Guided Reading Week 4
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 28th March.
Extra Time: up to chapter 38/page 177.
Flood and Fang: up to chapter 15/page 183.
Rooftoppers: up to chapter 17/page 150.
The Girl of Ink and Stars: up to chapter 21/page 186.
Kensuke’s Kingdom: up to chapter 8/page 117.
Spring 2: Week 4
This week’s book has been Jack and the Beanstalk. It has inspired us to plant our own seeds and observe them over time.
The children enjoyed doing this and writing some instructions for others to do the same.
We are still being inspired by the books we have read over the last few weeks-The hundred Decker Bus and The Hundred Decker Rocket.
The children enjoyed visiting our book fair and were discussing what their favourite books were.
This week we have started looking at the number 7 and the different parts it can be split into.
Help at home: by practising partitioning 7. You can do this using pasta, teddies or anything else that you can find at home that you have 7 of.
Thank you to all of those that came to the stay and learn this week.
Reading in the sun!
Today, we decided to take our reading outside to enjoy the sun! This was a great opportunity for the children to read a book they were enjoying and catch up on their guided reading pages.
Help at home: Make sure your child is reading everyday and is up to date with the guided reading book target pages.
Science: We are biologists!
In Science, we are currently biologists! Biologists study living things. In this unit, we are looking at life cycles. Life cycles are the series of changes in the life of an organism.
Take a look at our key vocabulary:
In our lesson, our enquiry type was ‘research using secondary sources’. The children used the iPads to find out about the life cycles of mammals and amphibians. Year 5 stayed safe online by looking for a padlock; checking the URL and the source is reliable; and typing ‘for kids’ at the end of their searches.
Did you know butterflies and frogs go through metamorphosis? This means that their young form looks nothing like their adult form.
We then discussed the similarities and differences between these life cycles. Can you spot any?
Help at home: Research the life cycles of birds, fish and reptiles.
Analysing Rugby
This half term, we’ve LOVED playing rugby. It’s been great for lots of us to try a completely new sport and get loads better at it over the half term!
We’ve been practising throwing, catching and kicking.
This lesson, we did some video analysis.
A member of our group filmed our technique for throwing, catching or kicking…
…before feeding back to the players.
It was really useful and definitely helped us improve.
Help at home by discussing some of our PE vocabulary: to evade, space and stamina.
Living & Learning: solving problems
This week in L&L, our statement was…
I can find solutions to different problems.
Before we try to solve a problem, we must recognise what emotions that situation is making us feel. Often, these emotions make things difficult for us because our brains are not very good at problem solving when our emotions are very high. Therefore, the first step of problem solving is trying to regulate our emotions.
Some of your children’s suggestions for regulating our emotions:
Take deep and slow breaths.
Listen to some relaxing music.
Do some colouring.
Go for a walk outside for some fresh air.
Talk to a trusted adult.
Write your feelings down.
Once our emotions are regulated, our mind is a little bit clearer and we are able to think of more appropriate and effective solutions to our problems.
Year 4 then became Agony Aunts. They were given two problems and had to work together to come up with suitable solutions to these.
I was really impressed by your children’s mature and responsible solutions to these problems. It was brilliant to see that they all knew the importance of speaking to a trusted adult whenever there’s a problem.
Help at home: practise some emotion regulation techniques with your children. Read through these problems and ask your children to come up with some solutions:
- Jalisha and her best friend Ella, both wanted the part of Cinderella in the play but Ella got the part.
- Daniel’s family are moving to Australia but he is really sad because he is going to miss his friends.
- Tom’s friend did better than him in the spelling test and keeps talking about it at break time.
Old Leos women’s and girls cricket opportunity
Local cricket club, Old Leos, have opportunities for womens and girls cricket. Please contact them for more information.
Design & Technology food: overnight oats
This week, Year 2 have prepared, eaten and evaluated our overnight oats. This is part of our Living and Learning (healthy eating) and Design and Technology (food preparation) learning.
The children have used some different food preparation skills (snipping, peeling, bridge and claw cutting technique, mixing, measuring liquids, using measuring spoons, weighing and arranging toppings) as part of this learning to create their finished product.
Then, it was the best bit – the tasting!
Finally, we evaluated our product and considered any changes we’d make next time.
Help at home: your child will be bringing this recipe home. Why not try it at home and let your child show you the skills they have learnt.
Computing: What is a sprite?
This half-term, Year 4 are computer programmers!
A computer programmer is someone who writes instructions, called code, that tell a computer what to do.
Your children have been using Scratch on the iPads to demonstrate their programming skills. On Scratch, you can program sprites to do a variety of things like move, change costumes and make sounds.
A sprite is a 2d character in a computer game.
Your children worked with a partner to program three different sprites to move in three different ways. We had some really creative ideas like an astronaut floating through space or a fish swimming underwater. It was great to see your children thinking like computer programmers and building some really effective programs.
I’m looking forward to seeing how their programs develop over the next few weeks!
Help at home: visit the Scratch website (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and practise programming. Can you get your sprite to talk? Walk? Change costume?
Reminder: stay and learn session
Number 2 – 18.03.25 9-9:30am