09 September 2022 – Year 1
This week’s spellings are ‘Common Exception’ words – words that don’t follow the usual spelling rule or pattern. We keep spellings for 2 weeks.
Encourage children to write their spellings out a few times over the 2 weeks.
This week’s spellings are:
- are
- ask
- be
- by
- come
Why not try our super spelling strategy?
Reading books
Today, your child will be bringing home a new reading record, their homework books and a letter about accessing e-books which will be assigned to your child every Friday, alongside spellings. Let’s get this year off to a great start by reading daily and sharing the book. Please fill in the records and bring them back into school every Thursday.
Our first week together!
Wow, what a week we’ve had in Year 2! It has been great to see the children looking happy and healthy as they return back to school. They have settled into our new classroom really quickly and it has been wonderful to hear about all the exciting things you have been up to over the summer holiday.
This week, in our living and learning session, Year 2 really impressed me with how well they understand our school rules. We discussed the three rules and how we can follow them, both in and out of the classroom. The children have certainly have put this into practice, with many compliments – how calm we are when getting on with our work and how sensibly we walk into collective worship. Keep this up, Year 2!
In maths, we have been recapping our knowledge of place value – see photos below from when we were ordering from greatest to smallest using our knowledge of tens and ones in a number. The children were tasked with ordering 3 numbers, but challenged themselves and wanted to order more! It was lovely to see how proud they were with their successes. We have also read and talked about our class novel, Vlad and the Great Fire of London, ahead of our topic learning starting next week. The first lesson will be focused on timelines. This weekend, why not discuss some events which would feature on a timeline of your life?
I have really enjoyed getting to know Year 2 this week and I am looking forward to lots of learning together. Please feel free to come and say hello or ask me any questions you have!
Year 4 – 09 September 2022
This week’s spellings are the days of the week. Each day we write down the date along with our learning objective so it’s a good idea to know how to spell these words accurately:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
This week’s spellings
This week, we’d like you to practise homophones. These are words that sound the same as another word but have a different meaning, and often a different spelling. Learn the following words ready for a test on Friday 16th September:
there
they’re
their
hear
here
witch
which
where
wear
were
Library
Year 1 will be visiting the library on a Thursday. We enjoyed our first session yesterday. The children choose their ‘love of reading’ book to borrow. Please bring these books back on a Thursday to change.
We looked at the books we had chosen and noticed that some children had chosen fiction book and some children at chosen non-fiction books. We talked about what this meant.
Fiction: a made up story.
Non-fiction: a book that gives facts/ real information.
Why not have a look through your books at home and see if you can group them into fiction and non-fiction books.
Maths
This week, we’ve had some ‘naughty numbers’ in our classroom. The numbers were all mixed up and we had to get them back into the correct order. The children worked together to see where they needed to be in the giant number line. We used some great language such as more, less, smaller, higher when deciding where we needed to be.
Why not count forwards and backwards at home? Starting from 0 to 10 and backwards from 10 to 0. Can they count from any given number e.g. 7 to 10 or 6 to 0?
This week’s message (Friday 09 September 2022)
We’re sad to note the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II. She demonstrated and represented important values and behaviours. In school today, we have marked this historic moment with a special assembly and teachers have followed this up with a review and reflection in class.
Our first weekly message of the year continues with some important information for the year ahead at St James’ CE Primary School…
Dates for the year
Key dates for the school year are in our school calendar. We’ve prepared this list for you to print out and have ready to check, too.
Support your child at home
Like last year, we’re hosting a series of Zoom presentations to help you support your child’s learning at home – the first one is this Monday.
The invitation is open to all parents and carers across Sphere Federation, although we’ve indicated if the session might be more appropriate for particular age ranges. The full list of presentations are:
- Phonics and early reading: 12 September 2022
- Story telling: 19 September 2022 (Mrs Payne here at St James’ CE Primary will read a story over Zoom for your child and you to enjoy – the session is ideal for children in Reception, but children in Year 1 and 2 are welcome to join, too.)
- Number (KS1): 03 October 2022
- Number (KS2): 10 October 2022
- Topic: 07 November 2022
- Reading and Writing: 14 November 2022
- Online safety: 28 November 2022
- Key Stage 2 SATs: 09 January 2023 (This one is mainly for parents of Y6 children.)
