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Spelling practice

Here’s a great example of spelling practice from last week. We’re always trying to think of fun and creative ways of practising spelling so that it doesn’t become boring.

Great homework as always

What are fractions? was our Creative homework question last week and there was a whole host of wonderful ways that it was answered. Lots I can’t show you as they were done on Scratch or as presentations but here’s a taste of what some of the children did.

As always with Creative homework, we looked at everyone’s then sat and looked at one in particular, commenting on their work and discussing what they’d done. The children said that they liked how we look at Creative homework as it was nice to hear what their friends thought of what they’d done.

In the mood

We brought our swing dance topic to an end this week with groups performing their routines to each other. Lots of the children have enjoyed this unit; some enjoyed it a lot more than they thought they would.

Not only were their dances great, but their feedback to each other was brilliant too. They could say what they liked about a routine: precision of movements, use of space, different levels. They were also able to give constructive criticism to suggest how a routine could be improved: moving at the same time as each other, clearer, bigger movements.

Phonics

Thanks to everyone who attended the learning workshop last week. We hope you found it useful.

During their phonics learning, your child will be learning the following terms:

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound found within a word

Grapheme: how the sound is written e.g. h, ai

Diagraph: Two letters that make one sound when read

Trigraph: Three letters that make one sound

CVC: Stands for consonant, vowel, consonant

Segmenting : Breaking up a word into its sounds

Blending : Putting the sounds together to read a word

Tricky words: Words that cannot easily be decoded

At the moment children are learning their first 19 phonemes and the graphemes that represent them.
Set 1:  s  a  t  p    Set 2:  i   n   m  d

Set 3:  g  o  c  k    Set 4:  ck (as in duck)  e  u  r

Set 5:  h   b  l   f      ff (as in puff)   ll (as in hill)     ss (as in hiss)

They will use these phonemes to read and spell simple “consonant-vowel-consonant” (CVC) words:
sat, tap, dig, duck, rug, puff, hill, hiss

All these words contain 3 phonemes.

How you can help at home:

• Practise the phonemes together
• Articulate the sounds clearly and precisely, eg
  mmm; ssss ; nnnn
• Use the phonemes to make different words at home and play phonics games
• Read everyday with your child
• Attend our phonics mornings in the week beginning 28 November

Although phonics is important in teaching the mechanics of reading, reading is about much more. We also want children to read for pleasure. Reading to your child regularly will help them to develop a lifelong love of books and reading.

11 November 2016

This week’s homework is talk time and is due Thursday 17 November:

Ask someone in your home what their favourite book is and why.

Finished frames

During our topic work we have looked closely at the artwork of Quentin Blake. The children have done their own paintings in the style of this very famous artist. Adding to that, we then went on to make a frame to showcase this super artwork. Year 4 have all worked incredibly hard on designing, making and decorating their photo frames. We now have our own art gallery in the classroom. Please feel free to pop in and take a look.

11 November 2016

The spellings for this week have the prefix re- or mis-. Pay special attention to misspell. This is often spelt incorrectly as an s is accidentally omitted.

• react
  refill
  rebuild
  retake
  recycle
• misplace
  misunderstand
  misspell
  misbehave
  mislead

PE

During this half term, we have three students from Leeds Beckett University leading our PE sessions on Fridays. The children are focusing on multi-skills, teamwork and getting enjoyment from sport. Here are a few pictures of yesterday’s lesson.

Creative homework review

As always, we reviewed our homeworks as a class this week. The standard of homework is always high in Y5; I love it. Seeing how children respond to creative homeworks is one of my favourite things. It gives me lots of teaching ideas, too – thanks Y5!

This week, we were particularly impressed by these pieces:

 Edward’s pot-washing time sheet.

 Sam’s collage of maths in everyday life.

 Pippa’s news report – love the jokes, Pippa!

 Megan’s maths game.

Topic themed English learning

This week, in English, we’ve been learning about poetry. We started out by comparing and contrasting a wide range of poems (some well known, some less familiar) and then began to unpick the poets’ use of figurative language. As it was Remembrance Day on Friday, and our Class Novel topic is heavily linked to WW2, we learnt ‘In Flanders Field‘ off by heart – ask your child if they can recite it to you!

Then, on Friday, we split into groups to perform the poem. Every group captured the mood and were able to portray this through their performance. Each group incorporated actions into their performance and one group even had the subtle, faint whistle of a bird in the background.

Here are some action shots…