24 March 2016
The homework this week is practice makes perfect and is due in on Wednesday 30 March.
I understand what I have read.
Each child has been given a short reading comprehension activity to complete. Your child should read the text independently and then answer the questions. The initial questions simply require your child to identify the correct answer, but the questions at the end require your child to write in sentences. If your child knows the correct answer but doesn’t write this in a sentence, help them to change the one word into a sentence. For example, if the question was, ‘Which animal has a trunk?’ Your child may write ‘an elephant.’ Putting this into a sentence would be, ‘An elephant has a trunk.’
If your child particularly struggled, leave a short note in their homework book and I’ll look through it with them.
25 March 2016
This week, your child has a word study to complete. They must find an A – Z list of words that follow the ‘double up for a short vowel sound’ spelling rule. For example, ‘apple’ and ‘attractive’ have a doubled-up letter to make the ‘a’ in front a short sound (compare the ‘a’ sound in ‘apple’ and ‘able’).
The words your child finds must be words that they feel they could use in their writing in class. I would encourage the use of a dictionary or even the use of an internet search engine. If your child is searching for words online, make sure you speak to them about being e-safe.
25 March 2016
This week’s homework is creative and is due 30 March 2016.
I can present my spellings in an interesting way.
Your child’s spelling homework this week is to find a “double up for a short vowel sound” word for each letter of the alphabet. They could use these spellings to:
- make a poster
- make a crossword
- make a word search
- create a missing letter worksheet
- write a story
This could be done using ICT; the choice is theirs!
24 March 2016
The homework this week is practice makes perfect and is due in on Wednesday 30 March.
I can write instructions.
We’ve been writing instructions in our English lessons over the last couple of weeks. Children could write a recipe; instructions / directions for finding a place (this could be a treasure map); instructions for how to do, play or make something.
Follow the instructions below to write perfect instructions:
How to write instructions
Follow this simple guide and you’ll be writing instructions in no time!
You will need:
- paper
- a pen or pencil
- coloured pencils or felt tips (optional)
- photographs (optional)
- ruler
Method:
- Firstly, find a quiet place and get all your equipment ready.
- Next, think carefully about what you are going to write about. It might be a good idea to read some different types of instructions before you start. Think about your audience (who will be reading and using the instructions).
- Write a title which clearly tells the reader what the instructions are for.
- Write a short introduction which gives the reader a little bit more detail about the instructions.
- Write down the equipment or ingredients that you will need using bullet points.
- You are now ready to write your instructions! Use numbered points to make your commands easy to follow. Each new command should start on a new line.
- Try to use time connectives (firstly, next, after that, finally) to also sequence your instructions. Adverbs (carefully, quickly, silently) Give more information to the reader about how to do something.
- Add in a ‘top tip’ or a ‘did you know’ box to give readers some extra relevant information or to give them extra ideas or suggestions about what they could do.
- Read through your instructions to make sure that there are no errors. If there are errors, fix them!
- Improve your instructions by adding in an extra words like time connectives, adjectives or adverbs. You could also improve them by adding in a question and a question mark (?) or find an exciting sentence in your text which could have an exclamation mark (!)
Top tip:
Pictures, diagrams or photographs really help give the reader a clear idea of what to do. Add a few in. Imagine building flat-pack furniture with no diagrams!
24 March 2016
Here are the spellings for this week:
24 March 2016
In addition to their Creative homework, some children also have some extra Practice Makes Perfect homework this week.
I can revise translation, reflection and using coordinates.
Children are expected to complete pages 82-85 of their maths revision books and evidence this in their homework books. They could make notes, show examples of completed questions or explain what they have learnt. Then, children should answer practice questions 9, 10 and 11 (these questions can be found on page 87. As always, we have discussed this in class so children should know what to do.
Are you keeping up with ways to support your child to stay safe…?
…or just hoping they will stay safe on their own? You wouldn’t expect them to cross a busy road without teaching them and checking they know what they’re doing – it’s pretty much the same for online safety!
Each week, Parent Zone produces a newsletter full of useful advice, and their website is packed with other great ways to support your child. They update content every week, usually on a Thursday afternoon, so don’t miss out on the latest articles and information for parents. In this week’s newsletter…
Nude selfies: understanding why
A film explaining what they are, and what parents should know about them.Setting safety and privacy settings for social media apps
If you want to set parental controls on apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, here’s how to do it.Self-harm: what parents should know
Why do young people self-harm and what can you do to help them? Expert advice from SelfharmUK.Teens on Tinder
Shockingly, 13-year-olds can legally use Tinder. Here’s what parents need to know about the popular dating app…In case you missed it: Don’t pay the price for your child’s online fun
Parents sometimes end up paying unexpectedly large phone bills and don’t know why. PhonepayPlus, the premium rate services regulator, explains what to look out for when giving your child a mobile device…
After school snack
Our savoury scones, using cheese, sweetcorn, carrot and courgette, went down a treat as an after school snack today.
Ask your child:
- How do we get ready to cook?
- What equipment did we use?
- What were the ingredients?
Here are some of the skills we used – can they remember any others?
24 March 2016
This week’s spellings will test how well children are retaining information they are learning by focussing on spellings covered across the year so far.
There have been many different spelling rules and patterns explored up to this point in the year. Next week’s test will be from the spelling lists learnt in the first half term (07.09.15 – 23.10.16). Children should look over these lists and note the patterns we learnt about, picking out words they think they found most tricky at the time.
Ten spellings from this list will be tested as children are not expected to learn spelling simply for a test but for long term use of these words.
24 March 2016
This week’s Talk Time homework is due on Tuesday 29 March.
To be able to tell my Fighting Fantasy story confidently.
After lots of work in class on writing narratives, Y5 will be writing their own short story on Tuesday next week. In order to be confident with our stories and to enable us to write a well-thought-through tale, the children have brought their story plans home.
Ask them what the story is about. Question any gaps you think there might in their tale and look out for ideas that are too complicated and might sound muddled. Can they tell you their story orally, remembering key events and some details?
As always, the children are asked to write notes demonstrating what has been discussed. These notes could point out main story events, effective adjectives, verbs or phrases that they’ve used at home and don’t want to forget, or they could detail feedback they’ve had on their story from people at home.
We’ll write our stories on Tuesday so this homework is due on Tuesday 29 March, one day earlier than is usually the case.
