Meet the Team

2024-25

As a team we are so excited to teach your children this academic year!

We are passionate about watching them grow, flourish and achieve!

As a teaching team we will give our utmost to nurture them to become resilient leaders of our school, helping us to set the example, to be role models in their conduct, attitude, learning and to access the vast array of extra curricular opportunities available to them this year!

WELCOME TO YEAR 6 MEETING

Don't worry if you couldn't attend our 'Meet the Teacher' meeting in the first week of term, watch this video which will explain all you need to know about Year 6!

Key Information 

PE Uniform Days:

Outdoor PE - THURSDAYS (Changed from Tuesdays)

Indoor PE - FRIDAYS

Diary & homework check day:

FRIDAY

Trips/Residentials:

Kingswood - Dearne Valley - Wednesday 25th June - Friday 27th June 2025

Holocaust Centre - Wednesday 15th January 2025

Supporting your child at home

Reading

Y6 children will all have a colour banded reading book which is appropriate for their level as well as a reading for pleasure book.  Please support us by reading and discussing their books at home.  There is an additional sheet stuck in diaries explaining the goals and how to help your child. The whole school expectation is that children read at home either independently or to an adult at least THREE TIMES A WEEK and it is recorded in their diary (Book title, pages read, adult signature) Diaries are checked on Fridays.

Spellings

Each week the children will be given ten spellings, engaging in daily practice using a range of fun and helpful activities. You can support them to practice their weekly spellings as well as the common exception words that you will find stuck in their diaries.

Practising their spellings little and often, making it fun is key to helping your children to become confident and successful spellers.

As a team, we can help the children to become super spellers. 

Maths

Each child has a  Times Table Rock Star account and login details are stuck in diaries.  This can be accessed from home so please encourage your child to have fun and practise their times tables. The whole school expectation is that children use TTRS at home at least THREE TIMES A WEEK. Inside diaries there is a copy of the times tables up to 12x and a 'key instant recall facts' (KIRFs) which children need to know by the end of the year. Each half term, a KIRF will be focussed on. 

Maths.com & SPAG.co.uk

In Year 6, we use these websites to set weekly homework. Your child will have a personal log in for each website stuck in the front of their diaries. These websites are excellent for giving children practise at answering SATS style questions. Homework will be set on a Friday and the children will have a week to complete it. Teachers will check that it has been completed the following Friday. To begin with, we will alternate the homework set (one week Maths, the next week SPAG) and we will build up to setting Maths and SPAG every week)

Optional topic homework

Each half term, to support our topic learning in school, we will be issuing an optional topic homework which is of a creative nature. We will be sending home a sheet at the start of the topic with ideas for creative projects that the children can complete if they wish. We will give the children the whole half term to complete it and will have a showcase of projects in class where the children can show off their work!

SUMMER 1: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Welcome back to Summer Term 1 - the term of SATS!! Your time has come Year 6 to shine and show off all of your learning and hard work. On top of all the revision and preparation we will be doing for our important tests, our topic will be SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST where we will learn all about evolution and inheritance. 

Important dates for this half term: 

Wednesday 23rd April: Class 13's visit to the National Justice Museum

Friday 24th April: Class 14's visit to the National Justice Museum

Thursday 8th May: VE Day celebrations

MONDAY 12th MAY - THURSDAY 15TH MAY: SAT'S TESTS FOR YEAR 6 (Free breakfast club this week for Year 6 pupils)

Friday 23rd May: Last day of term

WEEK 1: WEEK BEGINNING 21ST APRIL

The first week of the Summer Term started for Year 6 with a trip to the National Justice Museum for their 'Choices and Consequences' workshop which is run by the Ben Kinsella Trust. The purpose of the workshop is to understand more about the dangers of carrying a knife and the consequences of carrying and associating with those carrying knives. We learnt about the law and how it applies to knife crimes cases and how to make positive choices to stay safe.  All of Year 6 found the workshop very moving and emotional. The Year 6 teaching team were very proud of how well all the pupils conducted themselves both on the tram and at the workshop - well done Year 6! 

On a lighter note, we also started our series of dance lessons with Miss Talia for indoor PE. We learnt how to build our strength and co-ordination by completing a variety of different poses such as handstands, cartwheels and headstands. 

SPRING 2: MYSTERIOUS MAYANS

Welcome back Year 6 to Spring Term 2! We hope you had a lovely half term and a raring to go for the exciting things we have in store for this half term! Our topic for this half term is 'MYSTERIOUS MAYANS' and we will be learning all about this ancient civilisation based in Mexico and Central America. We will be launching our topic with a WOW day on Tuesday 25th February with a visit from Partake history. 

Other important dates for this half term: 

PE days remains as a Tuesday (outdoor) and Friday (indoor)

SATS Parents Workshop (Wednesday 5th March at 9am and Monday 10th March at 4.30pm - both meetings will be identical so you only need to attend one)

World Book Day: Thursday 6th March 

Pupil Review Meetings: Tuesday 18th March and Thursday 20th March 

Wednesday 26th March: Visit to Ellis Guilford to watch their production of GREASE

Thursday 27th March: Y6 PROUD assembly for parents/carers

Friday 4th April: Finish for the Easter Holidays

WEEK 12: WEEK BEGINNING 31.3.25 

The final week of the Spring Term has come around! Another busy week in school which has involved us editing and publishing our writing based on our shared text 'The Escape Room', learning about volume and angles in Maths, completing our double page spread assessments in topic and learning about eternal life in RE. In computing, we have continued to develop our skills in using Tinkercad and we have designed our own desk tidies which involves making holes in the objects. Look at some of our designs below! 

A real treat this week was when the Royal Shakespeare Company came into school and performed 'The Tempest'. It was a mesmerising show and we even got to meet some of the actors afterwards for a Q&A!

WEEK 11: WEEK BEGINNING 24.3.25 

It's been an exciting week this week in Year 6. On Wednesday, we were lucky enough to go to Ellis Guilford School to watch their production of GREASE! The singing, dancing and acting was OUTSTANDING and all of Year 6 LOVED it! The children also loved seeing ex pupils from Old Basford School up on stage! 

On Thursday afternoon, it was our PROUD assembly to parents where each child received a well-deserved certificate for their achievements this term. We also showcased our fabulous Mayan cushions that we have designed and made with Mrs Maker in art. Come and take a look!

WEEK 10: WEEK BEGINNING 17.3.25 

This week, as we are a Royal Shakespeare School, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Tyreke who works for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Tyreke spend half a day with each of the Year 6 classes delivering a drama workshop based on the play 'The Tempest'. We explored many characters and themes of the play through various drama activities. Next week, we have an exciting visit from the RSC where they will be performing 'The Tempest' to the whole school and our work with Tyreke gave us a great introduction to this. Come and have a look at all the fun we had.

WEEK 9: WEEK BEGINNING 10.3.25 

It has been MOCK SATS WEEK this week so a busy week for all Year 6 pupils!  We have practised every test paper that the children will be sitting in the rooms and with the adults that the children will be with in May. This has been a great practise run for the children and has helped to alleviate any stress or anxieties they may have about the tests. The teaching staff are so proud of how well the children have coped this week - the approached all tests with resilience and a determination to do well. We are proud of you Year 6 - let's do exactly the same in real SATS week!

Also this week, the basketball team went to Windmill Primary for a basketball tournament after school on Tuesday, 10 children went to Nottingham High School to watch a production of 'We Will Rock You' on Wednesday and Barbara from the Mental Health Support Team has been in school working with some Year 6 children on how to cope with exam stress. Perfect timing for mock SATS week!

WEEK 8: WEEK BEGINNING 03.3.25 

SUCCESS FOR THE CHESS TEAM!

On Tuesday, our Chess team (consisting of Esmahil, Uwais, Ross, Grayson, Owen, Karter, and Rehan) went to a chess tournament at Gotham Primary School. The A team played the Girls High School and Fernwood and the B team played The Elms School and Langley School.

Team B finished with an impressive 5 and a half points and Team A finished with 4 points. Mr Ross praised the team for how well they played - well done boys!

WORLD BOOK DAY

On Thursday, we celebrated WORLD BOOK DAY! Mr Summersby brought in his HUGE collection of graphic novels which the children really enjoyed looking at and sharing with each other. We then completed many fun tasks based on graphic novels. In the afternoon, we took part in a live session with author Stephen Mangan and his sister Anita about their book 'The Fart that broke World Book Day' and Anita taught us how to draw an alien. We also created our own reading rivers showing just how much we read in a week!

WEEK 7: WEEK BEGINNING 24.2.25 

This week we were lucky to have a visit from Partake History who launched our topic on the MYSTERIOUS MAYANS with a WOW day! The day was jam-packed full of exciting activities including making and sampling different versions of hot chocolate, studying many interesting Mayan artefacts, learning how the Mayans used to write and making our own clay tablets with Mayan glyphs and using an inflatable Pok-a-Tok court to play our very own version of the Mayan game Pok-a-Tok! The day was a huge success and the children LOVED it! Miss McCulloch even heard Rehan in her class say that it was the best WOW day he had ever had!

SPRING 1: WORLD WAR TWO

Welcome back Year 6! We hope you all had a lovely Christmas holiday and all the staff are really excited to see your faces! This half term our topic will be WORLD WAR TWO and we can't wait to get stuck in to all the brilliant lessons we have planned. We are eagerly anticipating our visit from the Holocaust Centre on the 15th January to support our learning even further. There are a few changes to PE this term; OUTDOOR PE will now be on a TUESDAY and we will be practising and improving our hockey skills and INDOOR PE with Coach Hannah will now be on a FRIDAY. Art lessons with Mrs Maker will continue this term but they will now also be on a FRIDAY.

WEEK 6: WEEK BEGINNING 10.2.25 

It's been assessment week this week so the children have been busy completing assessments in reading, grammar, punctuation and spelling, maths AND writing. They have shown such hard work and resilience and we are PROUD of every single one of them! Test papers and scores will be coming home on Friday so you can see the progress your child is making. This week also brought our World War Two topic to a close and the children have completed their double page spreads as their end of topic assessment. Some children have learnt so much that they couldn't fit it all on two pages! Have a look at some impressive work below!

WEEK 5: WEEK BEGINNING 3.2.25 

In Maths this week, we have been learning about decimals and have sharpened our skills on rounding, adding and subtracting and multiplying decimals. In spelling, we have learnt to spell words which belong to the "inter" family and in reading we have continued to be gripped by our shared text "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas". In writing, our work has been based around the text "Rose Blanche" and we have joined in with some dramas activities to explore the character Rose even further. We have written an extract of Rose's diary as well as a letter to her offering advice on what to do once she made her horrifying discovery. The afternoons have been just as busy with music, Spanish, RE, PE, history, computing, PSHE and art! Phew! It's been Children's Mental Health week this week so we spent time in our PSHE lesson learning more about ourselves as the theme this year is "Know yourself, Grow yourself".

We are all looking forward to the final week of the half term next week where it is assessment week! We are excited to discover just how much progress the children have made since the last round of assessments. Good luck everyone!

WEEK 4: WEEK BEGINNING 27.1.25 

A showcase of our work from this week - we have finished our wire models inspired by Alberto Giacometti, we have been learning about Judaism and the heroic actions of Sir Nicholas Winton in RE, in History we have continued our understanding of the horrific events of the Holocaust and in writing we have been studying the book 'Rose Blanche'.

WEEK 3: WEEK BEGINNING 20.1.25 

This week, we had a workshop from Barbara who works for the Mental Health Support Team. The workshop was based on resilience and ways in which we can build our resilience. The children all found it really useful and hopefully can now name ways in which they can manage difficult situations.

On Thursday, Loki's Mum, who is a World War Two reenactor, came into school to share the many artefacts she has at home with the children. Loki's Mum is extremely knowledgeable and the children were fascinated with listening to her stories about the war. The children were lucky enough to handle gas masks, grenades, identification cards, anti-tank bullets, helmets, German plane identification cards, photographs and many more! We would like to send a big THANK YOU to Loki's Mum for sharing all this with us - a great example of History being brought to life!

WEEK 2: WEEK BEGINNING 13.1.25 

Visit from the Holocaust Centre

This week on Wednesday, we were visited by Debbie who is a member of the Outreach team at the National Holocaust Centre. She spent half the day in Class 13 and half the day in Class 13. It was a truly fascinating day for Year 6 and we followed the life of Leo Stein who was a Jewish boy living in Germany in the 1930's. We learnt all about how he and his family faced persecution from the Nazis through listening to Leo's story, looking at photographs and examples of propaganda and through studying some artefacts from Leo's life. 

