09 December 2016
The homework this week is practice makes perfect and is due in on Thursday 15 December.
I can recite a poem.
Children have a poem by Ogden Nash called Winter Morning in their homework books. They need to learn this poem so that they can recite it from memory on Thursday. To help them, children could write it out, learn a line or two each day, record themselves reading it.
Winter is the king of showmen
Turning tree stumps into snow men
And houses into birthday cakes
And spreading sugar over lakes
Smooth and clean and frosty white
The world looks good enough to bite
That’s the season to be young
Catching snowflakes on your tongue
Snow is snowy when it’s snowing
I’m sorry it’s slushy when it’s going
09 December 2016
The spelling test will be on all the rules you have learnt so far.
- Adding prefixes and suffixes, including ‘drop the e for ing/ed/er’
- ‘y’ making an ‘i’ sound
- homophones
- double up for a short vowel sound
It’s the last spelling test of 2016 so make this one a brilliant one!
09 December 2016
This week’s homework is talk time and is due Thursday 15 December:
Talk about how you will cope with the change of a teacher.
You could discuss:
- how you could make your new teacher feel welcome
- what things will change/stay the same
- ways to deal with change
Birdfeeder
This week, one of our Reception children brought a new bird feeder into school. She explained to the class that she had noticed the old feeder had broken and she’d like to replace it. After choosing a few friends to help, she set off to find a suitable place to hang the new feeder. The front playground seemed like the best option. The birdfeeder was filled with sunflower seeds and hung up in the tree along with a Christmas star!
There will be some happy birds around!
Have a look around the front playground and see if you can spot it.
Thank you.
09 December 2016
For our spelling test next week, children will be asked to spell a selection of words that they have previously learnt this year. Children should briefly recap each spelling focus and spend time consolidating their learning around these words. They may choose to focus on the words they spelt incorrectly when they were tested on them previously.
Our spelling test will be on Friday 16 December 2016.
09 December 2016
This week we have two homeworks as normal (our final homework of 2016).
The first is Creative:
I can prove I use the 8Rs outside of school.
This homework will help children to see that the 8Rs are useful for life in general and not just learning. They could respond in numerous ways:
- make a collage of images showing them using each R for learning
- make a short documentary in which they demonstrate how they use the 8Rs outside school
- make a poster that promotes the application of the 8Rs to everyday life
These are just a few, simple suggestions. I’m sure you, and your children, will have a wonderful array of creative responses to this statement.
The second is ‘Mathletics‘:
Children should complete these two tasks.
- Bar model (x and ÷) – this is using the bar model to help children solve word problems.
- Money problems: 4 operations with £ – these are all problems involving money.
Again, if you have any problems, do not hesitate to contact me. I will endeavour to resolve them. However, some problems such as technical issues may be beyond my control.
What forces are in action here?
We’ve been learning all about forces for our mini topic and, once we understood pushes, pulls, levers and pulleys, we created our own Rube Goldberg machines. The children worked in groups and planned and made their creations all from their own ideas once we’d explored and researched examples of them through the internet.
Here are a couple of our machines. Our first one had a little hiccup but we really liked their pulley at the end to raise the flag. The second was our most successful; they even managed to sound the buzzer! You’ll see just how excited we were that it worked.
https://youtu.be/S0KjxWH24_Y
https://youtu.be/HUijnyElfWI
09 December 2016
There’s not a theme with spellings this week and there’ll be no test. I’ve given the children the Year 5/6 spelling list which indicates which words Year 6s need to know (that they haven’t learnt already in Year 3 and 4). I want them to look through the spellings and see if they can create groups of words which could be learnt together.
- homophones
- spelling patterns
- suffixes
- prefixes
- rhymes and rememberings
Then look and see which words it is difficult to put into a group – these are probably the hardest to learn.
09 December 2016
This week’s homework is Creative and will be reviewed on Thursday 15 December.
Convince someone to love reading.
I love reading and truly believe that everybody else should, too! Not just because it’s enjoyable but because of how much it helps our learning. Many of Year 6 love reading for a number of reasons and there’ll be some of us that don’t. Think about why you love reading (if you do) and how you can convince someone else (or yourself) that they should, too. We’ve discussed some ideas as a class and here’s what we came up with. You could:
- interview members of your family about their passion for reading
- turn your favourite book into a short movie
- create a trailer for the film version of a book
- cook a recipe from your favourite recipe book
- write part of the prequel/sequel to your favourite book
- create a poster to advertise your favourite book
- create a fake interview with your favourite author
- research the benefits of reading lots and create some statistics
And, many more…
09 December 2016
This week’s Practice Makes Perfect homework revises all of the wonderful work we’ve done on fractions since half term – we should be fraction masters by now!
To be able to calculate with fractions.
I’ve created addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions, all of which we’ve learnt how to solve this term, for the children to go over, remind themselves how to do it and not make any silly mistakes. We’ll go through the answers together on Thursday 15 December 2016.