Being a Year 6 teacher essentially means finishing the curriculum two months before other year groups do and leaving some time to spare. 

This is a great opportunity to rehone learning in core topics.

Below are some of the strategies I’ve put in place this year across reading, maths and spelling and grammar. A year ago, when I said yes to teaching Year 6, my personal mission was that no foundation subjects would be compromised and I’ve stuck with that by using these strategies. 

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Grammar and Spelling

1. Grammar gatherings: These take place a couple of times a week and can last anywhere from 2-3 minutes to 10-15 minutes, depending on what you are covering. The point of the sessions is to recap and revise, not introduce new learning. 

Choose quick topics that you covered in September and have some time to recap the key idea, and then include some paired practise or independent practise questions. 

This allows you to see what gaps are present within the specific grammar terminology and plug them as soon as possible. It also keeps the key concepts to the forefront of their minds.

2. Spelling: We use Read, Write Inc to teach specific spelling rules and it is brilliant. For the national curriculum spellings, we have split them into three sections for Year 6. One set until October, one until Christmas, and then one until February. We then recap and revisit until Sats.

The words are repeated over and over until they are essentially embedded. When I move into a new half term, previous words are randomly sprung on the children to ensure they are still able to spell them.

If you have standalone handwriting sessions on your timetable, combine them with practising the spelling words to give that little bit of extra practice time!

Reading

3. Identifying the reading skill required in the question: The biggest barrier for my children this year has been overdoing it for 1 mark questions or underdoing it for the longer questions, so we have spent, and continue to spend, time identifying what type of question is it - retrieval, inference, explain, sequence - and what does this skill mean.

4. Skills skimming: Leading on from the above, once the children became more familiar with the type of questions, I found retrieval was, understandably, the skill they were most confident with so this became a quick-fire quiz or a paired competition quiz and the reading session was focused on the trickier skills that require more in-depth thinking.

5. Test technique: Use the resources out there. Ten-minute tests from CGP, Read Theory, and Comprehension Ninja are all fabulous resources tailored to look very similar to test questions. 

Maths

6. Early Bird Maths: Starting with five questions and building up to 10, put maths concepts you have already taught on the board every morning as the children are coming in. 

7. Be smart with content: Time, shapes, money, Roman numerals - all these don’t need separate lessons and quite frankly you don’t have time to teach them as separate lessons, so include them in your maths teaching in September and when it comes to summer and you’re on that unit, they’ve got the basics covered and you can get straight on with the problem-solving side. 

I’d love to hear what other strategies Year 6 teachers have for this time of year to make the most of the time afforded by finishing the curriculum earlier than other years.

Maaria Khan is a Year 6 teacher and English and maths lead at Athersley North Primary, South Yorkshire