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Class Assembly

Our class assembly is tomorrow at 2:40pm!

York’s Chocolate Story

We had a great time yesterday at York’s Chocolate Story. We learnt about the history of chocolate and how York has played a huge part in its history. We were introduced to the founding families of confectionery companies such as the Rowntree family, the Fry family and the Terry family.  We learnt about jobs at the factories and what factory life was like. Did you know that the Rowntree factory in York has its own fire department? York still plays a big part in chocolate production in the UK – did you know that 6,000,000 KitKats are made each day in York?

Here are some pictures to show you some of our exciting day.

Chocolate Tasting
– When we held our noses, we couldn’t taste it!
– Not everyone enjoyed the very dark chocolate!

We made chocolate lollies!

We watched the chocolatier make chocolates.

Jobs in the factory
– The women are putting the foil on chocolate eggs.
– The man in checking the quality of the cocoa beans.

Getting ready to make lickable wallpaper – ask your child why they had to wear blue.

Happy with their creations.

We walked past York Minster and one group took a stroll down The Shambles.

Anti-bullying tips

Thank you, Emma (Year 2) for recommending CBBC for lots of Anti-Bullying Week advice.

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