Mathematics and English Transition
Units
Training session
National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies
Year 6 Transition Units
Objectives
 To introduce the Year 6 mathematics
and English transition Units
 To set out the purposes of the units
 To explain the next steps for children as
they enter Year 7
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Year 6 Transition Units
Structure of session
 Introduction and overview (10 minutes)
 Review of mathematics unit (30
minutes)
 Review of English unit (30 minutes)
 Next steps and summary (5 minutes)
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Year 6 Transition Units
Why have transition units?
 Maintain progress to the end of KS2
 Create and sustain pupils’ interests
 Supplement existing assessment
information and involve pupils
 Provide opportunities for pupils to
demonstrate what they know,
understand and can do when they
transfer to Year 7
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Year 6 Transition Units
Why have transition units?
 Offer pupils curriculum continuity and
similar teaching approaches
 Help teachers plan for and maintain
progression
 Transfer work with pupils who can
develop their early success
 Teachers can identify strengths and
weaknesses to inform planning
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Year 6 Transition Units
Are these units needed?
 Initiatives exist to strengthen transition and
have helped smooth pupils’ transfer
 Local projects have had a positive impact on
curriculum continuity
 Units are linked to the National Strategies
and the Frameworks that most schools use to
plan mathematics and English
 Units promote a common approach in Years 6
and 7
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Year 6 Transition Units
What are the units?
 Taught towards end of summer term
 Mathematics unit provides work for one
week
 English unit provides work for two
weeks
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Year 6 Transition Units
What are common features?




Maintain lesson structures of DML and LH
Sustain common teaching approaches
Stimulate thinking and imagination
Consolidate and apply skills and knowledge
to
 solve problems, reason and self-assess
 deepen understanding and engagement with text
and authors’ use of structure and language
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Year 6 Transition Units
Mathematics Unit
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is the Mathematics Unit?
 Entitled: Calculation and problem solving
 Five linked lessons with objectives from
Framework’s Year 6 teaching programme
 Resources and OHTs provided
 Unit 9 of summer term Year 6 pilot Unit Plans
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is the focus of the Mathematics
Unit?
• Solving problems using the four
operations and different calculation
strategies
 Developing children’s communication
and reasoning skills
 Setting problems that are followed up in
the Year 7 mathematics Unit
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is the structure of the unit?
• Each lesson begins with an oral and
mental starter that leads into the main
teaching activity
• Emphasis is on direct, interactive
teaching with full involvement of
children
• Plenary sessions review pupils’ learning
and contain self-assessment tasks
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is the purpose of the
mathematics unit?
• To establish continuity in teaching
approach between Years 6 and 7
• To engage children in mathematical
reasoning and problem solving
• To set and maintain high expectations
• To provide an assessment profile of
pupils for use in Year 7
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is in the mathematics unit?
• Built around four problems
• First problem asks children to imagine using
only 3p and 5p coins to make different
payments and reason why all payments are
possible
• Other pair of coins introduced for homework
task
• Possible extension - why do some pairs of
coins work while others do not?
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is in the mathematics unit?
 Second problem “Hit a Million” transfers
letters to numbers to find word values
 Draws on pupils’ knowledge of
multiplication, introduces prime factors
 Possible extension – find words with
square values
 Covers two lessons and introduces selfassessment sheet to children
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is in the mathematics unit?
 Third problem asks children how a square
cake is shared when cut into squares
 Involves division and multiplication of
decimals
 Leads into discussion infinity and
convergence
 Possible extension – explore decimal pattern
for 1m² cake
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is in the mathematics Unit?
 Fourth problem asks children to interpret
information and find sum collected
 Involves calculations and systematic
recording
 Possible extension – increase each
contribution by percentage
 Complete self-assessment sheet in plenary
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Year 6 Transition Units
A mathematics problem
• A bookshop uses only £2 and £5 gift
vouchers
• How does the shop form packs of
vouchers worth £9, £17, £23?
• Gordon says: “With £2 and £5
vouchers, packs of any value are
possible.” Is Gordon right?
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Year 6 Transition Units
How should the mathematics unit be
used?
 Annotate and modify the daily lesson
plans to make them work for your pupils
 Prepare support and extension
materials
 Undertake teaching activities with whole
class and keep class together
 Use key questions to probe thinking and
assess understanding
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Year 6 Transition Units
How should the mathematics unit be
used?
• Generate sharing of ideas and
discussion of pupils’ methods
• Encourage use of jottings to help
thinking
• Monitor use of formal methods of
calculation
• Keep key objectives in mind during
plenary
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Year 6 Transition Units
English Unit
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is the English Unit?
