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Games to play at home

Memory

Memory, also known as concentration, is a fantastic game that can be played by even the youngest children, making it a very enjoyable way to learn the phonemic code. Because children generally excel at memory-based games, it also allows them to compete easily with older players.

The player to the dealer’s left starts. On each turn, a player must turn over two cards and pronounce each phoneme. If they match and are a pair the player may keep them if he or she can pronounce the phoneme correctly. If playing with the advanced code phoneme cards, then a word containing that phoneme has to be said in order to keep the pair. Because that player was successful, he/she also gets to take another turn. If, however, the two cards that he/she turns over do not match, then the player must turn them face down again and the next player takes his/her turn. The game is over when all of the pairs have been found. The person with the most pairs is the winner.

Word Card Winners

Place all the cards face down and take it in turns to pick one. If your child says the word correctly they keep it. Read a few words wrongly and encourage your child to spot the mistake. The person with the most cards is the winner.

Have fun!

Topic

“It was great fun going to the museum!”

“I liked making the solar-powered cars.”

These are just a couple of the positive comments from the Year Fours about our last topic, ‘All Aboard’.

We have kick-started this year with a mini-topic on South Africa. The children have already used the atlases to locate South Africa and its surrounding countries. The African animal art work has really brightened up our classroom too!

Our main topic this term is ‘To Infinity and Beyond!’ As we will learn all about space, this topic is mostly science-based. However, there will be links with some other subjects such as literacy, DT and ICT.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break! Parents’ evening will be held at the end of the half term but in the meantime if you have anything you need to discuss, please feel free to come and see me.

07 January 2011

The homework this week is Talk Time and is due in Wednesday 12 January.

I can talk about the features of a non-fiction book.

We will be focussing on information texts for the next two weeks. The children have been introduced to the main features this week but will benefit from some more examples at home.

Why not visit the local library to look through some non-fiction books?

We’ll be talking about what they’ve done all week, next week.

07 January 2011

This week’s spellings for Bananas and Oranges all have the suffix ‘y’.

Apples have some high-frequency words to remember. They will be tested on Friday 14 January 2011.

07 January 2011

This week’s homework is creative. It is due on Wednesday 14 January 2011.

I can find different materials around the house.

Remember, all objects are made from a type of material, for example glass, wood, metal, plastic etc.

07 January 2011

This week we are learning to spell words with the ‘wh’ sound.

These words will be tested on Friday 14 January.

07 January 2011

The spelling rule this week is to drop the ‘e’ when adding ‘ing’ to words that end in an ‘e’

1. hope           hoping

2. use              using

3. write           writing

4. take            taking

5. shake         shaking

6. joke            joking

7. share          sharing

8. smile          smiling

9. have          having

10. care           caring

11. decide       deciding

12. become    becoming

13. improve    improving

Spellings will be tested on Friday 14 January. Good luck.

07 January 2011

This week’s homework is creative and links to the literacy learning that we have been doing in class. It is due in on Wednesday 12 January 2011.

I can write a kenning poem.

A kenning poem describes something without giving its name away. It uses verbs ending in ‘er’.

Here is an example similar to the ones we looked at in class:

A loud-barker

A swift-sprinter

A mud-roller

A cat-chaser

A tail-wagger

Think of your own animal. Now write a kenning poem about your animal. Remember to think of all the verbs (doing words) that your animal does and then add ‘er’ to the end of them.

Adjectives/ Adverbs group: Try to use your ambitious vocabulary. Can you think of even better words eg eater could also be scoffer or gobbler.  (Remember your hyphens too!)

Happy children, happy staff

At Moortown, we listen to the views of everyone in our school community.

We regularly ask our children for their opinions.  Recently, children have expressed their views on topics, their learning and how safe the school feels.  Each year, we also ask parents / carers for their views in the Annual Survey.

It’s important to also listen to the views of staff in school, whether teachers, teaching assistants or support staff.

I’m delighted that, once again, we’ve had a very positive response to the Annual Staff Survey; for example:

• 100% enjoy working at Moortown Primary
• 100% feel valued and supported and feel they are treated fairly and with respect
• 100% feel they have access to training when they need it

This all confirms that Moortown Primary is a happy and healthy place to work as well as to learn!