Inventions to make the world a better place
Last week’s homework was to create a competition entry for the Young Imagineers project. It required the children to think about how to make the world a better place and invent something that would contribute to this.
Here are some of the children’s favourites:
Lawn Mower Shoes (my favourite)
Salt-Water Purifier
Air-Powered Vehicles
Insta-Charger
Peace Sprinkler
I’ll be uploading all of the entries over the weekend so keep your fingers crossed.
Storytelling
This week the children enjoyed writing and performing their own version of ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, who do you see?’
Please ask your child to show you their book, ‘Reception, Reception, who can you see?’ next time you are in the classroom.
Sport at Allerton Grange
Year 6 had their first visit to Allerton Grange today to work with their sports leaders. We enjoyed basketball, football, hockey and netball activities which were well-delivered by the Y11s and well-received by the Y6s.
Thanks to Elias who was our class cameraman today and caught some great action-shots.
Assembly
Thank you to all who attended our assembly today.
The children have worked hard to prepare for this and have practised speaking with confidence and volume.
The song was chosen by the class and was great fun to learn! Well done to all!
Is there too much money in football?
Yesterday, in our reading session we used our debating to skills to answer the question ‘Is there too much money in football?‘. The debate came about because of an article we read last week in First News.
The children were given some information and had to collate this into a table in their books. We had to think about our own arguments whilst considering an alternative viewpoint so that we could put forward a better argument.
It was great to hear what the children thought, especially where pay in other professions was concerned. Most agreed that whilst footballers have a relatively short career, they shouldn’t be paid as much as people in other, more important professions: doctors, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, paramedics and even teachers!
The skill of debating is a useful life-skill and one that we’ll focus on throughout the year. Help at home by encouraging your child to form opinions about a range of things: things they’ve seen on the news, something they have read, something they like or dislike, political issues, social issues. Be sure to encourage your child to consider an alternative viewpoint as well.
Early Learning Workshop
- Have you ever wondered what a phoneme is?
- Do you know how to split a digraph?
Make sure you come along to our Early Reading Workshop on Tuesday 03 October at 6pm.
Find out how we teach phonics and reading and how you can support your child at home.
See you there!
From Addition Missions to Egg Rolls – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
We took on the role of spies this week in Maths, with secret addition missions to accomplish. We also practised how to mark our own answers and we’re shaping up to be independent and responsible learners.
For a more concrete representation, we have used place value grids to help us visualise how to add a 3 digit number to a 1 digit number.
Our maths talk this week has revolved around explaining what happens when we solve these calculations.
In English, this week, we have analysed what makes a good description. This helped us write our own as a group…
… and then move to more independent writing by the end of the week. I have been blown away by the quality of the children’s writing, especially their use of expanded noun phrases and prepositions.
As we continue our journey with our Explorers topic, we identified and described human and physical features of geography. Our flying ship was cut off from its communications with HQ this week, so we had to describe our location using photos taken out of the portholes.
PE was a highlight of the week again, as we continued to work on our flexibility and coordination in gymnastics. Some of the stretches were a little tricky but I’m sure our core strength will be improving as the weeks go by! Why not try a back support or an egg roll whilst you’re watching TV or even doing your spellings!
We’ve discussed what it means to be a part of a team, alongside our Living and Learning theme this week: “I am resourceful. I am resilient.” We talked about our goals and how we will need these two Rs for Learning to achieve them.
Well done to certificate winners Leo, who is a great example of someone who doesn’t give up when they face a challenge, and Nryan, whose spelling investigation impressed me greatly.
Another fantastic week in Year 3 – well done to everyone!
Arctic Explorers
In topic lessons this week, we’ve been exploring the less explored. We learnt about the first British woman to climb Everest and then delved right to the deepest part of the ocean: the mariana trench.
Then, we set sail to the Arctic. After discussing what we knew (and didn’t know) about it, we imagined that we were at a research camp, ready to set out on a day-long expedition. Working in the Arctic requires lots of calories so we worked in groups to plan what food we would take with us. We had to think about eating enough calories (3305kJ) to have enough energy for the journey; taking enough for all four members of the team to eat; and ensuring we stayed within our expedition budget of £60.
The children found the task difficult but worked well and resiliently together.
Amazing Grammar Learning
This week, we’ve been learning/revising loads about grammar and punctuation. To ensure the children were actively learning, we spent the week making a PaG board game. Each day, we focused on a specific area of grammar (word classes, punctuation, sentence types) and at the end of each lesson we prepared test style questions for each area.
Today, we enjoyed playing our games. Obviously, we weren’t just playing; without realising we were learning. It was great to see children helping each other learn whilst having fun.
Super Spelling
Last week, children were given a list of words to learn. I asked children to evidence their learning in their spelling books. Three children in particular really stood out.
Lori and Nicky showed that they had definitely been practising their spellings…
And so did Pia…
It’s important to remember that different children learn in different ways. What you see here may not work for your child. However, what I really like about these examples is that the children have actively engaged with the process of learning their spellings. They haven’t just learnt them by rote for a test. It’s likely that these children will have learnt these spellings for life. These children are also demonstrating that they have learnt how they learn best – this is a huge predictor of future of success. Well done to everyone in Year 5, especially Pia, Nicky and Lori.