Our Amazing Writing
Take a look at some excellent examples of our writing in Y6.
I’ve been very impressed with their powerful vocabulary.
We enjoyed sharing our brilliant writing with and learning from each other.
- expanded noun phrases
- varied openers
- conjunctions
Challenge your child to explain the three ways you can write an expanded noun phrase!
Welcome back!
Hello everyone!
What a first two weeks it has been! All the children have settled back into school life brilliantly. I have been really impressed to see how the children have adapted to the ‘new normal’ in school.
Here’s a little bit about our plans for the next few weeks…
In maths, we’re beginning with place value and looking at numbers to 100. We are recapping some of the learning from Year One, to make sure that everyone is confident before moving on to the trickier Year Two skills.
Starting at any given number, support your child at home by counting forwards and backwards within 100. Also, give them a number and ask them to tell you how many tens and ones the number is made up of.
In writing, we’re looking at sentence structure. Again, we’re recapping on Year One learning to begin with. This will help the children become confident writers, for when we begin to write our own short narratives, recounts and diary extracts.
Support your child at home by asking them to write sentences using varied punctuation, including full stops, question marks and exclamation marks.
In reading, we’re using our whole school novel ‘After the Fall’. In Year Two, we practice reading in a variety of ways. We have daily phonics and fluency (ask your child what this is) sessions, one-to-one reading and lessons that teach skills such as RIC (retrieval, interpret and choice).
Please read at home as much as you can. Look out in the coming days for your child’s home reading book. Reading this as much as possible at home, will help build up your child’s fluency.
In topic, we will use the book ‘After the Fall’ as a stimulus which will inspire lots of artwork. The children will take part in sketching, painting and collaging.
Reading in Year 1
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been listening to the children read in class and today your child will have brought a reading book home with them.
Reading books will be changed on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
To minimise contact with items coming from home, we would like the children to put reading books, they have read, in the box at the cloakroom door at the start of the day. The children will then put their reading record book in their appropriate group basket in the classroom.
We are sure the children will cope well with this responsibility.
Please could we ask for parents/carers to write the title of the book and a brief comment about their child’s reading inside the reading record book.
We would encourage the children to read to an adult every day to develop their fluency skills. The Active Reading Guide (in your child’s homework book) will provide support for reading with your child at home.
Thank you to those families who have begun to use Lexia. The children are starting to use this in school now and we would recommend 10 minutes every day if possible.
Please contact us (carolinetaylor@spherefederation.org and jackiefreeman@spherefederation.org) if you have any questions about your child’s reading.
Book Club
It’s been lovely and mindful in today’s library session.
“I love the different books we can enjoy here,” said Ethan.
Musa said he likes the library because of its variety of styles and genres.
Back in class, we’ve been practising our reading fluency by reading aloud to an adult or partner. Children have the choice to read their library book or a First News newspaper.
Ask your child what they’re reading at school. Do they enjoy it? Who is the main character? What’s happened so far?
Keep reading everyday at home, too!
Origami
Inspired by our class novel… 
…we’ve been making origami!
We’ve also learnt about pattern in our art lessons so we enjoyed experimenting with different ones.
Just like Humpty, we had to be resilient – one of our 8 Rs for learning – because it was quite fiddly! We were very proud of our efforts at the end, though!
Reading: inference skills through drama
In our reading lesson this morning, we’ve been using drama to show our understanding of a character’s feelings at different points in a story.
Welcome back Y3!
I’ve been extremely impressed at how well Year 3 have adapted to life back in school! They’ve got on with everything so far with no trouble at all – it’s like they’ve had no time away!
This week, we have enjoyed lots of different learning.
In maths, we recapped our tens and ones and have moved onto learning about hundreds, too! We’ve been making silly stories involving aliens and sweets to help us with our maths learning!
In reading, we made predictions and inferences with our new class novel: After the Fall. Nobody was able to predict the plot twist at the end though!
In writing, we were remembering what makes a sentence and then starting sentences using different words, such as:
Humpty nervously climbed the ladder.
became
Nervously, Humpty climbed the ladder.
See if your child can remember the things that make a sentence! Tip: one of them is a capital letter to start the sentence.
We have enjoyed learning about different classes of animals in science, too.
Edith correctly remembered that reptiles can normally be distinguished by the fact that they lay eggs on land; have dry, scaly skin; and are cold-blooded!
To help at home, practise reading with your child everyday. This can be anything from reading instructions on how to make a cake, talking about what they’ve read at school, going on Lexia (logins to be sent home tomorrow) to reading this post together!
Make sure your child practises their times tables everyday, too. The logins for Times Table Rock Stars are to be sent home tomorrow as well.
Here’s to another successful week!
Mr Wain
Our first week
The first group of children have started school and been amazing!
We look forward to meeting more of you next week.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us via our Reception Class email.
We value the knowledge and understanding you have of your child so we’d like you to be involved. It would be really helpful if you let us know what they enjoy out of school and if possible take some photos.
This information will help us plan activities to meet your child’s needs and motivate their learning.
Let us know of any ‘wow’ moments that happen at home by sending photos of your child’s achievements.
moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
The Reception Team
Teacher – Mrs Burke
Teaching Assistants-
Mrs Burgess
Miss Billard
Mrs Stewart
Science: learning about animals
In today’s science lesson we’ve been using secondary research to find out about different animal classes.
We then used iPads to create a presentation about a particular class of animal.
Enjoying our shared area
We have been so impressed with all the children this week. On Monday, the class entered school with huge smiles on their faces and this has continued throughout the week. Coping with new routines can be difficult for us all. However, the children have modelled how to do this well and without fuss.
As well as the classroom, Year One also have a shared area that is used as a learning space. This allows us to present the children with further learning opportunities and we will be using this area as an extension to our classroom.
The children have been taught how to use the area correctly and the importance of keeping it tidy. Below, are a few snap shots of how we learn in our shared areas.
