Summer Term
What a great start to a new term! Year 3 returned to school after the holidays and every day this week have shown they are ready and eager to learn. Well done, Year 3!
On Monday, we began our new science topic Magnets and Forces. Check out some of the Year 3 scientists below.
Keeping safe and fit
John, from White Rose Martial Arts, demonstrated in the assembly today some of the skills that can be learnt at the karate after-school club, running again this term.
Pupils who have already attended the club confidently showed their karate techniques alongside some key messages about self-defence from John.
There was a lot of interest from the children so please contact John directly to secure a place for your child. Information can be obtained from the office or your child’s teacher. There is a free taster session on Tuesday 05 May but places are limited.
Welcome back!
I hope everybody’s had a great Easter holiday and are ready to return to school fresh-faced! This half term darkness will descend on Year 2 as we take a look at night time. We’ll delve into the depths of space to look at the planets, moon and stars before plummeting back to Earth to think about the jobs people do at night and animals that have become adapted to night time.
This week (20.04.15)…
Maths
This week, we’re exploring number by looking at rounding to the nearest ten, doubling and halving, place value (hundreds, tens, units) and knowing inverse operations (add-subtract, multiply-divide). Our tables focus will be 2s so lots of counting in 2s at home, walking to school, going up stairs will be very helpful. We’ll then think about how knowing our 2 times tables means we know our 20 and 200 times table, too.
I got 7 Easter eggs but my friend got double that amount. How many eggs did my friend get?
English
English will be very closely linked to our night time topic as we learn how to write information texts. Organising our writing using a title, introduction, subtitles and matching information will be important this week so, when reading at home, choose a non-fiction book and discuss how it is organised and why this is useful.
Topic
Night time will kick off with a trip into space to explore what it is we see in the night sky. We’ll learn about our solar system and its planets as well as what stars are and the Greek legends that tell the story behind the constellations of stars we see at night. At home, stay up late and do some star gazing. See what questions the children have and ask them to write them down (using the correct punctuation) and bring them in for us to discuss.
Writing
As you know, at the end of the year we’ll be assessing the children in 13 areas of the curriculum. One of these areas is writing. The early learning goal is:
Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelled correctly and others are phonetically plausible.
The children are all confident in recognising their letter sounds and now need to develop confidence in ‘having a go’ at writing. Remember, it doesn’t matter if words aren’t always spelt correctly as long as the children are recording the sounds they hear.
‘Tricky’ words like I, the, said, he, me need to be learnt and practised.
Please could you practise a simple sentence every day at home with your child. Bring their writing to school for us to celebrate.
If you have any questions, please ask.
Our new SEAL theme for this half term is…
…relationships.
This theme explores feelings within the context of our important relationships including family and friends.
It aims to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in three key social and emotional aspects of learning: self-awareness, managing feelings and empathy.
There is a focus throughout the theme on helping children understand the feelings associated with an experience that we all need to cope with at some time: that of loss – whether of a favourite possession, a friend, a family home, or a loved one. Although relatively few children are bereaved, most will experience losses of other kinds during their childhood; losing a home, losing friends because of moving house or changing schools, or losing a pet are examples.
We would therefore ask for parents / carers to alert us to any experiences your child has had that might make this area particularly difficult for them – for example, a bereavement.
End of term
Well, what a busy term it has been! This culminated with our Easter production of The Time Lord, for which the children all worked very hard. Below are some of the finished plague masks we’ve been working on during our medicine topic.
I would like to say “Well done” to all Year 3 for a great term! Enjoy the holidays.
Homework Highlights
After a great curriculum week, here are some examples of the homework from Year 1.
Fruit surprise
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch has been a popular book as part of our learning in English. Today we created a fruit surprise for Mr Grinling. We also learnt some facts about fruit and keeping healthy. Did you know your 5 a day can be from fresh, dried, tinned or frozen fruit? Peeling, chopping, scooping (using a melon baller) and using a lemon squeezer were some of the food technology skills we learnt, too.
We also thought about important table manners when we tasted the fruit surprise and as it was so delicious there wasn’t much left for Mr Grinling!
‘I loved it because the raspberries were so delicious.’
‘We learnt how to use a lemon squeezer and we made a nice salad.’
‘I think Mr Grinling would love it!’
‘We learnt to chop a banana and we put it in a bowl.’
Variety is the spice of life!
If you ask your child what they’ve done today, you may be surprised! From learning Mandarin to finding out about geysers, it was all going on. All the children were mixed up for the morning and took part in four different lessons – there are eight different lessons altogether so there will be some more mixing up going on tomorrow. These lessons have been part of our Enrichment Week where children have thought about a variety of subjects in lots of different ways. Here are some photos to give you a taste of what has been happening: learning Urdu or Mandarin, art work, music, PE, geography, programming and DT.
A sentence looks like this.
This was one of the key messages from the theatre production today based around the Gruffalo story. We, as the audience, helped to create a story by choosing the correct punctuation and looking at when to use it. Some great adjectives, for characters and settings, were suggested to improve the writing. We also learnt an important message about cheating – the best story rightly won in the end.
Hopefully this will inspire lots of budding story writers.
