English

Year 6 will be a formative and exciting year for your child. Now that they are at the top of the school, they will be preparing for both SATs and secondary school in earnest, and they will develop much more independence and resilience as the year goes by.

In English, your child will now be expected to understand how to use a full range of punctuation, to write with a wide variety of sentence structures, use powerful vocabulary, and to generally spell words accurately. They may well be fully independent readers, choosing their own books and non-fiction texts based on their own interests. The writing your child does at school will be increasingly confident and creative.

There are a variety of simple things you can do at home to support your child’s developing English skills.

What your child will learn:

Follow the links below to find an overview of what is taught in Year 6, with information, support, and activities:

Spelling in Year 6

In Year 6, the National Curriculum expectations for spelling are similar to what they are in Year 5. So, your child will build upon their learning by continuing to spell words that don’t fit easy spelling rules and to use dictionaries and thesauruses. This includes:

• spelling words with ‘silent letters’
• knowing the difference between uncommon homophones and other confusing words
• using morphology and etymology in spelling
• using a thesaurus to expand their vocabulary.

Grammar & punctuation:

In Year 6, children will learn to use formal and informal language appropriately, to use a wide range of cohesive devices, and to use punctuation in new ways. This includes:

• making use of the passive voice
• linking ideas across paragraphs with cohesive devices, such as repetition of a phrase, grammatical connections, or ellipses
• using semi-colons, colons, and dashes to mark the boundary between independent clauses
• using hyphens to avoid ambiguity.

Handwriting:

Children will learn to: 

• write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed by:
  • choosing which shape of a letter to use when given choices and deciding whether or not to join specific letters
  • choosing the writing implement that is best suited for a task.

How to help at home:

There are lots of ways you can help your Year 6 child with handwriting. Here are our top ideas.

1. Try arts and crafts

Give your child opportunities to do arts and craft activities that allow them to experiment with a wide range of materials. For example, see if they can write with chalk, paintbrushes, felt tips, or crayons.

If you’re at the beach, you could try writing in the sand. This gives your child lots of freedom to try different things without the pressure of having to get it right first time – if their handwriting isn’t perfect, they can just wash or brush it away and start again.

2. Read a variety of books

Choose texts for your child that show a wide variety of formats and layouts. Be sure not to neglect non-fiction texts, such as magazine articles, brochures, adverts, newspaper columns, signs, and notices.

Showing your child these kinds of texts will give them experience reading in a real-world context, and will also prepare them for national assessments where they are expected to engage with a wide variety of text types. Make sure you talk together about how the texts are presented – the writing may look different depending on what kind of text you are looking at.

3. Write, write, write

Be on the look out for everyday opportunities for your child to practise their handwriting. For example, they could write out the shopping list that you dictate, mark events on the calendar, make greetings cards for family members, write out recipes or song lyrics, and so on. Try to find opportunities that link to their interests.

We use cursive at St Paul's. Consistency is essential at this stage, so it is important not to correct something that you think is an error but that is actually part of the style your child is learning.