Pandas
Meet the team ...
Teacher
Miss Nicholson
Teaching Assistants
Mrs Jackson (Mon–Thurs) and Mr Whittaker
Spring Term 2025
Welcome to the Spring Term and another term in Pandas class.
We have lots of lovely learning planned for Pandas this term. From looking at The Tudors in History to exploring deserts in Geography. We will be answering our topic questions at the end of our units. Would you like to live in the desert? What was life like in Tudor England? We will be getting creative in DT and Art - designing and making our own pop-up books.
We will be learning Tudor dances in PE and learning various skills through target games. Our PE days will be Monday and Friday this term. In PSHE, we will learn about online friendships and how to stay safe online; drugs, alcohol and tobacco and the influences that others have on us.
We have also been looking at The Mars Rover in Computing lessons and will continue this in Spring Term.
Knowledge organisers for our learning this term can be found at the bottom of this page.
We will continue to look at the book 'Darwins Dragons' in reading lessons and will be getting to know a new book called 'Cosmic' by Frank Cottrell-Boyce for our writing lessons. I am very excited about this and I think the children will really enjoy looking at this book.
It's one giant leap for all boy-kind in Frank Cottrell Boyce's out-of-this-world story: Cosmic. Liam is too big for his boots. And his football strip. And his school blazer. But being super-sized height-wise has its advantages: he's the only eleven-year-old to ever ride the G-force-defying Cosmic rollercoaster - or to be offered the chance to drive a Porsche. Long-legged Liam makes a giant leap for boy-kind by competing with a group of adults for the chance to go into space. Is Liam the best boy for the job? Sometimes being big isn't all about being a grown-up.
What can I do to support my child’s learning in Pandas?
Mathematics
Times tables!
It is important that children know their times table facts well in Year 6. Children need to be practicing the ones that they are struggling with at home., Asking your child their times table facts on a regular basis will help them with this or supporting them while they are on times table apps. Hit the button is a good app to help with this (see the link below).
BBC Bitesize
This is a good website that the children can access at home. They can work on aspects of Year 6 that they feel they need help with.
4 Operations
The children need to know how to answer the main 4 operations in maths. These are + - x and ÷. See document below for a table of the methods we use in school.
Spelling
When looking at spellings, I’ve explained to the children the importance of actually learning how the words are spelt and not just copying them out. We also look at the words and if any spelling rules/ patterns apply. I will supply the children with copies of spellings we are learning.
They also need to know the spellings from the Year 5/6 word list...
accommodate, accompany, according, achieve, aggressive, amateur, ancient, apparent, appreciate, attached, available, average, awkward, bargain, bruise, category, cemetery, committee, communicate, community, competition, conscience*, conscious*, controversy, convenience, correspond, criticise (critic + ise), curiosity, definite, desperate, determined, develop, dictionary, disastrous, embarrass, environment, equip (–ped, –ment), especially, exaggerate, excellent, existence, explanation, familiar, foreign, forty, frequently, government, guarantee, harass, hindrance, identity, immediate(ly), individual, interfere, interrupt, language, leisure, lightning, marvellous, mischievous, muscle, necessary, neighbour, nuisance, occupy, occur, opportunity, parliament, persuade, physical, prejudice, privilege, profession, programme, pronunciation, queue, recognise, recommend, relevant, restaurant, rhyme, rhythm, sacrifice, secretary, shoulder, signature, sincere(ly), soldier, stomach, sufficient, suggest, symbol, system, temperature, thorough, twelfth, variety, vegetable, vehicle, yacht
Some spelling strategies that could help them are: -
- Look, cover, write, check
- Split the word up into chunks and then give each chunk a colour – e.g. No/vem/ber
- Finding words within their spellings
- Asking them to tell you how a word is spelt
Reading
Read, read, read!! This really is the answer. The children need to be reading daily (even if it’s just 10 minutes) as this will really help them with many areas of learning. Reading helps children with pace, comprehension, seeing words used in context, learning new vocabulary, learning how sentences are formed, imagination and learning about different genres.
This can be TV, magazines, newspapers, posters etc… It doesn’t always have to be their school reading book.
It’s also important to talk to your children about what they are reading so that you can check their understanding of the text. Inference is something that children find particularly tricky. This is where they must look for the clues within the text, rather than just find a simple answer.
Useful Links
Gallery