Celebrating your child’s reading: eBooks
We hope that you’re enjoying listening to your child read their eBook at home and that your child is enjoying celebrating their super reading skills!
At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.
We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!
Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.
Happy reading!
Computing: branching database
During our Computing topic, we’ve learnt about a branching database.
A branching database helps a computer sort and find information by splitting a group of items into smaller and smaller groups by using “yes” or “no” questions.
We had a go at playing with one of these databases before creating our own.
Have a go here: https://www.j2e.com/jit5?fileId=FDrqUQoSY1jKiBHN#branch
We then worked in pairs to create our own. There were lots of different categories of things to choose from. Some of us went with a beach theme, a space theme or an animal theme.
Have a look at some of our branching databases!
Help at home and choose some objects that have some similarities. What “yes” or “no” questions could you ask to split the objects into groups.
Maths: right angles
Last week, Year 3 were learning to recognise right angles.
A right angle is the same as a quarter turn.
There are four right angles in a full turn.
This links directly to our Computing learning where we’ve been using quarter turns in our algorithms.
Many 2D shapes, or polygons as we’ve called them, have right angles.
Squares and rectangles have four right angles.
A triangle that has a right angle is called a right angled triangle.
We’ve also had a go at drawing different polygons, some with right angles and some without.
Help at home: Can you name the polygons we’ve drawn?
Living & Learning: personal hygiene
In L&L, Year 4 are learning about personal hygiene and how we can keep our bodies healthy.
We began by learning about germs and the different types – bacteria, viruses and fungi. Germs are all around us and while some are very helpful, some can be harmful to our bodies.
Yoghurts have ‘live cultures’ in that are good for our digestive system.
Some viruses can make us feel very poorly.
We discussed how quickly and easily germs can spread. To ensure we are keeping ourselves safe and healthy, we must wash our hands to help prevent this spread. We could use soap or hand sanitiser and to make sure we’ve washed them thoroughly enough.
Top tip: you should sing happy birthday twice while you do it!
Help at home: How do you prevent germs spreading at home? Discuss this with your child.
Writing: A Promotional Piece
After completing some fantastic narratives that created tension and suspense, we have now started to look at creating a promotional piece of writing. The children will be trying to persuade people to buy their ‘Chatbot Game’ that they have been making in our computing topic.
The purpose of a promotional text is ‘to persuade/sell/promote a product’.
We started by looking at different promotional texts; the children highlighted and annotated them to find the R2s.
Help at home: Find the R2s in the text.
– present tense
– name of product
– slogan
– subheadings
– persuasive language
– figurative language (e.g. alliteration, hyperbole)
– rhetorical questions
– customer review (e.g. direct quotes)
– special offer
– repetition (e.g. rule of three)
Living and Learning: Health and Prevention
Year 6 have been learning about germs and how to prevent spreading them.
We started off the lesson by taking part in a quiz. Did you know that the kitchen is normally the most germiest room in the house? And, there are 100,000 microbes in a sneeze?
The children then discussed cross contamination and how quickly germs can spread. We talked about the need to wash our hands to help prevent this spread. We could use soap or hand sanitiser.
Help at home: Discuss other ways we can stop germs from spreading.
Computing: Scratch programming
This half term we are improving our computing skills. The first few lessons have focussed on logical reasoning, including solving sudoku and number sequences. This week, we worked on using the Scratch program to create a Chatbot quiz. In our quiz we programmed the sprite to ask our name, respond with a greeting and then ask us a question. We were able to use the ‘if, then and else’ block to ensure that the right answer had a positive response and all other answers gave a different response.
We really enjoyed getting stuck in with the coding and we worked very well together with our partners.
Help at home by logging on to Scratch and letting your children experiment with coding at home.
Class Assembly – Internet safety and personal information.
Well done Year 1! After another great week, our wonderful Year 1s have performed their class assembly. Our class assembly was on being safe on the internet. The children showcased their learning from Safer Internet Day on stage for this class assembly. After weeks of practise they all came together to give us a great performance. Well done Year 1!
What is internet safety?
Internet safety consists of many different things. To name a few; thinking before clicking and posting, to treat strangers with respect, to be cautious online with others and to never share personal information online. Personal information consists of our full name, our date of birth, our home / school address and our photos online.
Once again Year 1 well done on another great week and I hope you have a great rest over the weekend. (You all deserve it!)
Poetry Basket: Pat-a-cake
This week our poem is well-known nursery rhyme, Pat-a-cake.
Two of the words we’ve been focussing on are to prick and plenty.
Spring 2: Week 3
This week, we continued exploring our transport theme by reading The Hundred Decker Bus by Mike Smith. After enjoying the story, we let our imaginations run wild and designed our very own Moortown bus!
Our ideas were fantastic: one deck had a dessert and a brownie bakery, another featured a deep swimming pool, and we even created a calm deck in case you wanted some quiet time.
Click here to see our amazing bus! We look forward to showing you our bus when you attend the next Learning Journey drop-ins.
Maths
This week, we explored ordinality – learning the positions of numbers up to 8. We used key language like “more than,” “less than,” and “equal to” to describe relationships between numbers, focusing on each number’s place in the counting sequence.
Help at Home: Play a game of ‘More or Fewer?’
- Make a set of number cards from 1 to 8.
- Gather a collection of small objects (e.g., buttons, toy cars, coins) and arrange them so your child can see them clearly.
- Turn over a number card.
- Ask your child: “Do you have more or fewer [objects] than this number?”
This simple game helps children practise comparing quantities and using the language of more than, fewer than, and equal to in a fun, hands-on way!
Home learning challenge
Recycled materials needed!
If you have any clean recycled materials at home, please consider sending them in for the children to use in our creative area.
Items that would be great include: cardboard boxes, cereal boxes, kitchen roll tubes, yoghurt pots, egg boxes, and other small packaging materials.
Please ensure all items are clean and safe for children to use.
Reminder
- Learning Journey Drop In’s
Tuesday 24th & Thursday 26th March – 3.15pm – 3.45pm