Guided Reading in Year 3
Hello!
Guided reading is a bit different this year so I thought I’d write a post explaining how it all works:
The children are split into five different guided reading groups. Each group has about six children in it and each group reads with me once a week on a designated day of the week. For example, Monday Group read with me on Monday, Tuesday Group on Tuesday, etc.
All the children in the group read the same book. After they read with me, I set a “target page”. They have to reach this “target page” by the next time they read with me. It’s really important that the children reach but do not exceed the target page so that they are all at the same place in the book. If you find that your child has reached the target page quickly, they can read another book at home or I can arrange for them to take another school book home.
I hope that makes sense! Please come to see me if you have any questions.
The Water Cycle
Our first mini-topic of the year is water. As part of the topic, we’ve been learning about the water cycle. In this topic lesson, children annotated a picture on the iPads to show the different parts of the water cycle.
Forces
We’ve started the year with a mini-topic on forces. We went to the playground to think about pushes and pulls that we use. Here’s a pupil using a pull force to lift himself up (he loves climbing from what I read in his homework)! Gravity and friction are two new words that we’ve learnt this week.
Maths
This half-term, the children will learn to develop their number skills. So far, we’ve learnt about multiples of numbers, partitioning numbers, odd and even numbers and we’ve been mentally adding numbers, too.
We’ll soon be focusing on using other methods to add and subtract. To help your child at home, you could encourage them to count on and back from random numbers in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s.
We’ll learn our 2, 5 and 10 times table this year so practising them will help, too.
Roll Up! Roll Up!
Our big topic ‘Roll Up! Roll Up!’ will start in October – we’ll learn all about the circus.
We’re looking forward to learning some circus skills too!
You might be interested to know that the Netherlands National Circus are performing in Harrogate on The Stray between the 18 and 23September.(Check out Groupon for some discounted prices!)
SEAL
The SEAL topic for this half term is ‘New Beginnings’. As a class, we have decided what rules we should all follow and have created a learning contract that we have all signed. The children will develop their speaking, listening and thinking skills through circle time. It is also a good opportunity for children to reflect on their week and help others with their problems.
Well done to Grace and Mia for making Jorja feel welcome in her new beginning at Moortown Primary.
Welcome to Reception!
We’ve now visited all of the children and are looking forward to them starting next week. We are confident that they will settle well and enjoy the new challenges of ‘big’ school!
There are three members of staff in Reception this year: Mrs Boulton, Mrs Maqbool and me, Mrs Burke. In addition, Mrs Wilson and Mrs Taylor will be taking the class for a short time on Tuesday afternoons. When your child starts school we encourage you to come in each morning and settle them in classroom. This is an ideal opportunity for you to find out what your child is learning, look at your child’s Learning Journey and discuss their learning with us.
We’ll open the doors at 8.50 each morning and take the register. When collecting your child, please wait at the gate. We’ll let your child out at 3.15 when we see the adult who is collecting them. Please make sure to bring and collect your child on time. Children can become very anxious if they arrive or leave late from school.
Our main emphasis this term is the children’s personal, social and emotional development. We’ll be settling the children into school life and familiarizing them with routines and expectations. The children will be forging new friendships, learning to share and care for one another and look after their environment.
Here are some of the ways you can help your child at home over the coming weeks:
Mathematics – Encourage your child to count objects and actions. For example, counting while going up the stairs or how many knives and forks on the table. Look for numbers around the house and in the environment. For example, on the remote control, on the telephone, house numbers, bus numbers and numbers on car registration plates. Look for different shapes within the home and environment, clothing, the walls and windows.
Writing – Provide your child with opportunities to use pencils and pens. Encourage your child to ‘mark make’ and develop good pencil control. Encourage your child to use writing in their play. If they are playing shops ask them to write a shopping list. If playing police get them to write an incident report! If your child is writing their name please help us by teaching them that the first letter of their name is a capital letter and the rest are lower case letters. Please use the school’s handwriting style. There is a copy in your ‘Welcome Pack’.
Reading – Share books with your child. While reading encourage your child to talk about the illustrations and predict what may happen next. After reading, talk about what happened in the story and encourage them to re-tell the story. Look for letters and print in the house and environment – encourage your child to look for letters from their name while you are out and about. If your child shows an interest in letter shapes encourage them to use the ‘sounds’ the letters make, for example ‘sssss’ for snake, ‘mmmm’ for Mummy, and ‘zzzz’ for zebra.
