The Cathedral Grammar School .::. Year 6 Standard

By the end of Year 6, students will read, respond to, and think critically about texts in order to meet the reading demands of The New Zealand Curriculum at Level 3. Students will locate, evaluate, and integrate information and ideas within and across a small range of texts appropriate to this level as they generate and answer questions to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

The text and task demands of the curriculum are similar for students in Year 5 and Year 6. The difference in the standard for Year 6 is the students' increased accuracy and speed in reading a variety of texts from across the curriculum, their level of control and independence in selecting strategies for using texts to support their learning, and the range of texts they engage with.

In particular, by the end of Year 6, students will be required to read longer texts more quickly than students in Year 5 and to be more effective in selecting different strategies for different reading purposes.

The texts that students use to meet the reading demands of the curriculum at this level will often include:

abstract ideas, in greater numbers than in texts at earlier levels, accompanied by concrete examples in the text that help support the students' understanding
some ideas and information that are conveyed indirectly and require students to infer by drawing on several related pieces of information in the text
ome information that is irrelevant to the identified purpose for reading (that is, some competing information), which students need to identify and reject as they integrate pieces of information in order to answer questions
mixed text types (for example, a complex explanation may be included as part of a report)
sentences that vary in length and in structure (for example, sentences that begin in different ways and different kinds of complex sentences with a number of subordinate clauses)
a significant amount of vocabulary that is unfamiliar to the students (including academic and content-specific words and phrases), which is generally explained in the text by words or illustrations
figurative and/or ambiguous language that the context helps students to understand
illustrations, photographs, text boxes, diagrams, maps, charts, and graphs that clarify or extend the text and may require some interpretation.

Such texts will include both fiction and non-fiction in electronic and print media. They may be published individually, for example, as junior novels or information texts, or they may appear in collections, such as the School Journal or other journals and magazines for this age group. Such collections often include poems, plays, stories, and procedural texts.

The writing standard

By the end of Year 6, students will create texts in order to meet the writing demands of The New Zealand Curriculum at Level 3. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.

The text and task demands of the curriculum are similar for students in Year 5 and Year 6. The difference in the standard for Year 6 is the students' increased accuracy and fluency in writing a variety of texts across the curriculum, their level of control and independence in selecting writing processes and strategies, and the range of texts they write. In particular, by the end of Year 6, students will be required to write more complex texts than students in Year 5 and to be more effective in selecting different strategies for different writing purposes.

Key characteristics of students' writing at this level:

Students will write for a range of different purposes on topics and themes across the curriculum at this level, applying a process appropriate to the task
and drawing on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will help them achieve their purpose. The knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected at this level,
including those needed for spelling and punctuation, are described in the Literacy Learning Progressions.

Students will independently write texts, choosing language and overall text structures that are appropriate for their audience and purpose (for example,
when recounting, describing, narrating, reporting, arguing, or explaining). These texts will include, when appropriate:

content that is usually relevant to the curriculum task and includes detail and/or comment supporting the main points
paragraphs that group ideas
simple and compound sentences that are correct grammatically and some complex sentences that are mostly correct grammatically
words and phrases that are appropriate to the topic, register, and purpose,including subject-specific vocabulary.

The mathematics standard

By the end of Year 6, students will be achieving at Level 3 in the mathematics and statistics learning area of The New Zealand Curriculum.

In contexts that require them to solve problems or model situations, students will be able to:

Number and algebra

apply additive and simple multiplicative strategies flexibly to:

combine or partition whole numbers, including performing mixed operations and using addition and subtraction as inverse operations
find fractions of sets, shapes, and quantities

determine members of sequential patterns, given their ordinal positions
describe spatial and number patterns, using:

tables and graphs
rules that involve spatial features, repeated addition or subtraction, and simple multiplication.

Geometry and measurement

measure time and the attributes of objects, choosing appropriate standard units
use arrays to find the areas of rectangles and the volumes of cuboids, given whole-number dimensions
sort two- and three-dimensional shapes (including prisms ), considering given properties simultaneously and justifying the decisions made
represent and describe the results of reflection, rotation, and translation on shapes or patterns
identify nets for rectangular prisms
draw or make objects, given their plan, front, and side views
describe locations and give directions, using grid references, turns, and points of the compass.

Statistics

investigate summary and comparison questions by using the statistical enquiry cycle:

gather or access multivariate category and whole-number data
sort data into categories or intervals, display it in different ways, and identify patterns
interpret results in context, accepting that samples vary;

order the likelihoods of outcomes for situations involving chance, considering experimental results and models of all possible outcomes.