Holocaust Memorial Day 2025

On Thursday, we had the privilege of joining the Multi-Schools Outreach event (Zoom) to mark World Holocaust Memorial Day 2025. We had the pleasure of listening to Hedi Argent MBE who was a Jewish girl living in Austria in the 1930's and escaped to live in England. We heard about her traumatic first hand experiences of the anti-semitism she experiences as a child. We were gripped as we listened to her fascinating story and even got to ask her questions at the end. A humbling experience for the whole of Year 6. 

WEEK 1: WEEK BEGINNING 6.1.25 

We kicked off our World War Two topic with a BANG on the first day back with our WOW day to excited and inspire the children. We learnt about rationing and we made delicious carrot cookies which is a World War Two recipe that uses carrots to make the cookies sweeter as sugar would have been scarce. We also started to learn about 'The Blitz' and completed some fabulous painting of London during this time.

AUTUMN 2: CASTAWAY

WEEK 7 - WEEK BEGINNING 16.12.2024

A BIG WELL DONE to Cohen who came in FIRST place in Class 13 in our end of topic quiz for our Castaway topic! Uwais came a close second and Ross came third!

HAVING FUN AT THE YEAR 6 CHRISTMAS PARTY!

WEEK 6 - WEEK BEGINNING 09.12.2024

On Thursday, we had our annual Key Stage 2 Christmas Carol Service at Christchurch. Several Year 6 children were chosen to be speakers and they did a fantastic job in telling the Christmas story to everyone as well s introducing the carols. We were extremely PROUD of all of them!

WEEK 5 - WEEK BEGINNING 02.12.2024

Well done to these 8 boys who represented school on Tuesday at a Boys Active competition at Harvey Hadden. You did extremely well and we are all very PROUD of you!

This week in Science we have been learning all about classifying animals. We learnt about what an invertebrate and vertebrate is and how vertebrates are then classified into further groups. We worked in groups and had a go at sorting a set of animals firstly into two groups, then three, then four using different criteria. After this, we learnt about classification keys and how they work. To practice the skill of using a branching key, we had fun trying to sort and classify some Liquorice Allsorts according to their characteristics!

WEEK 4 - WEEK BEGINNING 25.11.2024

On Tuesday this week, Year 6 took a walk down to the River Leen to conduct some field work as part of our 'Castaway' topic where we are learning about rivers. We got VERY lucky with the weather as it was a beautifully bright and sunny winters morning - much better than some of the weather we have had recently! We wrapped up warm and made our way down to the Leen.  On our journey, we walked all the way to Bulwell Bogs and back again! We completed some field sketches and labelled parts of the river that we could identify. At three different points along the river, we used dog biscuits to time the speed of the river. We also measured the river depth and found out that where the river was shallower, the speed of the river was faster.

It was a very enjoyable morning (the children were shattered afterwards with how far we had walked) and Miss McCulloch and Mrs Jones were very impressed with how sensible and well behaved the children were. 

WEEK 3 - WEEK BEGINNING 18.11.2024

What a busy week we have had this week in Year 6! In Maths, we have continued our learning about fractions and have learnt how multiply fractions by other fractions and by integers as well as learning how to divide fractions by integers. On Thursday, we had an arithmetic review and Miss McCulloch and Mrs Jones were delighted by the progress that Year 6 are making with their arithmetic scores. Keep up the hard work everyone! In English, we have started our innovation and wrote our own versions of 'Keep of the tracks' which is a warning story. We are looking forward to your inventions next week.

In our afternoon lessons, we learnt about how rivers are formed in Geography. In RE, we studied why Christians believe Jesus fufilled the expectations of the Messiah and in Computing we learnt about Copyright when using images to create our own webpages. 

The highlight of the week for everyone was our OPAL play morning on Tuesday. How lucky we were that it snowed on Monday evening so we were able to play outside in it on Tuesday morning with our grown ups! Some of the snowmen on the field were very impressive! 

Looking forward to next week Year 6.

WEEK 2 - WEEK BEGINNING 11.11.2024

This week has been ANTI-BULLYING WEEK in school. The theme this year is CHOOSE RESPECT and we have been busy in Year 6 thinking about what respect looks like and how we can show respect to others. We discussed the many differences among people and how sometimes we don't always agree with people with differing viewpoints to ours. The children were great at understanding that despite these differing viewpoints or ideas, we must always show respect to others. The children looked at different scenarios and worked in groups to think about if the scenario shows respect or not and how the children in the scenarios might be feeling. 

We also designed posters to encourage others in school to show respect.

WEEK 1 - WEEK BEGINNING 04.11.2024

It has been so wonderful to see the children filled with energy and excitement, ready for another half term in Year 6! 

We launched our new Castaway topic by discussing what we might find on a desert island and how we might survive there. We then created idyllic watercolour pieces of tropical island landscapes. 

This week, we also had the opportunity to build on our learning from last term in our beats and breaths topic. We had a special visit from Libby at Leon's Legacy who taught us the key skill of CPR, using DRSABC to assess the situation first. We all had the opportunity to practice the CPR manoeuvre on practice dummies. The children were thoroughly engaged with this and were able to share lots of their knowledge with Libby, as well as ask lots of questions. 

AUTUMN TERM 1: BEATS & BREATHS

WEEK 7 - WEEK BEGINNING 14.10.2024

It's the final week of Autumn 1! Where have those last 7 weeks gone? They have flown by! It's been a busy final week of the half term in Year 6; it's been assessment week and the children have worked incredibly hard on their test papers. Mrs Jones and Miss McCulloch are DELIGHTED with the progress that the children have made in just half a term! Keep up your hard work everyone. The final week has also marked the end of our 'Beats and Breaths' topic and the children have been completing their 'double page spreads' to showcase everything they have learnt about the circulatory system. Much to the children's delight, we also held our 'End of topic quiz' on Kahoot to see who had retained the most knowledge from our topic. Check out the pictures of our champions below! 

We would like to wish you all a happy and relaxing half term break and we look forward to seeing you all back in school on Monday 4th November for the start of Autumn Term 2!

WEEK 6 - WEEK BEGINNING 07.10.2024

This week, Year 6 have been scientists and have investigated how our heart rate changes with exercise. Together, we planned out the investigation and we chose which different activities we would do to see which would raise our heart rates the most. 

Which do you think? 
- Star jumps
- Speed bounce

- Step ups 

- Plank

- Sit ups

- Walking

- Jogging

- Running 

- Burpees

WEEK 5 - WEEK BEGINNING 30.09.2024

This week in Year 6, we have been learning about what is in our blood and what blood does inside the human body. On Monday and Tuesday, we got really messy in class and had a go at making our own blood! It really helped us to remember the four different components of blood - plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. We also learnt about the job of each of these four components. Come and have a look at us making our very own blood!

WEEK 4 - WEEK BEGINNING 23.09.2024

Thank you to all the parents that attended our Parent Workshop on Tuesday 24th September. It was a great opportunity for us to share our arithmetic skills and discuss how we can best support the children at home. 

We looked together at an arithmetic paper and how we would show our working out. We discussed the importance of fluency in our timestables to support us in our arithmetic work for multiplication and division. We also shared our skills and knowledge of Times Table Rock Stars. 

Here are a few websites that can support your children with their arithmetic skills: 

www.myminimaths.co.uk/year-6-arithmetic-practice-papers

www.mathsbot.com/primary/ks2

WEEK 3 - WEEK BEGINNING 16.09.2024

On Monday, we had the pleasure of having a silent disco in school! We all enjoyed dancing along to some of our favourite tunes!

This week we have been learning all about the circulatory system. We have been learning about how the heart works like a pumps and pumps blood through our bodies. We know that it is the blood's job to take water, oxygen and nutrients all around our bodies. As a team, we practiced the journey that blood takes through our bodies!

WEEK 2 - 09.09.2024

Year 6 had their WOW day this week to launch our Beats and Breaths topic. We spent the day using day-to-day resources to make models of how our lungs function. We have saved these in school for when we learn about our lungs in more depth. We also thought about how to keep our diets healthy and created our very own smoothies. We had lots of full tummies and happy faces when testing them!

FIRST WEEK BACK - WEEK BEGINNING 2ND SEPTEMBER

We have had an EXCELLENT first week back and we have started the year on a high. All of our Year 6 students have shown us that they are ready to be the oldest children in our school, be role models to the younger pupils and lead by example. Many students have signed up to roles and responsibilities around school which is extremely POLITE & HELPFUL. We have completed many baseline assessments this week and the children tackled them with drive and resilience. Well done Year 6 - we can't wait to see what you all achieve this year!