3,4C Class News
This week, we have enjoyed starting out new computing topic. We have created algorithms for off line games. Next week, we will be designing our own games and writing algorithms to solve them.
We have successfully completed the ‘Sponsored Times Table Challenge’ on Wednesday to raise money for the PTA and our school charity, Children’s Heart Surgery Fund. The scores were amazing; the children did a great job maintaining or improving their own personal score. Thank you to everyone who has raised some money so far!
Exciting news… we have started to learn the songs for our Spring production. Next week, we will start to look at the scripts and rehearse.
Help at home by continuing to help your child read regularly and access TTRS and/or Numbots.
Have a great weekend.
All about me!
Children enjoyed learning about how they’ve grown and changed from being a baby. We looked at our baby and toddler photos in group time; thank you for emailing them to us. We talked about some of the things that children can do now, that they couldn’t do when they were a baby such as talking, riding a bike and eating food. In the Creative area, we looked at our faces in the mirrors and tried to draw a self portrait. It was quite tricky, but we used a circle shape for our face and then added two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Some children loved adding extra features including curly or spiky hair and long eye lashes!
To continue our learning about ‘growing up’, we helped to take care of the babies in the water tray, carefully giving them a bath and washing their hair. In the playdough area, we looked at the numerals on different birthday cards and put the correct number of candles on our chocolate playdough cakes.
As part of our ‘Understanding the World’ curriculum, we’re beginning to learn about different forces. Children loved exploring the magnets in the discovery area and taking them around Nursery to see what they were attracted to and which objects they would ‘stick’ to. During story time, we talked about pushing and pulling forces when Fix-it Duck got his truck stuck in the muck. (Can you tell that we’re reading rhyming stories, too!)
Reminders:
- It’s World Book Day on Thursday 07 March 2024. For more information, see previous communications.
Next week’s learning:
Next week, we’ll continue with our ‘growing theme’ and will listen to ‘Oliver’s Vegetables‘ by Vivian French. We’ll be talking about the different foods that we eat and where they come from.
Nursery rhyme of the week – I’m a Little Teapot
Sound of the week – ‘r’ for rainbow
Hundred Decker Rocket
This week, we have continued to explore our topic ‘Let go’.
We have been reading the book The Hundred Decker Rocket.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on a mission to space. On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, all the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
In provision, the children were challenged to write their own sentences about a picture from the book or use their knowledge of the story.
Maths
This week, we have continued to engage in activities to draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. We revisited the concept of cardinality – the last number in the count tell us how many things there are altogether.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed air, er and longer words that contain double letters.
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
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.
Secret password
Write different tricky words on paper and stick them next to different doors around the house.
Each time your child enters or leaves a room they must press and say the tricky word password.
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. Watch here
Music
We began our lesson this week by listening to Beyond the Sea by Robbie Williams.
The children were amazing at recognising the instruments they could hear such as drums and the piano.
Then, they used xylophones to make low and high sounds.
Reminders and Messages
Monday 04 March- Class Trip to The National Railway Museum.
World Book Day 2024- Thursday 07 March Please join us in the classroom (9.00-10.00) where you can relax and read books with your child. We’d also like your child to share their favourite book with their friends. Please send your child into school with their favourite book and please ensure the book is named. As stated on the school calendar, this is a dressing up year. Dressing up is optional. Thank you.
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
Living and Learning: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different
In Key Stage One, we have read the book ‘Elmer’ by David McKee and considered things from another’s point of view. How might Elmer feel about being different from the other elephants? Why did Elmer want to look like the other elephants? How do the other elephants view Elmer?
Through this book, each class has been able to discuss how the elephants are the same and different. We have applied this to ourselves too.
Reading
We have linked our reading to writing this week and looked at the use of vocabulary. The children are noticing that authors make choices in their writing to help create a mood and effect on the reader. They have read lots of extracts over the last couple of lessons and identified the effect it has on them. Did it make them feel anxious? Elated? Petrified? They found evidence in the text to identify the deliberate word choices that the authors had used.
Class novel – Naughty Bus
We are enjoying repeatedly reading our class novel, Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke, and using it to inspire our reading and writing lessons too. The real photos and way the words are printed in the book has ignited lots of interesting discussions.
The word swim looks like it’s sinking.
Saving me looks like it’s being hooked by the powerful winch.
Help at home by taking discussing how authors use text or pictures in books to affect the reader.
Science vocabulary
Our new Science mini-topic is here below. We also designed some posters about what we can do to look after our Earth.
Help at home by talking about how we can care for our planet.
Science – caring for our planet
For the first two weeks of this half term, KS1 are learning about how to care for our planet. We know it is everybody’s responsibility to look after planet Earth. We have a responsibility to look after our local area and we can do that by caring for other people, animals and plants.
During our first session, the children had a look at the ‘wildflower garden’ by our KS1 playground. It was there that we discovered bird feeders, hedgehog and bug houses and recently planted plants and trees by our Year 6 children. We know all of these things help to look after our planets.
‘Trees produce oxygen that we need to breathe.’ (S.C 2c)
‘Hedgehogs can find shelter in the houses.’ (HP 2C)
This week we compared two areas to one another. We decided to look at Scholes village and London. We talked about differences such as population, traffic and transport ect and the effects this may have on these environments. We talked about how we could improve each area to help the wildlife. Here are some examples of the posters we made in class!
Viking Artefacts
Year 5/6 have been exploring some Viking Artefacts. They made predictions about what each item was used for. We then discussed how the items have changed over time. There were some items that we still use today which have not changed very much in 1000 years.
Reading: class novels
Year 5/6 have thoroughly enjoyed their class novels this year. From tales of escaping from harsh environments in David Long’s Survivors to the thrilling tale of Gunnar in Tony Bradman’s Viking Boy, children have been captivated by these fantastically rich texts.
In 56C, children are now enjoying reading a book which is structured in a different way; You are the chracter and you get to choose the path your story takes.
Help at home: discuss the class novel. Which one is your child’s favourite? Go to the library and ask for similar books to share at home.
