Author: Mr Nash

We were delighted to welcome the children back to school this week to start our summer term. We hope you’ve had a happy and healthy break.

Here’s a look at what will be going on in our classroom:

English
In English, we’ll write a non-fiction report about a hero from history. We’ll read Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman and dive into lots of interesting non-fiction texts.

Maths
In maths, we’ll learn about money, shape, length/height, stats and more!

Phonics – Spelling
We’ll continue our journey to becoming confident spellers…

Science
Science takes us back to plants, this time focusing on bulbs and seeds. We’ll plant some bulbs and observe them over time. We’ll also learn about sustainability and how we, as biologists, can support the wildlife in our environment.

Topic – History
This half term, we’re historians! We’ll learn about some heroes from history and the impact they’ve had on our society.

RE
How and why do some people pray? We’ll explore prayer across a range of world religions, linking to this half term’s Christian value, peace.

Living and Learning
We’ll learn about physical health: hygiene, sleep, diet, physical activity

PE
Throwing. Catching. Games. Exercise. Teamwork. Fun!

Help at home by keeping up the great work. Thanks for your all support so far this year – it’s had a huge impact. Please continue to use NumBots and Times Tables Rockstars, and listen to your child read every day.

Food preparation is part of Design and Technology;  children have three opportunities each year to prepare food.

This term, the children made overnight oats using a variety of skills:

• snipping
• weighing (using digital scales)
• measuring liquids
• use measuring spoons
• claw chopping grip
• mixing
• arranging toppings

First, we read the recipe together, discussing some elements that might be changed. We also discussed hygiene and how we can stay safe in the kitchen.

The children enjoyed a great deal of success, building on previous food preparation learning.

 

Children took their food home to try then returned to school to evaluate the product. We considered the success of the product and how close it was to the recipe. We discussed challenging techniques and any changes we would consider for next time.

Help at home by watching some of these fantastic cooking videos. If you try any of these recipes at home, we’d love to see the results.

In maths, we’ve been learning to divide.

This week, we’ve used the idea of sharing to help us to divide. When dividing by sharing equally, you’re calculating how much (or how many) each person (group) gets.

When dividing by sharing, it’s important to ask some key questions:

• How many are there altogether?
• How many groups are there?

We can use these questions to write our division equation.

The children really impressed me with their learning. We practised division by sharing using counters, saying these stem sentences to show our understanding:

Help at home by practising some division by sharing. We love this game.

This half term, we’re computer programmers!

Our current topic, computing, focuses on creating and debugging programs and algorithms.

An algorithm is a sequence of instructions or a set of rules to get something done.

The children have really impressed my with their ability, skilfully tackling challenges on Scratch Jr.

As the weeks progress, we’ll each be designing and creating a quiz game, and evaluating its success.

Help at home by exploring our topic vocabulary with your child.

algorithm – a sequence of instructions or a set of rules to get something done
program – an algorithm or algorithms which can be run by a computer
to debug – to find and fix errors in algorithms
computer – a type of machine that can follow instructions and do useful things
command – an instruction that can be used in a program

You could try Scratch Jr. at home!

In Living and Learning this half term, we’re learning about emotions and friendships.

We’ve talked about recognising emotions in ourselves and others and the benefits of speaking openly about them.

We discussed 6 key emotions

• Happy
• Excited
• Tender
• Scared
• Angry
• Sad

Empathy

What is empathy? Empathy is being able to know how someone else is feeling, even when you aren’t in the same situation. Sometimes we call empathy being able to “put yourself in someone’s shoes” and see things from their view.

We explored some situations in which children may have different emotions to one another. It’s important to be respectful of those emotions and acknowledge the importance of sharing them. Keeping feelings to yourself can have a negative impact on your mental wellbeing.

Where can I go for help with my emotions?

• talk to a trusted adult at school
• talk to a trusted adult at home
• talk to a friend
• put your worry in the Living and Learning box

Help at home by encouraging your child to express their emotions. Use the feelings wheel (above) to help. Compare the words in each segment of the feelings wheel – for example, does irritated feel different to furious?

In reading, we’re enjoying The Lorax by Dr Seuss. The Lorax is an engaging story with strong themes, told amusingly by way of rhyme. The children have enjoyed exploring the messages in The Lorax about environmental crisis and activism, building on our geography learning from last half term.

One of our favourite reading activities is ‘hot-seating’ in which children play the parts of characters from a story and answer questions. This is a brilliant platform for practising inference skills.

The children really impressed me; questioning, inference, acting – I saw it all!

We made sure to look the part…

Help at home by encouraging your child to think of some questions they’d like to ask characters in their favourite story. Take it in turns to step into character and have a go at answering the questions…

In maths, we’ve begun our multiplication and division learning.

Our focus this week has been equal and unequal groups. Equal groups contain the same number of items; unequal groups do not.

The children have enjoyed making equal groups with multilink cubes.

Help at home by looking for equal groups in the world around us. How many groups are there? How many are there in each group? How many are there altogether?