3,4A Class News
This week, we have continued to rehearse for our production of ‘Gladis Baker, Gladiator’. We’ve been adding actions to the songs and props to the different scenes so it’s starting to come together! Your child should either have a script or song lyrics to take home with them – it would be greatly appreciated if you could help them to practise their parts/ the songs at home. The children have also been sent home with a slip for their costume. Please don’t buy anything new – if you’re stuck, let us know!
In Science, we have continued our learning about light. So far, we’ve learnt about different light sources (natural vs artificial), how to protect ourselves from the sun, how light travels in straight lines and how some materials let light through whilst others don’t – transparent, translucent, opaque.
In Writing, we have started a new unit on writing a report about Scratch Jr. This links with our current topic – Computing. We’ve been learning about repetition and sequencing and have created our own programs on Scratch Jr by writing different algorithms for our sprites.
Help at home by asking your child about the vocabulary in bold above! 
3,4 C Class News
Well done 3,4 C – what a busy couple of weeks!
This week, we have enjoyed creating our own animations using Scratch. We have explored the different codes and have used repetition in our algorithms.
Today, we raised money for Red Nose Day by wearing non-school uniform and making a voluntary contribution. Thank you to everyone who donated.
Last Thursday, we celebrated World Book Day! We shared the books that we particularly enjoy and dressed as our favourite characters.
The children are working hard on the Year 3,4 production. Help at home by encouraging your child to learn their lines and/or the lyrics to the songs. Well done Year 3,4. Keep projecting your voices!
Eat your peas!
Look at our beanstalks! Children have been fascinated over the last few weeks as they watched and waited for their seeds to grow. We talked about the shoot and roots as they appeared and have made sure that we watered and kept them in the sunlight to help them grow.
We read ‘Eat your peas’ during story time and continued our learning about vegetables and healthy foods. We picked some healthy foods to add to our plates and talked about other food that we might choose to eat occasionally.
In the creative area, we did some observational drawing of different vegetables and looked at the shape and colours as we drew. We even had some beetroot to draw that we harvested from our Nursery garden.
In the play dough area, we rolled tiny balls of dough to make peas and counted out the correct number to go into each pod.
In the maths area, children looked at lots of carrots and sorted them by length. There was lots of conversation using different vocabulary related to size. Look how long this one is! This carrot is tiny, it’s very short. Your carrot is longer than mine.
Children have also been practising their counting skills and have been trying to make sure that they count carefully, saying one number for each item as they touch it or point.
Help at home: Practise counting different objects during play and in everyday life. Make sure children say one number for each item; it often helps to move each item as you count or line them up so that children only count each object once. Can they remember how many they had in total without counting again?
We also enjoyed exploring and peeling different vegetables and outside, we cleared the planters, ready to start growing our own veggies!
Next Week’s Learning
Letter sound of the week – b for bear
Nursery rhymes of the week – 5 Little Ducks and Pat-a-cake
Debating
Three year 5 children were selected to take part in an interschool debating competition. 14 schools took part in the debate at Wigton Moor Primary School.
The debate topic had many views: Should zoos be abolished?
The children said ithat overall it was a very good experience.
Help at home: What are your child’s views on zoos? Debating at home while having dinner or on a car journey can help develop good oracy skills.
The children represented our school with pride. Well done.
3,4 B Class News
This week has been a very busy week of rehearsals for our phase production. The children have worked really hard on the songs and lines and it is certainly coming together! Your child should have either a script or song lyrics to take home with them – it would be greatly appreciated if you could help them to practice their parts/the songs at home.
As well as rehearsals, we have been working hard in lessons have completed a brilliant narrative based on a short clip called, ‘The Dragon Slayer’. Please ask us about this at home! We have also thoroughly enjoyed our learning in computing – creating our own ‘unplugged’ games and then exploring writing programs on Scratch Jnr.
We continue to work hard on our times tables and are ‘going for gold’ with our times table facts – recalling them at speed and practicing the ones we are less sure of.
Help at home by continuing to help your child access TTRS and asking them to read regularly to you. Thank you for your continued support.
Have a lovely weekend!
Jack and the Beanstalk
It’s been another busy week in reception!
Jack and the Beanstalk
This week, we’ve been reading the traditional story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.
We discussed how this story has been re-told many times and some versions of the story are different. Just by looking at the front covers, we could spot similarities and differences.
This week, our word of the week was gigantic.
Planting a (magic) bean
After listening to the story, the children all agreed that we should plant our own bean.
We then wrote instructions to explain to others how they could plant a bean too!
Music
Each week in music, the children listen to a piece of music and respond to it; what it reminds them of, or what they notice. This week’s piece was non-vocal music, Frog’s legs and dragon’s teeth by Bellowhead:
“it’s faster” (than last week’s music)- Finlay
“It goes fast, then slow, then fast”- Harry
“I like sandstorm…that has no voices in too. It’s on my playlist”- Oliver Gr
The children then watched a video of the band performing and named the instruments.
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been exploring the composition of number 7.
We’ve also used our magic bean machine to combine two numbers.
Class Assembly
Thank you to parents and carers who were able to join us for our class assembly on Thursday. We hope you enjoyed the journey through our day in Reception! If you’d like to see the slideshow of photos shown in the assembly, please click here
Comic Relief; Red Nose Day
Thank you to everyone for participating in our non-uniform day for Comic Relief and for your kind donations.
Phonics
Spring 2 week 4 has focused on longer phase 3 words, words ending in –ing and compound words (words made of two words i.e. rooftop/farmyard) We review tricky words daily.
In provision, we’ve been making beanstalks by reading tricky words!
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try.
Tricky Word Jigsaw
A game to help the spelling of tricky words
- Write 5 tricky words on paper.
- Chop the words into individual graphemes.
- Ask your child to reconstruct the tricky words, by calling them out one at a time.
It doesn’t need to be as fancy as the picture above, a plain piece of paper and hand-writing the words will work just as well!
Poetry Picnic
Each week, we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is Spring Wind.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
click here to watch Reception recite this week’s poem
Reminders and Dates
Easter Disco 22.03.24 – 3.15 -4.15
The Friends of Scholes have arranged the Easter Disco after school. If you would like your child to attend the disco, payment should be made on the Gateway app. Collection as usual from the classroom door.
Year 6 Football Tournament
Last night, our year 6 footballers went to Wetherby High School to take part in a tournament against other local schools. It was the first opportunity that our girls team have had to play against other teams. Everybody played fantastically and it was great to see Scholes embrace mixed gender football teams. Whilst we didn’t win any trophies, there were lots of goals scored and loads of great teamwork. Harry worked hard throughout, to the point where he was exhausted and Lily saved some great shots in goal.
A fantastic effort by everyone! Thanks also to the parents who transported the children and stood in the drizzle for 2 hours – you are amazing too!
Computing
Our Topic this half term is computing. We are learning about what a computer is and the functions and abilities that computers have.
Each Topic, we learn different vocabulary.
In class, we are using Beebots. These are robots that have the appearance of a bee. They can move around when programmed with an algorithm. The children have experimented over the past few weeks, using the Beebots. They know how to get them to move in the way that they want (after lots of trial and error).
First we must press ‘CLEAR’ to ensure that the Beebot does not follow any prior instructions.
Then we command an algorithm into the Beebot and press ‘GO’.
We have also been designing our own games. We have practised working out the correct algorithms needed to complete our games. We’ve also set our peers challenges whereby they need to ‘debug’ an algorithm to complete our games. So far, we have planned and designed our games in our books.
We can’t wait for next week, where we can see our games come to life, using the Beebots!
Topic: computing
This week in topic we have been powering up the laptops again. Our current learning is all about computing and how to create programs. Using the Scratch platform we have been creating our own chat bot games. These are interactive games that allow a player to answer questions. This children needed to use selection to choose the correct blocks and build the algorithm for their game. The children also needed to select a background and a sprite (character). We will continue to work on our projects and we will debug any issues with our games.
Help at home: Can you help your child learn our computing vocabulary?
I Asked The River by Valerie Bloom
In this week’s reading skills lessons, we are reading the poem: I Asked the River by Valerie Bloom.
So far, we’ve enjoyed the poem and discussed:
– the rhyming sequence
– how it makes us feel
– the links it has to global issues
– any questions we have about it
– any vocabulary we’re curious about
– our likes and dislikes
– what connections we have to it (things we’ve previously read, seen or done)
Enjoy the poem below!
Help at home: Practise reading this poem with your child and make up some retrieval or interpret questions to check your child’s understanding. Some examples could be:
Who did the river have to meet?
When did the river have lunch with the sea?
Why does the river only foam and seethe from stanza eight?
