24 April 2015
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 29 April 2015.
- What do you know about night time?
- What questions would you like answered about night time?
With the launch of a new topic for Summer term, I’d like the children to think about what they already know about night time (the night sky, people, animals, changes) and what they don’t know but they’d really like to find out. Thinking about questions they’d like answering means we can keep the topic closely linked to the children’s interests with them excited about their learning.
As always for Creative homework, the choice is yours, but here are a few ideas of what you could do.
- An oral presentation.
- An interview with your child.
- Question and answers (but some answers may be missing).
- A night time poem.
Keeping safe and fit
John, from White Rose Martial Arts, demonstrated in the assembly today some of the skills that can be learnt at the karate after-school club, running again this term.
Pupils who have already attended the club confidently showed their karate techniques alongside some key messages about self-defence from John.
There was a lot of interest from the children so please contact John directly to secure a place for your child. Information can be obtained from the office or your child’s teacher. There is a free taster session on Tuesday 05 May but places are limited.
Welcome back!
I hope everybody’s had a great Easter holiday and are ready to return to school fresh-faced! This half term darkness will descend on Year 2 as we take a look at night time. We’ll delve into the depths of space to look at the planets, moon and stars before plummeting back to Earth to think about the jobs people do at night and animals that have become adapted to night time.
This week (20.04.15)…
Maths
This week, we’re exploring number by looking at rounding to the nearest ten, doubling and halving, place value (hundreds, tens, units) and knowing inverse operations (add-subtract, multiply-divide). Our tables focus will be 2s so lots of counting in 2s at home, walking to school, going up stairs will be very helpful. We’ll then think about how knowing our 2 times tables means we know our 20 and 200 times table, too.
I got 7 Easter eggs but my friend got double that amount. How many eggs did my friend get?
English
English will be very closely linked to our night time topic as we learn how to write information texts. Organising our writing using a title, introduction, subtitles and matching information will be important this week so, when reading at home, choose a non-fiction book and discuss how it is organised and why this is useful.
Topic
Night time will kick off with a trip into space to explore what it is we see in the night sky. We’ll learn about our solar system and its planets as well as what stars are and the Greek legends that tell the story behind the constellations of stars we see at night. At home, stay up late and do some star gazing. See what questions the children have and ask them to write them down (using the correct punctuation) and bring them in for us to discuss.
Writing
As you know, at the end of the year we’ll be assessing the children in 13 areas of the curriculum. One of these areas is writing. The early learning goal is:
Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelled correctly and others are phonetically plausible.
The children are all confident in recognising their letter sounds and now need to develop confidence in ‘having a go’ at writing. Remember, it doesn’t matter if words aren’t always spelt correctly as long as the children are recording the sounds they hear.
‘Tricky’ words like I, the, said, he, me need to be learnt and practised.
Please could you practise a simple sentence every day at home with your child. Bring their writing to school for us to celebrate.
If you have any questions, please ask.
Our new SEAL theme for this half term is…
…relationships.
This theme explores feelings within the context of our important relationships including family and friends.
It aims to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in three key social and emotional aspects of learning: self-awareness, managing feelings and empathy.
There is a focus throughout the theme on helping children understand the feelings associated with an experience that we all need to cope with at some time: that of loss – whether of a favourite possession, a friend, a family home, or a loved one. Although relatively few children are bereaved, most will experience losses of other kinds during their childhood; losing a home, losing friends because of moving house or changing schools, or losing a pet are examples.
We would therefore ask for parents / carers to alert us to any experiences your child has had that might make this area particularly difficult for them – for example, a bereavement.
End of term
Well, what a busy term it has been! This culminated with our Easter production of The Time Lord, for which the children all worked very hard. Below are some of the finished plague masks we’ve been working on during our medicine topic.
I would like to say “Well done” to all Year 3 for a great term! Enjoy the holidays.
Homework Highlights
After a great curriculum week, here are some examples of the homework from Year 1.
Fruit surprise
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch has been a popular book as part of our learning in English. Today we created a fruit surprise for Mr Grinling. We also learnt some facts about fruit and keeping healthy. Did you know your 5 a day can be from fresh, dried, tinned or frozen fruit? Peeling, chopping, scooping (using a melon baller) and using a lemon squeezer were some of the food technology skills we learnt, too.
We also thought about important table manners when we tasted the fruit surprise and as it was so delicious there wasn’t much left for Mr Grinling!
‘I loved it because the raspberries were so delicious.’
‘We learnt how to use a lemon squeezer and we made a nice salad.’
‘I think Mr Grinling would love it!’
‘We learnt to chop a banana and we put it in a bowl.’
27 March 2015
Year 2 will not have any spellings this week as we are doing mock SATs papers next week which will include a spelling test. To help at home you can practise spellings from previous weeks or see how your child does with common words that they haven’t necessarily had to learn.
Attendance matters
With just four days left of this half-term, we still have 146 pupils who have 100% since 23 February – and that’s despite a bad case of chicken pox spreading like wildfire amongst our younger children!
For the whole year so far, there are 48 pupils with 100% – almost a quarter. In alphabetical order of surnames, well done Farhaan, Owen, Isaac, Ben, Ethan, Henry, Bella, Jack, Will, Vijay, Sam, William, Faye, Alexandra, Mia, Hibba, Byron, Lewis, Albie, Edward, Grace, Sachpreet, Isabelle, Natasha, Phoebe, Musa, Umaimah, Manya, Nico, Oliver, Aisha, Ethan, Lucas, Isabelle, Finn, Zeewa, Georgie, Alexander, Neive, Alex, Grace, Megan, Ebonnie, Albert, Archie, Jorja, Noah and Ethan!
As for each class, here are the attendance rates (with last year’s figure for the same period in brackets):
- Reception: 96.7% (96.1%) …that’s a great increase, so well done!
- Year 1: 97.3% (97.1%) …well done!
- Year 2: 96.4% (98.0%) …please help us increase this year’s figure.
- Year 3: 98.3% (97.6%) …this year’s figure is amazing – just like the class last year as Year 2.
- Year 4: 97.3% (96.7%) …another increase – great!
- Year 5: 96.1% (97.9%) …please help us increase this year’s figure.
- Year 6: 97.3% (97.0%) …well done – the fifth class to have a higher attendance rate than last year!
We’re really happy with the fact there are five classes with higher attendance rates than last year. For the whole school, our attendance rate is 97.1%. This is good, although last year was just a little better: 97.2%%.
Thank you to all parents who have tried so hard to ensure your child is happy and healthy and at school as much as they can be.
Some important news: from September 2015, attendance lower than 90% will be regarded as persistent absence. This means we would contact the local authority’s Attendance Team with regard to visiting to support and advise families where attendance is too low. This would include three children in Reception, one in Year 1, three in Year 2, three in Year 4 and one in Year 5 – eleven children in total. (Year 3 and Year 6 have no pupils where attendance is lower than 90%.)