Autumn 1: week 6
Look at us – we’re artists!
We’ve been learning all about what an artist is. After reading Henri’s Scissors, we talked about the key events in Henri Matisse’s life. He loved to paint, but later in life he started making beautiful pictures using only scissors and paper!
We looked at Matisse’s bright and colourful artwork and shared what we liked (and didn’t like!) about it. Using our cutting skills, we made our own collages by cutting out different shapes and arranging them into creative designs. We had so much fun exploring colour, shape, and imagination—just like Matisse did!
Help at home: Practise your cutting skills.
Phonics Superstars!
The children are becoming real phonics superstars! Every morning, they eagerly help each other get their phonics packs out and ready to learn. We’re proud to share that we have now learned all of the Phase 2 phonemes for this half-term.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll be focusing on practising our blending skills and recapping all of the phonemes to strengthen our reading confidence. Well done, everyone!
Help at home: Use your phonics home learning book on a daily basis. Practise saying the pure sounds and writing the graphemes.
Look how we’re growing!
This week, we measured how tall we are. Throughout the year in Reception, we’ll keep checking to see how much we’ve grown.
Home learning challenge
Reminders
- Water bottles: Please ensure your child brings a filled water bottle to school each day.
- Lost uniform: We’re seeing a lot of jumpers and cardigans go missing. Please label all clothing clearly with your child’s name to help us return lost items.
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Parent-Teacher Zoom Meetings: These are coming up soon. Don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already!
Reading: It’s so important!
We hope that you’re enjoying reading your child’s library book with them. We call this a ‘love of reading’ book – to do just that, encourage a love of reading for your child! Reading to and with your child can have a huge positive impact on your child’s education.
This research is a powerful message of the impact you can have when reading to/with your child:
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!
Science: Jane Goodall
Yesterday, Year 3 watched this Newsround clip about Jane Goodall.
Jane Goodall is our featured scientist for our current biology topic: skeletons, movement and nutrition.
Sadly, Jane Goodall recently passed away. Year 3 had a discussion about her life and her achievements as a female scientist. She made amazing discoveries while she studies chimpanzees in the wild.
She links to our learning because we are studying animals including humans. We’ve classified and compared skeletons and we’ll be doing the same with animals diets too.
Help at home by researching more about Jane Goodall with your child. Here’s a useful link to get you started: https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/animals/general-animals/jane-goodall-interview/
Science – Touch
This week in science we carried on learning about our senses. This time we focused on touch. We worked really hard on identifying the sense and the receptor. We then took part in an experiment where we were blindfolded and touched a number of different objects. In which we then described what we felt, using words such as soft, hard, rough, smooth and rigid. We did really well with this and worked very hard on identifying what we had touched. 
Topic – Fieldwork and our geographers.
This week in our Topic lessons we have been learning about fieldwork and then taking part in our very own fieldwork. We learnt that it means going outside the classroom to explore, investigate, and discover things. Our fieldwork investigation was to go around the green outside and count all of the trees in the space. We split into two groups, then went out one group at a time taking part in our investigation. Once both groups had gone we then compared our results to see if we had all counted the same amount. 
Geography: Moortown local walk
Today, Year 4 completed some fieldwork in our local area as part of our Geography topic: Where in the World am I?
fieldwork: observing and collecting data in a locality
We were investigating the different types of land-use that we can see in our local area. Your children used the iPads to take photos of all the different types of land-use that they could spot. We were able to find four different types on our walk…
- transport – allows us to travel to other areas of land
- recreational – used for the purpose of activities and fun e.g Moortown Park
- residential – used to provide housing for people
- commercial – used for businesses e.g shops, cafes and restaurants
Your children were safe, responsible walkers and fantastic geographers!
Help at home: go on a walk (local or somewhere new) and ask your children to point out all the different types of land-use that they can see.
Writing: Expanded Noun Phrases (ENPs)
Over the next two weeks, in Writing, we will be exploring, planning and writing a narrative. Yesterday, the children looked at and created Expanded Noun Phrases (ENPs) that they could use in their piece of writing.
An ENP is made up of a ‘determiner adjective, adjective noun’ or ‘determiner adjective noun’. Here are a few we made:
- the smoky orange sky
- the green-eyed figure
- the glistening bronze wheel
- a magnificent, gargantuan hot air balloon
- an ancient, abnormal dragon
- a menacing, mechanical sky-ship
- several delicate, peach clouds
Help at home: Take a look at ENPs on BBC bitesize or create your own ENPs for the picture below.
Living and Learning: protected characteristics
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been learning all about respect.
We’ve revisited what the protected characteristics are. These are characteristics that are protected by law to stop discrimination.
disability, race, gender reassignment, religion or belief, age, marital status, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation
We’ve been usingthis useful mnemonic to help us remember: DRGRAMPSS.
As well as reminding ourselves what the protected characteristics are, we’ll be exploring themes around them such as…
- Why are they protected?
- What would society be like if they weren’t protected?
- How do they link to the British Values?
We’ve had discussions about different scenarios where the characteristics aren’t being protected and see if we can identify the problem and the characteristic.
Help at home: Have a chat with your child about why we have protected characteristics and the importance of them. What could they do if they saw someone being discriminated against?
Letter writing!
We’ve just finished our class novel, Yours Sincerely, Giraffe — and to our surprise, we received a very special letter in the post! It was from Whale, one of the characters in the story!
The children were so excited to write back to Whale, telling him all about themselves. We’ve been focusing on our presentation skills and making sure to include capital letters, full stops, and finger spaces, as well as using commas in a list.
Take a look at some of our wonderful writing below!
We’ve enjoyed using our Oracy skills to read our letters out loud too!
Well done Year 2!
Living & Learning: protected characteristics
Our L&L statement for the week: I understand some characteristics are protected by law.
In our L&L lesson this week, we learnt about the protected characteristics. We discussed what they are and how they’re protected.
Discrimination is defined as ‘the unfair treatment of people because of who they are or because they have a certain characteristic(s)’. We discussed examples and the impact of discrimination.
We discussed how the protected characteristics are protected by law – The Equality Act 2010 protects people from discrimination based on protected characteristics.
A helpful way to remember the protected characteristics is by using the mnemonic:
DR GRAMPSS
Disability
Race
Gender reassignment
Religion or beliefs
Age
Marriage or civil partnership
Pregnancy and/or maternity leave
Sex
Sexual orientation
Help at home: Can you remember the 9 protected characteristics using DR GRAMPSS? Why do we have protected characteristics?