Phonics
We’ll soon begin Phase 4 of Letters and Sounds. In this phase, children will continue to practise previously learned graphemes and phonemes and learn how to read and write:
CVCC words: tent, damp, toast, chimp. For example, in the word ‘toast’, t = consonant, oa = vowel, s = consonant, t = consonant.
CCVC words: swim, plum, sport, cream, spoon. For example, in the word ‘cream’, c = consonant, r = consonant, ea = vowel, m = consonant.
They will be learning more tricky words and continuing to read and write sentences together.
Tricky words:
said, so, do, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, when, out, what
Ways you can support your child at home
- Practise reading and spelling some CVCC and CCVC words but continue to play around with CVC words. Children like reading and spelling words that they have previously worked with, as this makes them feel successful.
- Make up captions and phrases for your child to read and write, for example, a silver star, clear the pond, crunch crisps. Write some simple sentences and leave them around the house for your child to find and read. After they have found and read three, give them a treat!
- Look out for words in the environment, such as on food packaging, which your child will find easy to read, for example, lunch, fresh milk, drink, fish and chips, jam.
- Work on reading words together, for example, a street name such as Park Road, captions on buses and lorries, street signs such as bus stop.
Time travellers at Herd Farm
Year 2 have enjoyed a glorious trip to Herd Farm going back in time to discover houses from the past.
First, Tina, our Forest School’s guide, took us to the Mesolithic Camp to show how hunter gatherers made temporary shelters with sticks covered in skins. We learnt about two main types of shelter – teepees and wigwams. Ask your child about the stick rule and the safe way to carry a stick.
Then we set to work creating our own shelter by creating a stable base (equilateral triangle) and turning a triangular based pyramid into a cone (great Maths learning too!). We were proud of our creations. Great teamwork, everyone!
After that, we took a walk to discover the Iron Age village in the valley – what a great setting for a village! We discovered that early farmers built thatched roundhouses with wattle and daub walls and cooked on open fires.
Then it was time to look inside…
Outside the roundhouses, Ian, our archaeologist guide, lit a fire while we enjoyed our fruit. We took some time to sketch the roundhouses and other features of the Iron Age village.
We left the Iron Age village to return to the main Herd Farm buildings (now a residential centre). The farm house was built in 1760 and we also found the newest building on the site, a sustainable steel framed, wooded covered building with a wood pellet biomass heating boiler, bringing us right up to date.
All the class demonstrated excellent behaviour and it was great to hear them share their knowledge from our topic so far. There was just time for a team photo before we got back on the coach to return to school for lunch!
‘I loved going to Herd Farm and I learnt that Iron Age houses are made of wattle and daub like Tudor houses. I was sad to leave.’
‘I enjoyed it because it was really fun and exciting. There were lots of activities at Herd Farm. I learnt lots from the past.’
‘I didn’t know that Iron Age houses had thatched roofs. It was cool to build our own shelters. I loved it!’
24 February 2017
The spellings this week all have an ey ending.
What sound does the ey make?
Are there any other words that follow this pattern?
donkey
key
monkey
valley
chimney
honey
money
alley
You may want to do one of the following spelling activities to support your child learning these words.
UTC Digital visit
On Monday, we had a visitor from UTC Digital to talk to us about the opportunities we have in the future if we want to go into the digital world for our careers or just learn some very valuable skills in digital technology which can be applied across a number of professions.
They explained that, to use, computers themselves are not smart; it’s the people who control them who need to be clever as computers need very specific instructions in order to work. He made us realise just how specific these instructions had to be by asking us to instruct him in making a jam sandwich. Simple right? No. Turns out it’s not. We had bread everywhere, his hands were covered in butter and he kept doing it wrong …all because our instructions were not specific enough.
It was an interesting and enjoyable session for the children and our visitors have emailed us since to tell us how impressed they were with the children’s enthusiasm and behaviour – well done.
24 February 2017
Year 6 will no longer have a list of words to learn. We’ll have an activity which will span across two weeks, reflecting the learning we’re doing in class. Each week, there will be a test requiring us to apply this skill.
Here is a list of suffixes and what they do to a word.
Practise adding the suffixes and think carefully about what spelling rules you need to follow. You’ll be tested on Friday 03 March on ten words which require you to apply this practice.
24 February 2017
This week’s Talk Time links to our SEAL statement for next week:
How can you help your group to work well together?
Discuss ideas over dinner, in the car, walking to school and make a couple of notes for our class discussion on Thursday 02 March.
24 February 2017
From now on, Year 6 will have Practice Makes Perfect homework each week in the lead up to SATs. The children have a ten minute SPaG test to have a go at. However, it doesn’t have to be completed in ten minutes and they can discuss it with you. We’ll then go through this in our homework review on Thursday 02 March.
They also have a Maths activity page which starts off with some arithmetic questions (which is the first Maths test they’ll do) before going on to more problem solving style questions. Again, we’ll go through this together in the homework review on Thursday 03 March.
24 February 2017
This week’s spellings all have the ‘super’ or ‘auto’ prefixes
Children should practise spelling these words in preparation for a test on Friday 10 March.
24 February 2017
This week’s homework is talk time and is due on Thursday 03 March:
I don’t interrupt with my mouth or my hands.
Our SEAL theme this half term is ‘Getting on’; it covers four main aspects:
- developing the social skills of friendship
- working well together in a group
- managing anger
- resolving conflict
Children can discuss why it is important to take it in turns to speak and to listen without interrupting.
24 February 2017
This week, following our learning on 2D and 3D shapes, the homework is practice makes perfect.
This should be completed and returned to school by Thursday 02 March.
Here is some information that might help.
When we talk about 3D shapes, we talk about faces, edges and vertices.
- The faces are the flat parts of the shape.
- The edges are the lines where two faces meet.
- The vertices are the points where two or more edges meet.
For example, this cuboid has 6 faces, 12 edges and 8 vertices:
