What are your Y6 children doing now that SATS are over with?

[bryte]

After spending most of the year intensively focusing on SATS, I had hoped that the rest of the school year would be fun and/or Y6 teachers would have the opportunity to engage the children in new learning of the teacher's choosing, not tied up with state testing. Instead, it seems like my DD's teacher is simply killing time.

DD had a change of teacher in January. She's in a year group which has had discipline problems all through the school, and her Year 6 class is made up of some of the worst behaved. I believe the new teacher's remit was to not give an inch. Now that SATS are over, the other two year 6 classes are doing some activities that my DD's class isn't being allowed to do. The teacher is not teaching them anything nor letting them participate in anything which might give scope for some of them to misbehave. DD is extremely bored. The end of term can't come quickly enough.

What's happening at your DC's school? Do they handle this half term better?

We have had business week where they've raised money for the end of school party, an outward bounds trip and rehersing for the school musical, Then there is the usual sports day and leavers assembly.

Y6 always do a Theme Park Challenge after SATs, which runs across a few weeks. Working in groups designing a theme park, choosing rides, producing marketing materials, analysing costs/profits, making models etc. etc. They then present the results at the end, and the best group get a prize. It's a fun exercise, but still learning. They have an activities week to look forward to, and preparing for the Leavers Play.

Rehearsals for school musical; Fitness Week this week; at last, a few science lessons; RE school trip, work on their legacy books; Sex and Relationships education. Oh and they have resumed maths & literacy lessons. Even a bit of reading thrown in for good measure. Pretty busy.

No big trip this term as they went to France for 5 days at the start of y6.

Dd spends time doing inter generational learning which means she has learnt to crochet and will learn to knit, do some simple woodwork and gardening. They have a mini enterprise week where the profits pay for end of year party. She will learn Bhangra dancing and they are rehearsing for end of term performance. They go to the local uni for science and humanities days. Then there is cycling proficiency, sex education and numeracy and literacy continues.
Residential happened earlier in the year.

DD2 is going to see a performance of Private Peaceful and has done some work around the anniversary of the D-Day landings. She is also doing a topic on light in science and really enjoying it. There's still sex education, leavers assembly and sports day to come as well.

Ds' class have started working on a new topic. They've also just started their Sex & Relationships lessons.

They've been on a few local trips, and will soon be going on a residential trip.

It's been busy but so far ds has been really enjoying it.

Interesting normal lessons (they had a student teacher in fior a few weeks) restarted immediately asfter SATs - which are very low key, so there's not so much of a crash once it's done. Residential, cycling proficiency, Arts week, end of year show, talent show - basically 'normal+'.

DD is doing cycling proficency, has her leavers disco, preparing for leavers assembly and a 2 day camping trip coming up and SRE. Nothing too heavy for her. She is still counting the days until she leaves though.

We have an "enterprise fortnight", followed by rehearsals, set making, etc. for a big musical!

Ours have done a junior apprentice project to raise money for leavers t shirts. Each group had a 10 pound budget to buy materials to make products of their choosing (most opted for biscuits, muffins, friendship bracelets, loom bracelets, ice cream floats etc.This involved marketing, packaging design, advertising, budgeting and basic accounting, market research etc. And then a big sales event open to the rest of the school and parents. Great fun.

Now they are rehearsing for the end of year play and making props and costumes.

Tomorrow is sports day.

The day after is Egyptian day with a theatre workshop.

Next week is sports activities week.

In 2 weeks time is the swimming gala.

Then thers will be the leavers swim, BBQ and disco.

Lots of fun :)

Ours do...

Residential
Cycling proficiency
Arts week
Science week
School play rehearsals

But they also do an hour of maths and an hour of literacy every morning

Lots of RE. Preparing for confirmation. Rehearsing for leavers assembly. Disco. A few trips planned. Helping with transition to secondary school by giving them information and activities.

No english or maths just fun lessons like science experiments.

Sounds like there is a nice mixture of activities going on in your children's Year 6 class.

We do have Enterprise week coming up and sports day but those are whole school things that happen every year. I'll try to take DD's version of events with a pinch of salt but the school has been going through trying times the past few years (school deemed inadequate by Ofsted) and this new teacher seems to have sucked the last remaining joy out of DD's school experience. I'll put on my school-support face for DD and silently count down the remaining weeks with her.

Ds is bored to tears. He loves structured learning and it has all stopped. He's at a prep school so it all stopped at the end of Jan after entrance exams.

He has written a book for small children, done a very long project on environmental adaptations of a plant and animal, made a film, a "dragons' den" type project, endless play rehearsals, made a poetry anthology and done some kind of maths challenge in teams.

It actually sounds better on paper than it is. He feels he wants to learn and, instead, is doing busy work.

DS has also had an enterprise week. They are holding events this week which stem from that, raising money for a trip to a theme park.

The whole school has had Health Week.

It was the school music concert last week, so they spent time in school practising.

This morning we were out of school (I was helping) visiting other schools with the orchestra.

They had a Y6 athletics day.

School musical rehearsals start next week (Lion King), but DS will actually be at a Primary Music week run by secondary.

They will also start their new topic next week, Growing Up and Moving On, incorporating Sex ed and transition to secondary.

Not much Maths/English as far as I can tell. He is happy, I don't care.

Moving up to year seven on Monday!!

Rehearsals for year 6 leavers concert. Rounders tournaments. Entrepreneurs project where they are all given £1 and have to make more money by doing jobs or selling cakes - all properly recorded in edexcel and PowerPoint Day out to a theme park using the profits from their project. Fun science bubble challenge experiments. Maths investigations. Literacy- Preparing and putting together a year book. Compositions using garage band on the I pad.

Loads of fun stuff! ( and dare I say it more educational than endless learning how to pass a test ...)

Rehearsals for year 6 leavers concert. Rounders tournaments. Entrepreneurs project where they are all given £1 and have to make more money by doing jobs or selling cakes - all properly recorded in edexcel and PowerPoint Day out to a theme park using the profits from their project. Fun science bubble challenge experiments. Maths investigations. Literacy- Preparing and putting together a year book. Compositions using garage band on the I pad.

Loads of fun stuff! ( and dare I say it more educational than endless learning how to pass a test ...)

Residential, day trips, rehearsals for play, sports day, leavers do, summer fair etc etc. but last week was given the most ridiculously hard piece of maths homework they've had all year!

Bikeability, sports day, residentials, rehearsals for school play, inductions for secondary plus a few lessons. DD is being kept busy.

Although a few kids in our school have been withdrawn to 'home ed' until they start secondary in September! Most of these have been sent overseas to be with relatives.

1 week residential
Rehearsing for school play
Rehearsing for recorder group events
Planning the Yr 6 stalls for the school fete
Obsessively filling in their world cup charts with all the results

I'm sure they're doing a bit of work in between all of that but I haven't heard much about it!

There's lot of great stuff going on by the sound of it, the entrepreneur projects sound fun while educational.

Dd's class seem to be spending a lot of time making Egyptian death masks (nice cheery project!) and lots of rehearsals for the class production. They're going swimming once a week and there are a few inter-school sports tournaments, induction days coming up too.

We're in Yorkshire, so there is a Tour de France week at school next week with a production and lots of different projects and crafty things. Dd doesn't particularly like work so she's loving it!

Rehearsals for school musical
Sex and relationship lessons (we as parents get to watch dvd next week)
school trip to local place
Year 6 also run the sports day for year 2
Some numeracy and literacy
transition days into secondary school