Class News

Living and learning: internet safety

In Year 4, we know how to stay safe online.

During internet safety day, Year 4 thought particularly about the statement: I know it’s important to check with a trusted adult before sharing personal information online.

Personal information is any information about who you are.

Websites and apps can collect our personal information and data and use it to provide services to us. For example, a website might need your address if they are delivering something you have ordered online.

We need to keep this information safe whilst online. We must always speak to a trusted adult before sharing any information online.

Help at home: Can you think of an example of a piece of personal information that you should keep private?

Guided Reading Week 2

Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 8th March:

Divine Freaks: up to chapter 9/page 95.

Street Child: up to chapter 14/page 119.

How To Train Your Dragon: up to chapter 7/page 83.

The Considine Curse: up to chapter 9/page 70.

Extra Time: up to chapter 18/page 80.

The London Mystery Eye: up to chapter 16/page 117.

Spring 2: Week 2

Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading The Hundred Decker Rocket by Mike Smith.

This story has a very important message about keeping our planet clean. We watched a video about the 3 Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle. After watching the video, we thought about what we could do to look after our planet.

Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip
after clip.

Put rubbish in bins.
Respect our planet.
Don’t leave rubbish on the beach because it could hurt our animals.
Put garden rubbish in the brown bin.
Reuse our water bottles.
Take old clothes and toys to a charity shop.

For our writing, we used our imaginations to design new decks for a rocket.
Yesterday, we watched a video of first moon landing and looked at some rockets from the past.
Help at home: Watch and talk about the above video again at home.

Art
This week, we used our artistic skills to do an observational drawing of a bunch of tulips.
Help at home: Choose an object to draw at home.

Morning activity
Every morning, Reception have a go at doing a writing activity before phonics. They particularly like it when there’s an interesting picture on the board for them to write about.

Help at home: Write a sentence about the above picture. Don’t forget to check your sentence.

Take a look at some of this week’s space chilli challenges…

Poetry picnic
Pop, pop, pop went the popcorn! We hope you enjoy watching this week’s poem as much as we did learning it.

School trip
We’re very excited about our first school trip to the National Railway Museum next Tuesday!

What will my child need?

• Rucksack
• Packed lunch
• Water bottle
• Suitable coat

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR CHILD’S BOOKBAG AT HOME.

Yoga!

This afternoon in PE we had a Yoga session. We started with some calm breathing exercises which made us feel relaxed and peaceful. We then learnt some of the Yoga poses: warrior I, warrior II, triangle and twisting dragon. It was difficult at times to hold our balance but we were getting much better the more we practised. After getting the hang of each pose, we put the poses together to make a flow. We moved from warrior I into warrior II and then down to triangle. It took lots of control and patience to move from one pose to the another. We ended the session with a guided meditation which was so calming. I was very impressed with the children’s focus and engagement.

Help at home by asking your child to show you some of the poses from today’s lesson.

Maths – Length

Year 3 are getting stuck into their new maths unit – length!

We recapped our knowledge of centimetres and metres by measuring each other’s heights and ordering these from least tall to tallest. We even measured Miss Birch’s height which was approximately 171cm or 1m and 71cm tall because there are 100cm in 1m.

We then starting measuring in millimetres which are tiny compared to metres! There are 10mm in 1cm. We chose objects in our trays to measure and again ordered these from shortest longest

We then began finding equivalent lengths (which means equal lengths) and converting them from one measurement to another.

For example:

43cm is equivalent to 430mm because I know there are 10mm in 1cm. 43 x 10 = 430!

Help at home:

While at home, think about what the most suitable way to measure a certain object would be, either metres, centimetres or millimetres. “I would measure an apple in centimetres and I would measure the length of the park in metres.”

Book Club

This half term, we’re back to group Book Club sessions.

Help at home by asking your child to tell you their target page that they’ve agreed with their group this week and discuss the following as you’re reading together:

• Who’s their favourite character and why?
• Has anything surprising happened?
• What will the characters do next and why (motive)?

Don’t forget to give voices to the characters!

We also celebrated our reading records.

I asked Y6 to show their favourite page in their reading record that they’ve done so far this year and I think you’ll agree that they’re outstanding. Enjoy the gallery below!

Figurative Language Treasure Hunt

This week, we had to hunt to find figurative language hidden around the classroom!

Once we had found one, then we had to write down what figurative language what being shown. For example, similes, onomatopoeia, alliteration or a personification.

Then, we put our skills to the test by practising some figurative language that might help us with our narrative next week.

A fan favourite was Hardev’s:

“The lake held the boat captive like a lion in a zoo.”

We loved it because it was a stunning example of personification and a simile.

Help at home by practising some of the harder examples of figurative language like hyperbole, idioms and metaphors.

KS2 SATs: information for parents

There will also be a meeting held on Zoom on Monday 11 March at 6pm – details to follow.

Writing: figurative language

For the past two lessons, Year 5 have been looking at figurative language. During the first lesson, we had a scavenger hunt! Around the room were 28 different sentences and the children had to find them and decide what type of figurative language it was.

Types of figurative language:

• simile
• metaphor
• alliteration
• personification
• hyperbole
• onomatopoeia
• idiom

For the next lesson, the children wrote a descriptive paragraph that contained different types of figurative language.

Have a look at some of their fantastic work:

Help at home: Discuss the definitions of each type of figurative language or

create a descriptive paragraph using different types of figurative language.

Science: How do we taste?

On Monday, we were joined by our visitors from the University of Leeds. This week they came to talk to us about how we taste. The children learnt that there are 5 different tastes. These are:

• Sweet
• Sour
• Salty
• Bitter
• Umami (savoury)

The scientific word for taste is GUSTATION. 

The children then were able to try different foods that highlighted the different tastes.

Did you know that the nose and taste buds work together to tell you what taste and scent you are eating? Different parts of your tongue detect which taste it is.

Finally, they went on to look at the difference between whole foods and processed foods.

Help at home: Take a look in your food cupboards at home and discuss which foods are whole and which are processed.