Autumn 1: Week 7
Autumn
We’ve had a busy week doing lots of seasonal activities. After reading Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert, we looked closely at the beautiful leaf illustrations and used them as inspiration to talk about all the amazing changes we see in autumn.
We also began learning about hibernation and explored why some animals start to hibernate around October and November. We even made our own clay hedgehogs!
Help at home: Ask your child which animals hibernate and what they do to get ready for the colder months.
Maths
Our focus has been on using the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to compare groups of objects. Since we’re working with countable items, we use fewer rather than less.
Help at home: Gary and Barney are still arguing! Can your child help them out? Use this sentence to compare: “___ has more/fewer ___ than ___.”
(For example: Gary has more apples than Barney.)
Phonics
We’ve been busy recapping all the graphemes we’ve learned so far. There are no new graphemes or phonics sheets this week or next. Please continue to use the phonics home learning book.
Here’s a snapshot of some of this week’s seasonal chilli challenges…
Living and Learning: democracy
This week, our Living and Learning has been around one of the British Values, Democracy.
We use voting within the classroom. For example, what class reward the children would like or which book to read at the end of the day but this week it is our Junior Leadership Team elections so all the children had a difficult decision to make when giving their vote at the polling station.
Year 2 did a fantastic job delivering their speeches to be elected for the Junior Leadership Team (JLT). The children thought about what would make them a good leader and what ideas they would bring to the JLT.
Every child had their democratic vote by deciding who they’d like to see represent our class in the JLT.
Well done to Lydia May and Zara Mae for being voted as our new members of the JLT and thank you to Teddy and Rowan for doing such a good job representing the class as our junior leaders for the past year.
Help at home: Think about voting and why it is a fair way to make a decision. Are there any times you vote at home?
Visitors – PCSOs
This morning we had some visitors in school. They were our PCSOs. They came in to talk to us about fire safety, how to stay safe at Halloween and how to stay safe during Bonfire night. They taught us some really important and valuable things. Our favourite was the carrot trick. Where the year 1s were taught to stick the handle of the sparkler in the carrot and then use the carrot as a handle to help keep our hands safe and to increase the distance of the flame from our hands.
Living and Learning- Democracy
This week in Living and Learning, we have been learning about how to take part in democratic decisions . This has been perfect timing because our school has held our own JLT elections this week. We took part in an election style vote, where the Year 1s had to put an ‘x’ next to the name they wanted to be JLT and post it in the ballot box. Our winners were crowned today (Thursday 16th), and they were Zuri and Jesse! Congratulations and well done to everyone who took part and for all of their amazing speeches.
Here is a photo of the behind the scenes, where the children are writing their speeches.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Year 5 and Year 6 went on an amazing trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to support our Art learning for next half term.
It was great to see both abstract and figurative sculptures.
We started off the day by taking part in a workshop with a real artist! We investigated patterns, textures and shape. The children did some artwork without looking at the page; they had to put their sketchbook on their heads. They also created a collaborative piece where they had one minute to draw and then had to move on to someone else’s sketchbook to draw for another minute.
Another great moment was seeing Barbara Hepworth’s Family of Man in real life! We had a tour of the sculptures and learnt all about the story of what they represent.
Lastly, inspired by the sculptures we’d seen, we made our own out of clay, just like Henry Moore would have done. He used a maquette made out of plaster.
In the afternoon, we had a self-guided tour where we explored more of the park. We even managed to squeeze in some time for a run around and a game of infinity tig.
Help at home: Ask your child about the trip. What was their favourite part of the day? Which was their favourite sculpture and why? Or, take a look at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park website – can you find out more about the pieces of art we saw in real life?
Writing: twisted tales
In writing, Year 4 are looking at news reports.
The purpose of a news report is to tell the reader information about something that has happened.
We’re going to be writing a news report about a twisted tale. We’re doing a spin on the classic three little pigs story. However, ours is going to be the three little wolves and the big bad pig. The big bad pig needs a warm blanket for winter and wolf fur is exactly what he’s looking for!
Today, together we drew a story map (we found the drawing quite tricky as you can see!) of our twisted tale. This is going to help us write our news reports next week.
Help at home: ask your children to tell you the story of the three little wolves and the big bad pig. Can they do it like a news reporter?
Watch us while we work
Thank you to those parents who were able to join us for our watch us while we work session earlier this week. We hope you found it useful.
Here’s a summary of how we are encouraging the children to become more responsible for their learning at home.
Spellings – use the spelling guide for ideas to help with learning weekly spellings.
Sentence practice – use spellings to make silly sentences. Use a picture as a stimulus for writing sentences including asking questions about what they can see.
Daily reading – we thought about some of the reading skills the children are learning in Year 2 (fluency, prosody (using expression in their voices), retrieval, interpret and learning new vocabulary). Reading needs to happen daily to build up these skills. A brief note in their reading record books is needed after reading at home. We will continue to monitor the use of e-books at home. Please alert us to any access issues.
Maths – number facts such as counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and number bonds to 10 and 20 are really important to secure this year. Hit the Button is a great online game to build up the recall of these facts.
Numbots certificates are awarded every Thursday and it’s great to see children already achieving their next levels in Year 2.
Finally, here’s the help at home section of the website.
Please get in touch if you need any further support with your child’s learning at home.
Geography fieldwork
What a fantastic time we had on our Geography fieldwork this week! The children showed excellent awareness of how to stay safe while carrying out their investigations.
Before setting off, we reminded ourselves of our important safety rules:
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We wear our hi-vis jackets so we can be easily seen.
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We stay with our group and our adult at all times.
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We listen carefully to our adult’s instructions.
Our fieldwork question was: “What trees are there in Moortown Park?”
To find the answer, we took photographs and collected leaves from different trees.
Back in class, we examined our leaves carefully and used an identification guide to find out which trees they came from. We discovered a wonderful variety of trees in the park, including oak, birch, sycamore, beech, and holly.
Help at home:
Why not explore the trees in your local area? Use a leaf identification guide to see what types of trees you can find near you!
Geography – I can investigate land-use in my locality.
This week, during Geography, we’ve planned a walk in our locality so that we can investigate what the land is used for.
There are five main types of land-use:
- agriculture – land used for farming
- residential – land used for housing
- commercial – land used for businesses e.g. shops and restaurants
- recreational – land used for recreational activities e.g. swimming pools and golf courses
- transport – land used for roads, railways and airports
We used a map of Moortown to decide what route we’ll take. We thought about trying to create a loop and to try and pass as many different areas as possible. Have a look at what we decided on:
We’ll hopefully pass areas of residential, recreational and commercial land-use while walking along land used for transport! We’ll take pictures of each and label these in our books.
We look forward to showing you the pictures!
Maths: calculating with 1,000
In Year 4, we’ve been looking at the structure of 1,000 in maths.
There are 10 hundreds in 1 thousand.
There are 100 tens in 1 thousand.
There are 1,000 ones in 1 thousand.
Understanding the structure of 1,000 then helps us with our calculations.
When subtracting ones from 1,000, we can partition into 990 and 10 to help us.
Once we were confident, we had a go at writing some of our own worded problems for subtracting from 1,000.
Help at home: have a go at these questions (remember to partition if you need some help):
1,000 – 5 =
1,000 – 8 =
1,000 – 3 =
1,000 – 6 =