Exciting English
This half term, we’ve worked incredibly hard in our Reading and Writing lessons, having lots of fun along the way.
Our class novel has been Zog and the Flying Doctors by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, the sequel to Zog.
Films of both books are currently available on BBC iPlayer. Click on the above links.
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading both stories, making lots of predictions and inferences.
Through our weekly RIC lessons, we’ve improved at fact retrieval, inference and understood authors’ choices.
Each week, there has also been a new fluency text where we’ve practised the act of reading. This week we’ve been reading an exciting text about great white sharks. Texts about plants and Leonora Cohen have helped us with our Science and History learning too.
In our Writing lessons, everyone has been trying their very best with their handwriting and spelling. We’ve also had a strong focus on must dos such as capital letters and full stops.
Our writing about Zog and his friends has not only been fun to write, but fun to read as well. We’ve been editing mistakes and making improvements along the way, giving us all a great sense of pride in our learning.
We may not get everything perfect right away but we’re all reflective and resilient learners. Being reflective and resilient are two of our 8 Rs for learning.
How many can your child remember?
Forgiveness
This half-term our Christian value is forgiveness. Last Friday, the children did an activity called ‘Fizzy Forgiveness’. The children dropped their tablet in the water and watched it fizz. When doing this, the children thought about a time where they might have had to forgive someone or somebody might have needed to forgive them.
Living and Learning – Speak out Stay safe from the NSPCC
The NSPCC would usually come into school to talk to us about how to stay safe. This year, we watched a virtual assembly instead.
Sometimes things make us happy and sometimes they can make us sad, worried or unhappy. It’s important to understand our feelings and not keep worries to ourselves and that’s what we would like children to know.
Extending our vocabulary
We have had great fun making up actions to help us remember and apply the week’s vocabulary. Here are a few pictures of us acting out various words. Ask your child to show you their actions as they are so much better than photos!
beneath
desperately
clutching
crumbly
looped
twined
A sunny week in Foundation
What a glorious week we’ve had in Foundation. The sunny weather has allowed us to be outside every day and the children have loved it! We’ve been using our imaginations to make up role-play situations in the pirate tuff tray. A group of children helped Miss Marsden plant some bulbs and vegetable seeds. On Tuesday, the children loved getting wet. They used different containers, tubes and pipes to make the water travel down the pipes and into other containers. They were pouring squeezing, filling and splashing all morning. The children were that engaged, we nearly ended being late for lunch – oops!
In PE, the children continued to develop their throwing and catching skills. However, this time they used balloons! Look how excited and eager they were to catch the balloons. Next term, we will continue to learn key skills and start playing small team games.
At the end of the week, it’s our maths focus days. This week, we consolidated our learning on numbers 6, 7 and 8. The children chose a number and drew a picture to represent that number using two groups.
For example, “There are 4 red flowers and 3 yellow flowers. There are 7 flowers altogether.”
The children outside made a number track using hoops and chalk. They rolled two dice, counted the total number of spots, and jumped that many spaces on the number track. It was great to see the children praising their peers when they won.
F1 Group Times
On Monday and Tuesday, the F1 children focused on alliteration in phase one phonics sessions. The children listened carefully to Mrs Rippon saying initial sounds. For example, “Can you find something that begins with sssss?” On Wednesday, the F1 children discussed the different seasons and what changes we might see. After the discussion, they sorted some picture cards into each of the seasons.
Here are some more highlights from this week…
In the construction area, the children explored how to make the remote control cars work and drew roads for them to drive on.
Phonics Learning
Home-Link Challenges
I hope the sun keeps shining and you all have a lovely weekend!
See you on Monday for another fun-filled week.
Super homework from Year 3,4
This week, our homework task was to create a picture to teach us about forgiveness based upon our book “The Boy, the mole, the fox, and the Horse” by Charlie Mackesy.
We had some fantastic creative homework in that will help us remember our Christian value of forgiveness. Here are a few:
History topic – real life heroes
We are learning all about significant people (real life heroes) in our topic lessons this half term. Below is the key vocabulary that we will be focusing on.
equality – being treated fairly and having the same chances in life
rights – the basic things people need to live (eg food, housing) and reach their potential (eg education, safety)
apartheid – a system that keeps people apart, usually because of their different skin colour
racism – treating people differently because of the colour of their skin, their religious beliefs or their culture
suffragette – a woman who campaigned for the right of women to vote
protest – people coming together to show others that they are against an idea or an event
impact – a strong and powerful effect on something or someone
belief – a strongly held opinion that something is right
Sarah Allen from Abbey House Museum talked to us about Leonora Cohen today. Leonora Cohen was a suffragette. She was involved in the fight for women to have the right to vote. The children asked some super questions and shared their thoughts.
Women should have been allowed to vote too.
Why was she sent to prison three times?
Why did she not give up?
We have also learnt about Apartheid and how Nelson Mandela changed things.
Living and Learning: I know how to seek help.
In connection to this week’s Living and Learning statement, we have taken part in an NSPCC assembly and discussing who we can talk to if/when we are worried or anxious. This is especially important in the COVID year that we are living through. For more information, ask your child and I’m sure they’ll share all about it!
Let’s rock for Red Nose Day!
Hello to all of you Times Tables Rock Stars,
This Friday is Red Nose Day and the people at TTRS have come up with a great challenge to raise some extra money for Comic Relief.
Prices for a new nose start at 50,000 coins so we’d best get saving.
We’ve got until Friday – Red Nose Day. Let’s do our bit to help the nation reach that £5,000 target.
TTRS Tournament winners (wb 08 March)
Our first week back at school has seen a very close race for the title!
All week, the lead has changed hands but, in the end, there can only be one winner!
The TTRS tournament winner this week is… (DRUM ROLL)…
It’s Year 5! That’s the second win in a row! Year 3,4 were a very close second.
Will Year 5 get a third win in a row? Will Year 3,4 go one further to take the victory? Or perhaps, Year 6 will come in and steal the show?
All the best, TTRS.