Class News

It’s half-term…

…so no specific homework, spellings or tables this week.  It’s a good time to relax and enjoy some time with your children – have you visited the free exhibition of Anthony Browne pictures at Leeds City Museum, for example?

Building a Saxon Roundhouse

On Monday morning, Year 3 and 4 took part in a great workshop where they used their maths and DT skills to build a Saxon Roundhouse. Although tricky at times, the children worked together collaboratively to solve problems and build their own section of the house.

“We’re eating a balanced meal.”

Last week, Year 2 were introduced to some new friends who helped us know how to eating healthily. We met Donny Dairy, Colin Carbohydrate, Victor Vitamin, Peter Protein and Freddy Fats. First, we sorted different foods into the five food groups.

Then, we planned our own balanced meal by choosing

• three items of food from Victor Vitamin and Colin Carbohydrate (the food groups we should eat most of)
• two items of food from Donny dairy and Peter Protein
• one or no types of food from Freddy fat.

On Friday, we made our meal and all ate a healthy, balanced meal together.

 When asked who had enjoyed their meal, here was the response!

More phonics

We have begun phase 2 of our phonics programme, ‘Letters and Sounds’.

In this phase children will continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, including ‘sound-talk’. They will also 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’).

VC and CVC words

C and V are abbreviations for ‘consonant’ and ‘vowel’. VC words are words consisting of a vowel then a consonant (e.g. am, at, it) and CVC words are words consisting of a consonant then a vowel then a consonant (e.g. cat, rug, sun). Words such as tick and bell also count as CVC words – although they have four letters, they have only three sounds. For example, in the word bell, b = consonant, e = vowel, ll = consonant.

Now the children will be seeing letters and words, as well as hearing them. They will be shown how to make whole words by pushing magnetic or wooden letters together to form little words, reading words and breaking up words into individual sounds, which will help their spelling. These will be simple words made up of two phonemes, for example, am, at, it, or three phonemes, for example, cat, rug, sun, tick, bell.

How you can help at home:

Magnetic letters

Remember to make it fun!

Thanks d:Side – we learnt lots!

Today, Catherine, from d:Side, came to visit to give us lots of information about our body and keeping it healthy.  Judging by the responses, the class have learnt lots so far in our Doctor Doctor topic.  We also managed to learn about what makes a healthy lunchbox and the safe use of medicines.

• “I learnt all about bodies, bones and muscles.”
• “I learnt that we grow when we are asleep.”
• “There are veins to take our blood around.”

Gymnastics

We’re continuing to learn new gymnastic skills on Thursday afternoons.  This week, we’ve been practising different jumps and travelling along the benches in different ways.

Dance at Allerton Grange

Recently, we went to Allerton Grange to hone our dancing skills. The session was led by a group of pupils from Allerton Grange who taught us a dance to a song from the Lion King. Check out our lion faces…

Talk time homework

The discussion we had about the talk time homework this week was fantastic. The children had loads of really interesting things to talk about and to show. Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated!

Topic baking

Last week, children baked and then decorated their own house-shaped biscuits. The children first designed their houses on the new laptops in The Space and then made the biscuits. The following day, they decorated their biscuits and used their design as a guide.

We also made a big gingerbread house which we gave as a gift to our visitors from Finland!

Phonics

We are busy learning to identify alliteration and rhyme which will pave the way for the systematic learning of phonics.

The children are taking part in lots of activities where they listen attentively to sounds around them, such as sounds in the environment and to sounds in spoken language. Singing a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and reading books to and with the children helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.

We are also learning to ‘sound talk’. The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word: d-o-g = dog. This merging together is called blending and is a vital skill for reading.

Children will also learn to do this the other way around: cat = c-a-t. The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds (phonemes) in order, all through the word. This is called segmenting and is a vital skill for spelling.

This is all oral (spoken). Your child will not be expected to match the letter to the sound at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds.

Ways you can support your child at home:

Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.