Poetry Basket: Under a stone
This week’s poem is called Under a stone.
We’ve been focussing on the words earth (land eg soil, dirt) and firm (a solid surface).
PE: basketball
This half-term in PE, we’re doing basketball!
Basketball is a fantastic sport for your children to practise a variety of different skills (e.g., passing, catching, shooting, defending etc.).
Last week, we began exploring some different ways we can pass the ball in basketball – chest pass and bounce pass. We recapped our ‘pass and point‘ technique which we used last year in netball and rugby. When you release a ball during a pass, your fingers should end pointing towards where you are aiming. This is a great technique to ensure an accurate pass.
This week, we’ve looked more closely at catching. When preparing to catch a ball, we need to get into the ready position:
- feet shoulder width apart
- knees slightly bent
- diamond hands
The ready position allows us to safely and effectively catch the ball.
Help at home: if you have a ball at home (any ball will do) practise some chest and bounce passes with your child. They must show you the ready position before catching the ball.
Guided Reading Week 2
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 8th May.
Ghost Hunter– up to page 95
Kensuke’s Kingdom – up to page 69
Two weeks with the Queen – up to page 61
How to train your dragon – up to page 103
Spy fox– up to page 85
Considine Curse – up to page 85
Maths: factors, multiples and primes
Over the past two weeks, we have been learning about factors, multiples and primes in Year 5. We have learnt how to find all the factors of a number, as well as find common factors between two numbers. We have learnt what prime, square and composite numbers are and how to identify them.
Prime number: has exactly 2 factors.
Square number: has an odd number of factors.
Composite number: has more than 2 factors.
This unit of work ended with us creating factor multiple chains within 100. You begin with a number less than 100 and then find a factor of this number. Next find a multiple of the new number and then a factor of this number etc..
For example: 64, 4, 32, 8, 88, 11….
We first played cooperatively where we had to work together to create the longest chain. Afterwards, we played competitively where we had to stop the other person be able to continue the chain. Some of us worked out a way we could always win using our knowledge of numbers! It was great fun.
Help at home by playing a game of factor multiple chains.
Science: Plants and their parts.
Since returning from their break our wonderful Year 1s have been learning all about plants, their parts and how to grow them. The children started off by looking at different parts of plants and trees. They were split into groups then classified and grouped the different parts together. They did really well in this and impressed us with their knowledge on the parts that make plants. After this, they then learnt how to plant a sunflower, planting one inside and one outside. They are now going to observe the changes over time (so feel free to ask how ‘Sun Sun’ and ‘Sunset’ are.)
Summer 1: Week 2
On Monday, a very special parcel arrived at school… inside were five tiny and very hungry caterpillars!
The children were full of excitement as I carefully opened the box. We spent time observing the caterpillars closely, noticing their size, movement, and how eager they were to begin feeding.
Over the next few weeks, we’re looking forward to watching them grow and change. The children will have the opportunity to observe each stage of their journey. This links perfectly to our word of the week: metamorphosis—the process some living things go through to become adults.
We can’t wait to share updates as our caterpillars continue their incredible transformation!
DT
In the creative area, we’ve been exploring how to safely use hand drills to make holes in pieces of wood. The children have been learning to handle the tools with care, applying the right amount of pressure and control to create their holes. They showed great concentration and enthusiasm as they developed these new practical skills.
Next week, we’re excited to put these skills into practice by working together to build a class bug hotel for our outdoor area. Thank you to everyone who has collected natural resources to help fill our bug hotel—we really appreciate your support!
Stay & Learn
Thank you to everyone who attended our final Stay & Learn session today. We hope you found the session helpful and came away with some useful tips and ideas for supporting your child’s fine motor skills. If you were unable to attend, click here to view the slides.
Home learning activity
Writing: using inverted commas
Year 3 are going to be writing a recount. What is a recount?
A recount re-tells events and describes what has happened.
Our recount will be inspired by a picture book called ‘The Flood’ by Alvaro F. Villa.
In our recount we’re going to include; description, action and dialogue (direct speech).
We’ve began practising our use of inverted commas for direct speech…
Help at home by practising writing direct speech. Have a conversation with someone at home and write it down using inverted commas. Use the list of R2s above to help you!
Here’s some great examples from our learning.
Reading: Retrieval Race
In today’s lesson, Year 6 competed in a retrieval race. They were split up into teams and had to run to read through a text and then return to their group to recall all they had read. A key tip for retrieving is to scan the text for key words.
Help at home: What can your child remember about the Amazon Rainforest?
PE
In PE, we’re playing Lions and Hyenas on Tuesdays and on Thursdays we’re developing our skipping skills in preparation for the skipping festival in June.
Today, we enjoyed the lovely sunny weather while taking part in a whole-class game of Lions and Hyenas. The children worked collaboratively as a team and demonstrated a range of skills, including running and dodging.
New class novel
This half term is the beginning of our new class novel. Year 3 voted for…
All Miaow wants is to enjoy his peaceful, solitary life as a temple guardian catching mice. But when the Jade Emperor invites all creatures on Earth to compete in the Great Race, the reserved cat finds himself reluctantly entering – and worse, socialising!
Spirited and fiery, shapeshifter Ming is Miaow’s polar opposite, and she’s determined to make him her new best friend. But she hadn’t counted on Miaow making other friends too. As the race heats up, things start to unravel… Can the pair (and their friendship) make it to the finish line?
