As always, our homework was great this week. We had lots of varied responses to our creative piece: demonstrations, Scratch projects, interviews with parents, videos, collages and loads more.
Below are some of our favourites. It’s always interesting that the children’s favourite pieces are not always the most ‘jazzy’, or the most colourful, but the pieces that are original, different and interesting.
We’ve had a great morning celebrating World Book Day. It’s been great to dedicate so much time to reading and, for some of us, getting dressed up has been great fun, too.
Already today we’ve crammed in lots of great learning:
Here’s a few pictures from our day so far…
| Word Families
This week’s spellings activity is to explore some common word families. Words we use every day but might not stop to think about. Children will not be given a list to learn but should explore the following word families: |
| graph |
| phone |
| auto |
| micro |
| tele |
As usual, children have been given two pieces of homework to complete this week. Both pieces are due on Thursday 09 March 2017.
Talk Time: I can discuss how adults I know work cooperatively.
Working cooperatively with others is not only our SEAL sentence this week but it is also a crucial life skill. Children should discuss with an adult how working cooperatively looks in everyday life as an adult. A useful conversation to have would be to highlight how working cooperatively in the classroom is similar to working cooperatively in the workplace.
Practice Makes Perfect: I can show what I’ve learnt about decimals.
We’ve just finished learning on decimals so this is a chance for children to show how much they’ve learnt. They should complete the questions they have been given independently – only asking for help if it is needed. There are 10 marks available so children should aim to complete the questions in roughly 8 minutes.
This half-term our SEAL theme is ‘Getting On‘. This week, we had an open, honest conversation as a class in which we all agreed that we could improve our ability to get on. We decided to think of Year 5 as being a team – a team we are all a part of.
I then set the children a challenge. In teams, they had to build the biggest tower they could. However, all they could use were marshmallows and spaghetti. As we were building we thought about what makes a good team and even came up with our own (very cheesy) class motto:
“Teamwork makes the dream work!”
This afternoon, we’ve been lucky enough to visit the book fair as a class. We enjoyed perusing the many books and were each given a voucher to use to buy one of the featured books.
We’ve discussed in the past how important reading is and this week is a great chance to really promote a love of reading. Ask your child if they enjoyed the book fair; talk to them about the book they chose; ask them if there were any other books that they liked – could you go to a library and see if you can find it?
Also, don’t forget that World Book Day is this Thursday. Your child should bring in a book from home and everyone has the opportunity to dress up if they would like.
Double up for a short vowel sound
This week, we have focussed on a spelling rule that we have previously learned but still make mistakes with.
The ‘double up for a short vowel’ sound is very common in the English language although, as we have found, there are exceptions to the rule.
Here are a list of words that double up for a short vowel sound. You should familiarise yourself with the rule and learn how to spell these words. You will be tested on ten of these words on Friday 03 March.
| accommodate
|
necessary
|
planning |
| beginning
|
communicate
|
exaggerate |
| difficult
|
preferred
|
beginning |
| successfully
|
occurred
|
challenge |
| immediate
|
interrupt
|
addition |
This week, as usual, we have two pieces of homework.
First, we have a Creative homework: I can show what entertainment means to me.
This really is an open-ended task. Children should think about what they do for entertainment and then present this in a creative fashion. They should focus on more than one type of entertainment. A good example would be a comparison between two different types of entertainment.
Second, we have a Practice Makes Perfect homework: I can correct spelling mistakes.
Children have been given a worksheet to complete. The worksheet requires them to spot a series of spelling mistakes and then correct them. If children are not sure of the correct spelling, they should find out. This could be done in many ways: dictionary, internet or simply by asking someone.
As always, if you have any difficulties please contact me early in the week.
This week, in addition to our whole school homework, we have a Creative homework:
I can see fractions all around me.
In class, we’ve discussed several ways in which children may choose to respond. Here are a few examples:
| Homophones
This week’s spellings are all homophones – words that sound the same but have different meanings. Children should practise spelling these words in preparation for a test on Friday 10 February. Words in bold are words that we commonly make mistakes with in our writing – and really shouldn’t. Words in italics are previous spellings that we still find tricky. |
| cereal – serial |
| profit – prophet |
| affect – effect |
| compliment – complement |
| shore – sure |
| root – route |
| weather – whether |
| grate – great |
| to – too – two |
| practise – practice |