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Guided Reading

Due to STEM week, guided reading this week will not be happening as usual. On Friday, all children were asked to have read to their target page by Tuesday. Please don’t worry if your child doesn’t quite manage to read to their target page – I appreciate that it may be difficult to manage on top of homework and general life (although most groups will have had their target page set on Monday and Tuesday last week giving them almost a week to read).

When changes to guided reading are made it is always to improve learning. Although your child may generally read on a set day (eg Tuesday) this will change from time to time. Please don’t allow your child to be anxious about not having read to their target page – this does not make reading enjoyable. Instead, encourage them to read to their target page soon after they are given it.

Thank you.

18 November 2016

This week’s homework is practice makes perfect and is due Thursday 24 November:

Complete Mr Lawton’s maths challenge sheet which is practising what we have learnt this past week in our maths lessons.

18 November 2016

Choose some words from previous spelling lists that you found hard and practise them using the strategies at the front of your homework book.

SEAL

This week, we did an activity that focused on some dilemmas. The children had to work as a team to decide whether they thought each situation was serious and which not as serious (although still a problem).

The children ordered each scenario from 1-9 and placed them into a Diamond 9. Number 1 being the most concerning and 9 being less of a concern. We had a discussion  and each team presented their ideas.

18 November 2016

We’re still focussing on irregular verbs this week so here’s another list. However, there are lots more. Try to spot some when you’re reading.

Children may be tested on the infinitive form of the verb (to lose) or the simple past tense version of the word (lost). The children have already spent some time looking at these words so they aren’t unfamiliar. However, as we’ve moved back to testing every week, we’ve dropped the number of spellings down to eight.

If you’ve any questions about this list or spelling generally, please ask.

to lose           lost

to fall             fell

to hide           hid

to drive          drove

to fight           fought

to win            won

to pay            paid

to find           found

18 November 2016

The homework this week is talk time and is due in on Thursday 24 November.

What children say about bullying

We’re reaching the end of anti-bullying week (although, of course, every week should be an anti-bullying week!).

At Moortown, there is very limited bullying – in fact, children frequently tell us there is none at all, which is great. Even so, it’s still important to prepare your child if they encounter bullying. Please discuss at home how harmful bullying can be, and encourage them to start telling other people.

A report by the NSPCC describes the nature of bullying experienced by young people contacting Childline. Its key findings are:

• Bullying is the second most common reason for boys and the third most common reason for girls to contact Childline. It makes up 9% of all counselling sessions (25,740 sessions in 2015/16).
• In a quarter of counselling sessions about bullying, children also talked about mental health and wellbeing issues.
• Last year, Childline provided more counselling sessions about physical bullying (4,723 sessions) than online bullying (4,541 sessions).
• However, there has been an 88% increase in counselling about online bullying over the past five years.
• In 2015/16, there were 1,420 counselling sessions with young people talking about bullying on social networking and gaming sites, up 34% on the previous year.
• Of the children who contacted Childline about bullying, 12% said they had not told anyone else about it.
• The young people who had told someone else were most likely to have told a parent (31%), a teacher (30%) or a friend (16%).
• Childline delivered over 300,000 in-depth counselling sessions to children and young people in 2015/16.
• Overall, Childline provides more counselling sessions to girls than to boys.
• Although Childline provide more counselling sessions about bullying to girls, it is a more common concern among the boys who do contact them.
• Due to the confidential nature of the Childline service, young people do not always disclose personal information, such as their age and gender.

Gymnastics

Last week, we learnt how to make different shapes using our bodies. We practised these on the floor. This week, we transferred these to off the ground. Some shapes were a lot harder to make off-ground! The shapes we learnt are: Pike, Straight, Arch, Dish, Straddle, Star and Tuck. Can your child say which shapes they can see above?

18 November 2016

This week, I will not be giving your child a spelling list. Instead, during our spelling test on Friday 25 November, I will read out ten sentences that contain at least one apostrophe. Your child will need to figure out which words need an apostrophe and use it correctly. For example…

• Some of my book’s pages were torn. (Here, an apostrophe is needed because the book ‘owns’ the pages.)
• I believe they are Mr Jones’ golf clubs. (An apostrophe is needed to show Mr Jones owns the clubs, and in this case it comes after the s because Mr Jones has an s at the end of his name.)
• I can’t believe you lost your book. (There’s a missing letter here, because can not has been contracted.)

To prepare for the test, your child should practise using apostrophes for possession and contraction/omission.

18 November 2016

This week’s Practice Makes Perfect homework links to the English learning we’ve done this week and what we’ll go on to learn for the next few weeks.

To be able to add detail to my writing.

Having learnt all about adding detail to writing in order to keep it interesting and make it descriptive, write the opening to a story using these techniques:

• expanded noun phrases,
• prepositional phrases, and
• adverbs.

Don’t forget, you only use one page for a piece of homework and I only want the opening. We’ll then look at these together in our homework review. While your writing, think about what you’d like to write a full story on as this will be our English learning in the run up to Christmas.