Chinese New Year and superheroes
This week, we’ve been learning all about Chinese New Year. We looked at where China is on a globe and world map. We’ve learnt about traditions, read the Zodiac story, watched parades and created our own Chinese dragons – they found this tricky challenge!
We finished the week by having our own parade.
In PE, the children enjoyed moving like dragons. Click on the links below to watch two of the groups in action!
Dragon dance 1
Dragon dance 2
The new superhero office has been a big hit this week. The children have been using their super powers to save the world!
Next week, it’s safety week. We’ll be learning about how to keep safe in different situations. We even have some real superheroes coming to visit us!
Home-Link Challenge
Bird Beaks
This week’s Science lesson saw us learning about natural selection and adaptation. Charles Darwin came up with the idea of natural selection and the Theory of Evolution whilst travelling the world on the HMS Beagle.
He noticed how different birds beaks were adapted to suit the food that was available in a habitat. He also deduced that over time species with traits that helped them survive would be the ones who were naturally selected.
What does this mean for us? Well, we used different tools e.g tweezers, tongs etc to simulate birds beaks and found out what kind of food each could eat.
04 February 2022
Here are the next set of spellings. Can you challenge yourself by playing the speed write game.
Year 1: who, what, when, why, which, how
Year 2: move, Mr, Mrs, old, only, parents, past, pass, path, pole
Please practise your spellings ready for the spelling test on a Friday.
04 February 2022
Our spelling focus this week has been on using apostrophes for possession and omission.
This week for homework, we would like you to write six sentences that demonstrate how to use an apostrophe for omission (can’t).
We would then like you to write six sentences that demonstrate how to use an apostrophe for possession (sister’s / sisters’).
04 February 2022
We are being historians through our topic learning this half term. Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to be around during historic events like the Great Fire of London? For this week’s Talk Time, we’d like you to do exactly that.
Would it be good to travel back in time?
Would it be good to travel forwards, into the future?
When talking about travelling back in time, you could use these question prompts to support discussions at home:
- What time period would you travel back to?
- a time from recent history (eg your lifetime)
- a point from your parents’/grandparents’ lifetimes
- over 100 years ago
- Where in the world would you like to be at that point in time?
- Does it relate to an important historical event?
- What have you learnt in a current or past history topic that you’d like to experience?
- Who would you like to meet?
- What historical figures have we learnt about at school?
- Are there people you’d meet who aren’t famous eg family members?
- Is there anything about the past that you’d try to change?
- If so, how would you go about it?
- Would you realistically be able to make that change? Would you need help?
Many of the points above will also help you to discuss travelling into the future. As well as those, it’s important to think of what would be gained from travelling forwards in time. When coming back into the present, would you tell people what the future is like (good and bad things) and why?
These R2s will get you thinking critically about your own ideas:
- What reasons can you think of in support of time travel?
- Are there reasons why you might be against it?
- Challenge: Rank your ideas by importance. Imagine you could only do five, or maybe even three things.
Using drama to inspire writing
Year 3 have been busy in their writing lessons this week. To help gather ideas for their writing, the children have enjoyed getting into character and acting out some scenarios. Using drama helps to develop realistic dialogue and extend vocabulary.
Next week, the class will be writing a recount about the battles between the Romans and the Celts. In order to write this recount, the children need to get into character and tell the story as if they were an actual Celt. The children have certainly been inspired through improvisation and storytelling.
Year 3 have also been exploring some rich vocabulary and some are the words and phrases have been amazing.
blood-thirsty warrior
thundering hooves
deafening screams
trudging through thick mud
staggering, wounded soldiers
smoke filled air
metallic aroma
This afternoon, the class spent some time up levelling basic words using images and a Thesaurus. Then, they looked at the work of their peers to find more ideas for writing. The children are developing a vocabulary-rich classroom and are beginning to use more sophisticated words when they speak and write.
We are really looking forward to reading the recounts.
History
Reading
Be sure to chat to your child about how they’re getting on in their reading lessons – these are every day and help to unpack challenging texts by deciphering the meaning of words, the structure of an author’s writing and often link to our topic or can sometimes be poems.
Here’s this week’s – we explored and defined some new words: adaptation, environments, ancestors and traction.
Area
Year 5 have been learning about area and what it is – check out this animation to help!
English – The Naughty Bus
