School Council
The School Council met today to make a few plans for this term. Our first bit of exciting news is that the School Council have been re-branded as ‘The Junior Leadership Team.’
We discussed some ideas for Children in Need, which is taking place on Friday 13 November. The team decided that we would do a non-uniform day and collect donations. More information will be sent out on Monday.
The team are currently discussing what our new charity is going to be this year, so we’ll keep you posted when we’ve decided.
34O Certificate Celebration
Well done to everyone in 3,4O this week.
In particular, our super certificate winners…
For great learning…
Mikey – You’ve really impressed me with your improved attitude this week – keep it up!
For Living & Learning…
Harry – You are a great friend to many people and work well with everyone – well done!
For Sport and Physical Activity…
Layton, Travis and Archie – Miss Hague noticed how well you were playing with each other at lunchtime. You used to new equipment sensibly and maturely, making sure everyone had a fair turn.
Descriptions and drawings of Dink!
What a great start to our creative writing today!
We loved drawing characters from descriptions. Here is the text that we used:
Deep inside the dark cave lived a fanged, hideous creature known as Dink.
Covered from head to toe in grotesque, white spots and crusty, mud-soaked skin,
you could smell Dink before you could EVEN see him. On the very top of his
head, lived a family of lice that played all day in his bright green, unwashed hair.
His muscular body escaped from his tiny clothes which were soaked in sweat.
Look at our drawings of Dink.
This was a really fun way to read accurately, check for understanding and look at ways to create good descriptions. Why not try this at home with another text? A good one is The BFG, by Roald Dahl.
Living and Learning – Mental health
In class, we’ve been doing a lot of talking over the past few weeks about emotions and our mental health.
Here’s a round-up of what we’ve discussed:
- Emotions, or feelings, can change all the time.
- We all experience a whole range of emotions, from anger to happiness to fear.
- Different things happen every day that make us feel good and not so good.
- There are ups and downs all the time.
But there are some things we can do to help us have more of the good feels – simple ideas of things you can do every day…
• Go outside! Get some fresh air
• Run around or play – do something active that gets your body moving
• Have you got a hobby that you enjoy? Learn something new!
• Hang out with your family or friends
• Doing something nice for someone else
• Helping others – it feels good for you too!
• Read books you like
• Listen to your favourite music – sing and dance!
• Have a good night’s sleep
• Relax…
What to do if something feels not so good
If things happen that make us feel not so good… don’t worry! There are things you can do to
feel better. Here are some ideas…
• Talk to someone about it
• Take your mind off it – do something else
• Take some deep breaths
• Count to 10!
• Know that this moment will pass
• Choose something from the list above
• If it feels very bad or not right… tell a trusted adult – they can help you!
What are we learning this half-term?
Short answer: loads of exciting stuff!
If you want a bit more detail, read on…
Topic: Ancient Greece
This half-term, we’ve loads of exciting learning planned. We start our new history topic: Ancient Greece. There’s loads to learn about this incredibly important – and interesting – ancient civilisation (our curriculum statement tells you exactly what we’ll learn).
Amongst other things, we’ll learn some new knowledge: When and where was Ancient Greece? What influence did the gods have on their citizens? What is a democracy? And, the learning I’m most looking forward to, we’ll learn about and then compare two of the main states in Ancient Greece: Athenia and Sparta.
As well as improving our historical knowledge, we’ll continue to practise the key historical skills: time and chronology, using historical sources to gain information and thinking about how people interpret historical events differently.
We’ll also enrich our learning with some art, some design & technology and lots of thinking about the spiritual, moral, social and cultural aspects of our learning.
If you want to get ahead of the game with your learning, check out BBC Bitesize.
Writing:
In writing, we’ll move on to writing with description. We’ll write character descriptions about an encounter with a mythical beast and we’ll have a go at re-writing part of an ancient myth. In our writing, we’ll use lots of adjectives for impact and learn how to use expanded noun phrases.
Reading:
We’ll read some Greek myths, lots of descriptive writing and some poetry to help us practise our reading skills. To supplement this, we’ll have some good old-fashioned story time where we read our class novel: Give Peas a Chance.
Maths:
We’ll build on our learning last half-term as we move on to addition and subtraction. We’ve a helpful guide to calculations on our website that can help you practise these skills at home – it shows parents how we teach these skills in school, too (something that cropped up a few times at our recent parent teacher evening).
PE:
Danny from 5 Star Sports will continue to help us improve our games playing skills – all at an appropriate social distance of course. in our other PE lesson, we’ll think about tactics – and, in particular, how to adapt our tactics to beat our opponents.
Living & Learning:
This half-term, we’ll remind ourselves about the importance of manners, think about Anti-Bullying Week and learn about happy and healthy relationships.
As always, we want to hear from you. If you have any questions, or think we can help in any way please get in touch. Because we want to keep everyone safe, our usual playground discussions aren’t ideal. Instead, remember that you can email us anytime…
3,4O – olliecatherall@spherefederation.org
3,4EV – emmamccormick@spherefederation.org & vickyrichardson@spherefederation.org
3,4NV – nicolawadsworth@spherefederation.org & vickyrichardson@spherefederation.org
Certificate achievers
Well done to the certificate achievers from last week:
For great learning…
Isabelle – for writing clear instructions.
For sport and physical activity…
Alex – for excellent basketball skills.
For living and learning…
Eric – for being ready to learn at the start of lessons and for being an active, responsive learner.
I will announce the certificate achievers from this week after half term.
Have a happy and healthy half term everyone!
Poems
This week in Year 3/4 reading sessions, we have been reading a range of poetry. There have been some good discussions about what they mean, the themes and the effect on the reader (us!).
Here is one which is linked to our topic book, Here We Are.
It’s called …
‘A Love Letter to the Stars’
We enjoyed spotting rhyming words- can you spot the rhyming pattern?
One of our pupils felt inspired to write her own poem. It’s wonderful! Thank you for sharing it, Tallulah!
Hi! My name is June
and I love the moon,
I love how it is so big
That I can never dig it,
I love how the stars can move to each place,
Like they are so close to space.
By Tallulah
Certificate stars!
My super certificate winners from last week were:
For great learning…
Ava – for a fabulous learning attitude and working hard across all subjects.
For sport and physical activity…
Hope – for showing great team work and skills in PE.
For living and learning…
Sam – well done for showing resilience in Maths.
Well done!
Book club
We enjoyed our weekly ‘Book Club’ lesson today where we read and shared books. Well done to everyone who remembered their reading record.
Writing Instructions – How to have a happy and healthy class!
We’ve been working on writing instructions in Year 3/4 this week.
In pairs, we worked collaboratively to write a set of instructions on ‘How to have a happy and healthy class’.
To improve our sentences, we have used adverbs.
We are very proud of our writing – here are some examples:
