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Time travel

Our new whole school Big Topic, Time Travel, got underway today with Year 1 and 2 focussing on houses and homes.

The first challenge was to work as a group to put the different types of houses in chronological order according to when they were built.  There was lots of discussion about what the houses looked like and what they were made of.  The next task was to match the inside of the house to the outside.

The first types of houses we investigated were Celtic houses and we concluded that houses certainly have changed over time.

We’re learning about history.

We enjoyed a visit from Time Striders today and learnt lots about the history of Britain.

The Tin Forest

For the first two weeks of Spring Term, we’ve enjoyed a book called The Tin Forest by Helen Ward. This tells the tale of an old man who lives on the edge of nowhere, near forgotten, whose house is surrounded by other people’s rubbish.

We started our mini topic by looking at the pictures and developing our prediction and inference skills for reading.

We wondered about who might live in the abandoned house and whether we’d like to go there ourselves. It was a unanimous NO!

Then we thought about who might live in this house and what sort of questions we might want to ask that person. Here are some of our ideas…

After writing a diary entry as the old man; a letter to a real person who lives on a dump; a description of the final forest; and a poem… we made our very own Tin Forest!

Keep visiting our news feed for weekly updates on the forest and how it is growing and thank you to those of you who contributed to our tin tree trunks.

16 January 2015

This week’s homework is creative and is due on Wednesday 21 January.

What can you make out of the rubbish (recycling) you produce in your home?

Look around the house at the things you’re throwing away and think about what you could make out of them. The old man made a forest out of tin – think about useful, attractive and magical things you could make.

This homework is creative so you could decide to actually make an item and take a picture or bring it into school or you might want to design something in your homework book (especially if you’ve got an idea as big as the forest the old man made).

Phonics open mornings

We have three fun phonics sessions for parents this week. Don’t worry if you haven’t requested a session, just turn up on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday at 9am.

See you there!

16 January 2015

The spellings this week have either ibly or ably suffix. The words in the left column, show the words with the able or ible suffix. The words in the second column are the ibly and ably words which they will be tested on.

Group 1 

Group 2

16 January 2015

The homeworks this week are Creative and Practice Makes Perfect.

The Practice Makes Perfect homework is another Mathletics one. They have a couple of different activities to do based on the learning we’ve done in class.

The Creative homework is to show examples of forces in action. We have been learning this in class so your child should have lots of ideas. They could find photographs which show forces in action or draw a diagram which shows forces in action. Examples could be a toy car rolling down a ramp, a person sitting on a chair, a floating boat, a tug of war contest. Children could also show whether forces are balanced or unbalanced. An example of balanced forces is shown below. In this example, the two men are pulling in opposite directions with the same force. This means that there is no movement.

To find out more about forces, follow the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/znmmn39

Swimming

Unfortunately, until further notice, there will be no swimming due to roof  damage at Scott Hall Leisure Centre caused by severe weather.

Phonics mornings

Next week, we’ll be holding phonics sessions for parents on Wednesday 21, Thursday 22 and Friday 23 of January at 9 am.

During these sessions you will have the opportunity to see how we teach tricky words and long vowel phonemes. We will explain words such as ‘digraph‘ and ‘polysyllabic‘ and give you ideas for supporting your child at home in their independent writing.

Please let us know which day you wish to attend.

We look forward to seeing you next week.

Open morning

Thank you to the parents who visited us this morning. Each parent watched the teaching and learning in two classes (30 minutes each), then discussed what they’d seen with Mrs Weekes and me. The feedback was really positive and very useful. Here are some of the comments:

• “This was a great opportunity to visit the school and see lessons taking place.  Great behaviour in classes.  Nice mix of teaching styles.”
• “Great teaching and behaviour and lots of learning… All the children were on task and knew what they were doing.”
• “In Year 4, there was excellent rapport with kids who were on-task and motivated.”
• “The varied teaching methods, the engagement of the classes, the level of knowledge all impressed me.”
• “In Year 2, lots of support and the children knew what they were doing.”
• “Everyone was involved in Year 1 – all the children were concentrating despite being so young.  There were lots of methods to teach.”

Parents raised some points for us to consider: