Learning at home
Thank you for all the ‘home learning moments’ you have been sending.
It’s wonderful to see how keen the children are to continue their reading and writing at home.
Please keep sending those ‘wow’ moments.
Phonics
Phonics
Thank you for attending the phonics mornings last week. We hope you found them useful.
We are continuing with phase 2 of our phonics programme, ‘Letters and Sounds’ and are learning ck, e, u and r. Children will be taught that two letters making one sound such as ck is called a digraph. Other digraphs include qu, th and sh.
In this phase children will be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /ll/ as in b-e-ll. We use Jolly Phonics actions to help children remember these phonemes. Each week the children will bring a set of letters home to learn. Please practise these every day and keep them in their book bag for us to add to.
Your child will be taught how to pronounce the phonemes correctly to make blending easier.
Sounds should be sustained where possible (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be reduced as far as possible (e.g. try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’).
We will begin learning ‘tricky words’ next week which are words which are not phonetic. Please help your child to read these by recognition. The first tricky words are the and to which we will be sending home for the children to learn.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.
Treasure Hunt
We kicked off our Where in the World Am I? geography topic with a TREASURE HUNT in Moortown park!
In teams, we used a map, compass points and a trundle wheel to locate the stash!
We had to carefully read and precisely follow the directions – one metre South East instead of South West would have had catastrophic consequences!
Once each location was reached, we had to find the coin and note down the letter that was on it. There was a lot of excited cheers that kept ringing out across the park!
Ask your child to tell you the word that was spelled out on the treasure! Hint: it means the lines on maps that show how steep or gentle the terrain is.
Can you spot a way that we made sure we were safe on our treasure hunt?
Poppies
Ever since then, poppies have become a symbol of remembering not just those who gave their lives in World War One, but all those who have died on behalf of their country.
Today, we took the opportunity to have a go at sketching poppies. I’m sure you will agree, these drawings are simply stunning.
Autumn fun and learning!
This week the children have been rolling conkers and pumpkins. They held a competition to see whose conker rolled the furthest.
Our Art Projects
Our independent art projects are now finished and very powerful, each representing the novel in its own way.
Each of the following six final art projects have been chosen because they best match one of our Y6 Art Vocabulary we’ve been learning: line, shape, pattern, colour, form, texture. Discuss together which you think is representing which word and why! Do you agree/disagree? Is there more than one option?
One of these pieces was chosen to represent realism, the other surrealism. Again, discuss and decide which you think it is!
Where in the world am I?
Following our local walk this week, we used the map to see the route we had taken. The children were able to spot landmarks on the map and some even spotted their house!
Our new topic, Where in the world am I?, will include lots of map work so if you have an atlas at home it would be great to start looking at where we live in the world.
Where in the world am I?
As a hook to start our new geography based topic, Where in the world am I?, we took a walk around our local area observing and recording features we spotted along the way. Following from this, we will group the features into physical and human and then comment on our likes and dislikes about the local area. What do you like about Moortown?
Skylar’s Missing Note
What an exciting first day back Year 1 have had!
This morning, we welcomed Sam and Jen and we were engrossed by the performance of Skylar’s missing note. This musical story was all about Skylar’s prized piano and how one of the notes (middle C) became lost as the piano was transported to their new house. The note did appear in the mouth of a pigeon but unfortunately, despite Skylar’s best efforts, the note could not be reunited with the piano. Nevertheless, Skylar continued to enjoy her piano and she found other ways to use her piano to create music.
Following the performance, Sam led a workshop where we continued the story but this time based on the pigeon. Along the way, we learnt many musical terms.
- Dynamics – loud or quiet
- Pitch – high or low
- Tempo – fast or slow
- Rhythm – the pattern of the music
Our petition against palm oil.
Last half term, Y6 were inspired by a poem called Rang Tan. This prompted us to write persuasive letters to the government to convince them to ban palm oil.
Today, we were able to walk the short distance to the post box and send our letters off to Parliament!
Watch this space for a (hopefully speedy) reply!