- Key Stage 1 SATs: 27 February 2023 (This one is mainly for parents of Y2 children.)
- Reception to Year 1 transition: 19 June 2023 (This one is for parents of Reception children.)
All the sessions are at 6pm on Mondays and should last around 30 minutes.
If you’re interested in attending any of these Zoom workshops, please either send us a message on the School Gateway app or email the school office. We’ll then email the Zoom joining details out to all those who have expressed an interest.
Homework
Your child’s first homework task is published today.
Homework is an important part of education and gives you a chance to support your child and find out what they’ve been learning. This doesn’t need to be sitting at home with a stack of worksheets or creating an elaborate project: quality time talking to your child and practising basic skills is enough.
Today, we’ve given each child a new homework book. The book is for your child to practise spellings, writing, times tables and number facts. It doesn’t need to be sent back to school.
This homework guide sets out what we expect children to do and why. Reading, spellings, times tables and number facts are essential for all children to be confident with. The focus of your support at home should be ideally around these areas. Your comments in the Reading Record book (at least once a week) are really helpful for your child’s teacher.
As always, contact school if you have any questions or concerns.
Children settled into the new school year really well this week. It’s likely they’ll feel tired after a busy week back. Have a restful, happy and healthy weekend.
09 September 2022
Vocabulary is the focus of this week’s Talk Time.
We’ve just begun a new Science topic and with it comes new Science vocabulary.
This half-term, we’re all biologists, learning specifically about Living Things and their Habitats. Here’s a list of key words that are being learnt and applied as part of our learning. Over the half-term, practise using these words with your child.
Years 1 and 2 Biology vocabulary:
| alive | a living thing; not dead |
| dead | no longer alive |
| habitat | the place where an animals or plant lives |
| basic needs | the things that a plant or animal need to live |
| food chain | shows who eats who in a habitat. |
| predator | An animal that hunts and eats other animals |
| prey | An animal that is eaten by another animal |
Years 3 and 4 Biology vocabulary:
| vertebrate | an animal with a backbone |
| invertebrate | an animal without a backbone |
| warm-blooded | animals that can control their body temperature (birds and mammals) |
| cold- blooded | animals that cannot control their body temperature; their body temperature changes with the air or water temperature (all animals except birds and mammals) |
| organism | a living thing, animal or plant |
| insect | an invertebrate with six legs |
| classification key | a set of questions about the characteristics of organisms; used to identify a living thing or decide which group a living thing belongs to. |
| environmental danger | something that can threaten a habitat |
Years 5 and 6 Biology vocabulary:
| taxonomy | The science of naming, describing and classifying organisms |
| organism | a living thing, animal or plant |
| kingdom | The highest division in the classification system; there are five kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, protists, monera) |
| flora | Living things that are plants |
| fauna | Living things that are animals |
| bacteria | Single-celled organisms; most or which can only be seen with a microscope |
| fungi | Organisms that can feed on the remains of other living things; can be single-celled or multi-celled (eg mushroom, yeast, mould) |
| micro-organism | An organism that can only be seen through a microscope |
Some of these words have been introduced already this week but there may be others that are going to be covered in the coming weeks.
History – The Ancient Greeks
It is great to see all the children back in school and ready to learn.
Our History learning is Ancient Greece.
Today, the children wrote about things they would like to know more about.
I’d like to find out about the Greek Gods. Noah
What did the Ancient Greeks do for a living? Evie
I wonder if they had a king or queen?
How big is Greece?
Below is the related vocabulary that we will be learning throughout our lessons.
- chronology – putting events in chronological order means: listing them in the order in which they happened
- empire – a group of countries or territories that have one ruler
- democracy – people have a say in how the government is run by voting
- government – a group of people who have the authority to make decisions that are for the good of the people and the country
- legacy – traditions, skills and knowledge passed on through history
- citizen – a person who is a member of a particular country and has rights because of being born there or living there
- influence – to have an effect on people or things
- bias – a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgement
- oligarchy – a small group of people who make decisions for a country
Spend some time researching Ancient Greece with your child. The British Museum has lots of fascinating, historical facts.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/learn/schools/ages-7-11/ancient-greece
In class, we have looked at the National Geographic Kids site.
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/greece