As the term progresses, I’ll send you more information about how we teach reading and phonics. Keep checking on-line, too!
Please remember that we want you to be very much involved in your child’s learning so please ask if you need more information or have any questions or concerns.
For more information about the Foundation Stage and how children learn in Reception go to www.foundationyears.org.uk
Welcome to Year Six
Hello and welcome to Year Six! I hope you all had a relaxing summer and managed to find some good weather amongst the rain.
Things have been busy already in Year Six with lots of learning. I’ve been really pleased with how motivated and responsible the children have been on their return to Moortown, especially now they are the oldest in school.
Our first few weeks will involve some re-capping. For example, checking through the children’s preferred strategies for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as lots of learning in Literacy on how to use punctuation correctly, especially commas. Children already have a guided reading book and a target page to read to for the following week.
For those of you who I don’t know, this will be my third year at Moortown Primary, all of which have been in Year Six. I have taught at several other schools and have been a teacher for more than twenty years. Parents’ evening will be towards the end of October; in the meantime, please feel free to drop in if you have any questions. I look forward to getting to know you all better.
Finally, I’d like to welcome Mehak to our class. She’s been welcomed by all the class and is already proving to be a great member of the Year 6 learning community and is impressing everyone with her excellent Maths and quietly confident attitude to learning.
Welcome to Year 3
Hello and welcome to Year 3!
I hope you all had a lovely summer. I’ve been really impressed with how the class seem to be settling into Year 3 over the first week and a bit and have enjoyed listening to all the fun things that they have done over the holidays.
In this post I’ll go over some of the key things that you will need to know for this year:
Ok, here goes…
• PE is on Wednesdays and Fridays. Children will need a PE kit suitable for both indoors and outdoors. This should include a pair of trainers or pumps. I usually ask parents to bring in the kit at the start of the term and take it home at the end of each half-term to wash. This way, the children always have a kit. Also, please put the children’s name on the kit!
• We have a spellings and tables test each Friday morning. The new spellings and tables are written in the red learning lists books. These books are for the children to take home each day to practise. However, they should bring the books back in to school each day in case we do some practice in school as well. The children will be given ten spellings and ten times table facts to learn each week but they will only be tested on eight out of the ten. The times tables we learn in Year 3 are the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 times tables. The spellings we will be learning are a mixture of important spelling rules which may be revisited more than once during the year and specific vocabulary which will tie in with the learning in the literacy lessons.
• Homework is the same in Year 3 as it was in Year 2. There will be a mixture of creative and talk time homework with a few practice makes perfect as well. New homework is given out on Friday and is to be handed in by the following Wednesday.
• Some of the children have asked me what they are allowed to bring in for a playtime snack. They can bring in any type of fruit but not cereal bars, yoghurt, fruit bars etc.
• Tuck shop is starting next Tuesday and will be weekly on this day. Children can bring 20p to buy some fruit at morning break.
I’m sure I won’t have covered all your questions in this post so please pop into the classroom to see me or grab me in the playground if you have any queries – or even just to say hello!
Finally, I’d like to welcome Lennox to our class. He’s been made welcome by all the class and is already proving to be a great addition to Year 3!
Welcome back!
As most of you already know, I taught the current Year 4 two years ago in Key Stage 1. They were a wonderful group of children then and it’s great to see that Mr Wilks has had such a positive impact.
In literacy, Year 4 are currently story-writing in literacy. Further into the term, they will be learning about promotional writing (advertisements, leaflets) as well as writing reports (information texts – often a website or factual book). Encourage your child to read these different types of text when you’re out and about or if you spot an interesting report in a newspaper or magazine.
In maths we’re investigating place value (this is all about knowing the value of digits in a number, such as knowing 357 has three hundreds, five tens and seven units) as well as the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and divide). By the end of the year, your child has to know all times table facts up to 10 x 10. It is imperative that they practise their times tables every day for a few minutes until they can recall any times table within five seconds.
Parents’ evening will be towards the end of October; in the meantime, please feel free to drop in if you have any queries. Finally, I’d like to welcome Luca to our class. He’s slotted perfectly into our learning community and has already made excellent contributions– especially in art!
I look forward to seeing you all again soon.