18 March 2016
This week’s homework is practice makes perfect and is due on Wednesday 23 March.
I can tell the time.
Your child will have a series of time-based tasks to do that they need to finish in the booklet provided.
We’ve started telling time to the nearest minute in class and if your child needs some extra support to do this at home, I recommend the BBC Bitesize website. I’ve also set some time tasks on Mathletics.
18 March 2016
This week, your child has been given a copy of the Year 3/4 spelling list. They must pick 10 spellings that follow the rule double up for a short vowel sound. Words that follow this rule include comma (compare the sound of the ‘o’ with coma, where there is no double up), hopping (compared with hoping) and funny. Why not ask your child to identify the short vowel sound in each of these words. 
18 March 2016
Spellings this week are not one specific list. The children have gone through their English book and picked out words they have spelt incorrectly in the past in order to learn these and not make the same mistake again.
It’s best if ten minutes of each day is given to practising spellings and we’ve looked at lots of different ways in which we can practise in class.
- word shapes
- word pyramids
- missing vowels
- create a crossword
- make it into a wordsearch
- good old look, write, cover, check.
These spellings will be tested on Thursday 24 March.
18 March 2016
This week’s Talk Time homework will be discussed on Wednesday 23 March.
To be able to see things from other people’s point of view.
This links to our SEAL statement for the week and is an essential skill for life. Over dinner, discuss when we might have a different opinion to somebody else; why somebody else’s opinion might be different; whether it’s OK for our opinions to differ; and what we can do to get along with each other and accept/respect our differences.
Big Topic Review
A big thank you to those parents that were able to attend our open afternoon on Wednesday. We hope you enjoyed finding out about all the great learning that’s happened in Y6 during our ‘Life’ topic.
For those that didn’t attend, we reflected on each piece of learning we have done by writing down on big sheets something we remembered.
Then, we created a ‘diamond 9’ of the skills we have learnt/practised and some of the knowledge we have gained. It was interesting how everyone had different ideas of what they’d learnt most about.
Finally, we sat down to review our big topic book. It works as a diary of all the great topic-related learning we do!
If you’d like to find out more about our brilliant ‘Life’ topic, ask your child how they’ve found it.
18 March 2016
The homework this week is Practice Makes Perfect and is due in on Wednesday 23 March.
I can find real life arrays.
Arrays are pictorial representations to help children understand multiplication. They are an arrangement of items in rows and columns, for example:
We have a neat arrangement of 5 rows and 3 columns. We can see here that there are 3 groups of 5, which is 3×5. This is how arrays can help children with multiplication.
At this stage, we are just focusing on identifying arrays. We have been looking for arrays around our classroom and in the playground. Here are some examples of real life arrays to get you started! When you find some, you could draw them or take a photograph to stick in your book.
18 March 2016
This week’s creative homework is due on Wednesday 23 March.
To be able to use speech punctuation.
Using the tips provided, the children need to show that they are able to punctuate speech accurately or create an activity or example that would help others to punctuate speech accurately. There are lots of ways you could do this:
- Write a story (or section of) that includes dialogue
- Create a top tips sheet that would teach someone how to use them
- Make a game that would help us to practise.
- Write a section of text with punctuation missing to be corrected (but have an answer sheet ready).
How are you feeling?
Across school, we’ve been trialling the use of colours to represent children’s emotions. Children are then encouraged to think whether this is a blocker or driver for their learning.
- ‘I feel blue because I am calm.’
- ‘I feel red because I had a fall out at lunchtime.’
- ‘I feel orange because I am excited to celebrate my brother’s birthday.’
Here is a new website to support young people’s emotional wellbeing in Leeds.
‘If you’re a young person, MindMate can help you understand the way you’re feeling and find the right advice and support. If you’re a parent, carer or professional, MindMate can help you support a young person you know.’
Children are also encouraged to speak with an adult, friend or use our class SEAL boxes to share any worries.
Leeds Youth Council
All young people aged 10-18 in Leeds can now join the Leeds Youth Council (LYC).
This week’s maths learning
This week, in maths, we’ve been learning all about measures.
After exploring mass through weighing items using different methods, we moved on to capacity. We spent time measuring, estimating and converting between units. (Remarkably, we didn’t make much mess!)
You can help at home by:
- Encouraging your child to find examples of measures in every day life
- Encouraging your child to estimate the mass/capacity of things you find in the house (eg what do you think is the capacity of that glass? What do you think is the mass of the laptop? What do you think is the capacity of our bath? Hint: benchmarking helps – ask you child about this!)
- Practising converting between units (eg ml to litres, g to kg)
- Using the revision books handed out last week
We’ll continue our learning by solving problems involving different measures.
