Survivors Diary Entry
This week, we’ve been writing a survivors style diary entry taking inspiration from our class novel: Survivors by David Long.
Today, we edited and improved our writing in pairs. We checked that we had included:fronted adverbials, relative clauses and that our writing was in the first person.
Help at home: by asking your child to write a sentence with a fronted adverbial in it. This makes their sentence starters more varied and interesting!
Geography – I can see the seas!
This week in Geography, 2C have been researching the seas that surround the UK and how to read a map key.
We listened to a song about the UK – United Kingdom Song with signing | By Al Start | Primary School Geography – YouTube (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We also used Google Earth and Atlases to help us with our research.
Does the surface area of a parachute affect how quickly it falls?
In this week’s science learning, we conducted an enquiry to answer the following question:
Does the surface area of a parachute affect how quickly it falls?
We went to the hall to drop our parachutes and timed how long they took to drop to the floor.
What did we change? The size of the parachute
What did we keep the same? The height, the weight and the force applied
What did we measure? How long it took for the parachute to fall
Our results showed us that the bigger the surface area of the parachute, the longer it takes to fall because more air resistance is acting on it.
Help at home: Present the sentence above to your child with the bold words missing and see if they can fill in the gaps!
Maths: place value
This half term, Y2 are focussing on Place Value in Maths. Numbers are very important so it is important we know everything we can about numbers 0-100. We have been using place value charts, part-part-whole models and ten frames to recognise which number represents the ‘tens’ and which represents the ‘ones’.
PE in 1,2B
We certainly have had happy and healthy PE lessons the last two weeks. We played a tag game, after making our own ‘pitch’ using cones. The highlight for most people was the ‘up and down’ team game at the end. We could all see and feel how our bodies had changed after exercise!
Science in Year 1
In Science we are learning about the human body! We have enjoyed drawing around our bodies on the playground and labeling our body parts.
Over the next few weeks we will be focusing on the five senses. The children were very inquisitive when finding out about their sense of sight and what it might be like to be blind. Guides dogs and braille came into our conversations. We conducted a little investigation on the playground: Could we accurately throw a beanbag into a hoop if we were partially sighted or blind? Ask your child to retell their findings.
Happy children, engaged in play
This week, many children continued with their transition sessions and have stayed for a full day at Nursery. We’ve had lots of happy faces as children waved good-bye to parents and carers each morning, with just a few wobbles!
Try not to worry too much if your child has a little wobble or struggles to say goodbye in the morning. We often find that a quick hug, a big smile and waving good-bye works best and that most children usually settle very quickly once you’ve gone. We will always give you a call if your child continues to be upset, so if you don’t hear from us, you can presume that your child is happy and busy playing!
Here are a few photos of our play and learning this week – you can see that children are very busy and happily, engaged in play. This is just what we like to see once children have settled into their new environment! We strive to make Nursery a happy and healthy place to learn.
Now that children are familiar with our Nursery classrooms, over the next few weeks, you’ll start to see some changes in our areas of provision as we introduce new small world areas and themes for our learning.
Family photograph
As we’re getting to know everyone, we like to talk about our families and home life. To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery next week. These will be displayed in our home corner for children to look at and talk about with staff and their friends. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
3,4C Class News – Science and Reading
Wow! Another fabulous week of learning, 3,4 C.
In Science, the children have been learning the names of some of the bones in the human body – skull, spine, femur, pelvis and ribcage. This week, we have looked at the function of these bones within the body.
During reading lessons, we have focussed on the skill of retrieving information accurately from a text. We have enjoyed reading about the capital cities of the countries in the United Kingdom and retrieving facts about each of them.
Book Club was today. Well done to everyone who remembered their book and reading record. The children enjoyed celebrating reading, sharing books with each other and persuading others to read their book. At home, keep reading regularly. Please make sure that your child brings in their completed reading record activity and their book next Friday.
Well done class 3,4 C.
The Great Big Book of Families
We’ve been reading The Great Big Book of Families. Through the book, we have explored and celebrated the variety of families.
What is a family?
People who live in the same house.
People don’t have to live in the same house.
They love each other.
Grandma and Grandad because they can live in your house.
In our writing, we created our own family pictures and labelled with initial sounds or words.
Maths
This week, we’ve been using our subitising skills.
When subitising, we can say how many there are in a small group by ‘just looking’ and knowing without needing to count.
We used counters to create our own arrangements of 2 and 3.
Phonics
This week, we have learnt the phonemes (the sounds a letter makes) i,n,m,d.
During our phonics learning, we became detectives by searching for objects with the initial sounds s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d.
Each week we will be sending a ‘learn at home’ sheet, which recaps the phonics learning from the week. Please look at this with your child and complete the activities.
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 called Chop Chop.
Within the first 6 weeks of Reception, your child will participate in the reception baseline assessment.
“The RBA is a short, interactive and practical assessment of your child’s early literacy, communication, language and mathematics skills when they begin school, using materials that most children of your child’s age will be familiar with. It became statutory for all schools from September 2021.”
Click here to find out more.
Help at Home
Sound Detectives – Find objects around your house or outside that have an initial sound we have learnt.
s a t p i n m d
Family photos
Over the next few weeks, we will be thinking about our homes. To help support our discussions and art project, please send in one picture of your front door. You can also email photos to the email address below.