 Year 6 Term 3 Units (after the national tests):
Poetry, Authors and Texts, Extended Narrative
Writing, Impersonal writing
 Year 6 Planning Exemplification 3: Extended
Narrative Writing
 English Transition Units: Authors and Texts
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Year 6 Transition Units
What is the rationale behind the
English Units?
 Application/consolidation
 Maintain progress
 Extension/deepening
 Motivation
 Engagement and reinforcing the pleasure of
reading
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Year 6 Transition Units
What are the English unit’s
objectives?
• To use a reading journal to raise and refine
personal responses to text and prepare for
discussion
• In the reading journal, the pupils will describe
and evaluate the style of a writer by
summarising, comparing and contrasting
elements across their novels and making
connections to and comparisons with another
writer/other writers
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Year 6 Transition Units
What are the Unit’s
objectives?
 In composing journal entries, the pupils
will use, as appropriate, complex
sentences and appropriate technical
vocabulary when summarising,
comparing and contrasting.
 They will also have the opportunity to
investigate the language used in novels.
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Year 6 Transition Units
Who are the suggested authors and
texts?
 Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael
Morpurgo
to be read in the weeks before the Unit
 The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson
to be read during the fortnight of the Unit
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Year 6 Transition Units
How are the reading journals used?
Favourite part - when Kensuke and
Michael rescue the orang-utans
I wonder if
someone really
could survive that
long
Kensuke’s
Kingdom
I wanted Kensuke
to go back to
Japan to look for
his family.
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Year 6 Transition Units
How are the reading journals used?
Did you visit any tropical islands so
you could make it realistic
Why is the
narrator called
Michael like you?
Michael
Morpurgo
How did you get
the idea of
someone living on
an island for so
long?
Year 6 Transition Units
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How are the reading journals used?
Dear Aggie
Andrea has
been reading
about others’
problems perhaps
hoping to
find an
answer to her
own
I always read your letters
page in the paper, and I
know my problem might not
seem very serious
compared with some
people’s, but to me it is.
My mum and dad split up a
while ago, and I take it in
turns to stay with them.
The trouble is that my
mum’s moved in with a man
who’s got a daughter my
age, which is 10, and I can’t
stand her.
Year 6 Transition Units
Complex
sentence
containing
three
subordinate
clauses to
get the
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information
Day 1 plan
Introduction to Reading Journals
• Shared text, sentence and word level work
– Use Ch3 of Kensuke’s Kingdom to introduce idea of
log/journal and the range of types of journal entry (Resource
sheet A). Introduce the idea of using a reading journal. Briefly
show examples of entries from a reading journal (eg sample
texts 1, 8, 9) to show how a reading journal can be used. T8
• Independent/guided work
– Pupils start their own reading journals by writing two or three
comments they would like to make to Michael Morpurgo
about any aspect of Kensuke’s Kingdom and two questions
they would like to ask him about it. T1, T8
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Year 6 Transition Units
Day 1 plan
Introduction to Reading Journals
• Plenary
– Sample pupils’ responses. Focus on and explore
a wide range of reactions/ responses T1, T8
• Class novel
– Begin reading The Suitcase Kid to class.
• Possible homework suggestions
– Pupils begin to read own chosen texts; they record
initial comments and questions T1
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Year 6 Transition Units
Overview of Y6 Literacy Unit
 Pages 1 – 17 planning for Y6 and Y7
 Pages 18 to the end – resources for Y6 and
Y7
 Pages 7 and 8 - Y6 plan
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Year 6 Transition Units
Next steps and
summary
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Year 6 Transition Units
Year 7 English Unit
 Extends the use of the reading journal
 Based on short story by Michael
Morpurgo ‘My Father was a Polar Bear’,
reproduced in full
 Examines relationships
 Reinforces work on complex sentences
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Year 6 Transition Units
Year 7 Mathematics Unit
 Builds on Year 6 Unit’s objectives
 Supports approaches to calculation
developed in Key Stages 1and 2
 Sets work in similar contexts to that
used in Year 6 Unit
 Extends work and problems – use of
negative numbers in coins problem
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Year 6 Transition Units
Next steps into Year 7
 Ensure children’s work and
assessments are made available to
secondary schools to build on when
they use the Y7 Units
 Explain to pupils that the work in
secondary schools will draw on all they
have learned during the Units
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Year 6 Transition Units
Summary
• Units offer curriculum continuity and
progression in two subjects
• Units promote similar methods and
styles of teaching
• Units provide some common additional
information to teachers on pupils’
achievements in core subjects
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Year 6 Transition Units