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12 December 2014

This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and is due on Wednesday 17 December.

I can practise telling the time.

You have been assigned three activities on Mathletics, all to do with telling the time and days of the week. Have a go at these as many times as you want and, if you want to go on and do more, please do! We can then have a look at how we did and what we need to practise more in class. Don’t forget to use the question mark: if you’re not sure how to answer a question, click on the question mark and it will give you some help.

As a challenge, have a go at the test and see how you do then we can take it again later and see how much better we are.

Great homeworks!

Lots of super homeworks this week. Here are a few:

This is Shahban’s mosque

This is Ethan’s review of Walking with Dinosaurs

This is Jennifer’s letter to an author

This is Simran’s book about Divali.

These pictures are of Rayhaan’s Minecraft mosque

KS2 tuck shop free portion

As an incentive for selecting the pre-pay option, we’re able to offer you one week free. Therefore, the cost for one portion of fruit from 06 January to 31 March 2015 inclusive (12 weeks) is £2.20 (11 x 20p) and the cost for two portions is £4.40 (11 x 40p). Please note that if you choose to pay in advance, your payment is non-refundable and must be made in cash with the exact money.

If you prefer your child to continue paying in cash on a weekly basis, that’s fine – we’ll continue to operate this system.

If you would like to pay in advance for your child to visit the tuck shop, please return the slip and money to the office by Monday 15 December 2014.

KS2 fruit tuck shop takes place every Tuesday morning playtime.

05 December 2014

The Practice Makes Perfect homework this week is an English homework.

I can write active sentences with subjects and objects. 

In English we’ve talked about sentences which have subjects and objects. In active sentences there is an active verb. The subject of the active verb does the action and the object has the action done to it.

For example: Stella broke the window. 

In this sentence, Stella is the subject, broke is the verb and window is the object.

The children’s task is to complete some sentences when given either the object, subject or both. An extension is to write some active sentences without an object.

05 December 2014

The spellings this week are all chemistry words which we have learnt in our What’s the matter? science mini-topic.

05 December 2014

The whole school homework this week is creative: children are invited to respond to something from either a cultural or spiritual perspective.

I can show what I know and think about something cultural.

We’d like children to present their responses about a recent book they’ve read, film they’ve watched, piece of art they’ve looked at, piece of music they’ve listened to – anything cultural in fact. We’re interested to read some sort of description (a summary, for example) and then your child’s opinions. This review might include pictures, an interview (your child could write a fictional script between himself/herself and the artist, for example), a letter (eg to or from a character, or perhaps even the author) – anything which might include your child’s responses!

However, your child might prefer to do the following:

I can show what I know about a festival.

Over the course of this term, some children in school will have celebrated a religious festival of some sort. This might have been

• the Muslim festival of Eid ul Adha, this year in October
• the Sikh and Hindu festival Diwali, also in October
• the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, coming up in December
• the Christian festival (of course, celebrated by many non-Christians, too) of Christmas
• the Chinese New Year festival which next year will be in February

There are lots of other festivals and celebrations which you and your child together might want to reflect on, from the anniversary of the crowning of Selassie (a festival which might be celebrated by Rastafarians) to the Winter Solstice (a Pagan festival). You can also research more festivals.

We invite children to respond to the sentence above – they might include a recount (like a diary entry), pictures, an interview (perhaps in a script). Your child might also choose to research a completely unknown festival, or they might even think about creating a brand new festival, one that everyone will celebrate.

Whether inspired culturally or spiritually, your child’s homework is due on Wednesday 10 December.

05 December 2014

Here are this week’s spellings.  There will be a spelling test on Friday 12 December.

Please note that this will be the last spelling test of this term.

Show Racism the Red Card

Here’s some more great feedback following our recent Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds themed week, this time coming from the team who lead Show Racism the Red Card workshops in schools.

The over-riding message that we are trying to instill is the understanding of equality for all regardless of appearance, differences and pre-conceived perceptions. The school children’s understanding of the subject matter was of a standard so high (prior to input) that it was a two-way educational process and a pleasure to deliver. A pleasure to attend and I thank you on behalf of ‘Show Racism the Red Card Team’ for giving us the opportunity. (Staff are amazing, too.)

Attendance matters

Despite a lot of illnesses last week, our average attendance so far this year (up to 28 November) is great: 97.1%.  This year’s Reception class attendance is the highest ever for this period, compared with any previous Reception class – a magnificent achievement!

• Reception: 97.6%
• Year 1: 97.1%
• Year 2: 97.7%
• Year 3: 98.6%
• Year 4: 96.0%
• Year 5: 96.8%
• Year 6: 96.1%

Phonics

We’re coming to the end of Phase 2 of our phonics programme, ‘Letters and Sounds’. Next week, your child will begin Phase 3 with the last of the single letter phonemes. The purpose of this phase is to:

• teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example: ‘oa’ as in boat
• practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example: fizz, chip, sheep, light
• learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly (so please help your child to learn these: talk about letters using their correct name as well as the sounds they make)
• read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them
• read and write words in phrases and sentences.

CVC words containing graphemes made of two or more letters

Here are some examples of words your child will be reading: tail, week, right, soap, food, park, burn, cord, town, soil.

During Phase 3, your child will learn more ‘Tricky Words’. These are the words we’ll learn in Phase 3: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, said.