What an exciting and peculiar week it has been for everyone at UCPS. Our focus this week has been on minibeasts (and not just the garden variety!). We hope the children have enjoyed the learning this week and that they (and you!) are feeling ready to dive into the brave new world of online learning. We will try our best to answer all your questions (email these to Enquiries) on our daily blog. Please continue to upload the children’s learning onto Tapestry as this is a fantastic way of sharing and celebrating all the amazing learning the children are doing at home. Please click here to read a special letter from Dr Biddulph with a message for our amazing children.
Our Learning Next Week…
Our animal kingdom exploration will now take us below the ocean.
In Group Learning: We will be reading three books next week, two fiction and one non-fiction: Shark in the Dark by Peter Bently, Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister and Colourful Creatures by Nicolas Brosch. We will provide three different tasks related to our stories on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. You will be able to record these in your red books!
Click on the picture to hear the story!
Click on the picture to listen to the story!
Find me on Bug Club!
We have allocated Colourful Creatures onto your Bug Club accounts so that you can listen to it using the ‘Read to Me’ feature.
In Phonics: We will be learning the ow (two variations, ow as in cow or ow as in snow, we have two special ditties in the pictures below to help us remember these sounds) and oi sound and applying this in a range of words such as brown and how, grow and snow and coin and boil.
Say: ow – brown cow.
Say: ow – blow the snow.
In Maths: We will be revisiting measurement – looking at length, weight and then doing a fun experiment on floating and sinking, exploring the role that weight and size play in this process.
Our Rainbow Challenges (we recommend doing one a day and will provide additional information in our learning videos)
Red: To draw and decorate your own colourful fish. In class we would usually use wax resistant crayons and paint with water colours, but feel free to decorate it in any way you wish. Please keep these so that when you return to school they can be put into our whole class aquarium.
Yellow: To create three ‘What Am I?’ clues for a mystery underwater animal and get someone in your house to guess what animal it is. Make sure your letters are clear, you use a capital letter at the start, finger spaces in between and a full stop at the end.
Blue: To find some objects in your house and put them in order according to their length and weight and explain your choices.
Green: to draw a picture of the view from your window and write a sentence that uses an adjective to describe what you can see.
I can see some lovely flowers and a shining sun.
Purple: to complete a Cosmic Kids Yoga underwater adventure, here are some suggestions (you could do this challenge each day if you like!):
Important Notices
- Please check again that you can log on to the following websites and contact your class teacher in person or through the Enquiries email if you are unable to log in:
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- Bug Club: https://www.activelearnprimary.co.uk/
- Tapestry: https://tapestryjournal.com/
- Purple Mash (logins for this will be sent home this week, please check your child’s book folder): https://www.purplemash.com/sch/universityofcamb5
Additional Online Learning Resources
Our amazing Learning Coaches will be providing us with some ideas for activities to do with the children during the period of school closures. This week Ms Phillips has sent us a calendar of 28 days of activities that children can do to engage with nature, many of the activities don’t require access to an outdoor area – Thanks, Ms P!
Many of our learning videos on YouTube will have further links in the description to extend and support children’s learning but if you’re looking for some different ideas, we’ve sorted a range of ideas according to learning area:
Playful Learning
- Boromi #dailyplay activities: https://www.boromi.co.uk/dailyplay
- Lego Family – lots of great ideas of things you can create with duplo and Lego – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwEFuOAC8vDbILoL0hLk-8A
Phonics
- Mr T’s Phonics (or Geraldine the Giraffe as the children know): https://www.youtube.com/user/breakthruchris
- Phonics Play – lots of fantastic games to support children in sounding out and blending words: https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
Writing
- Sky Writer – to practise letter formation: https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/skyWriter/index.html
Reading for Pleasure
- Get Epic – 40,000+ books, free for the next 30 days: https://www.getepic.com/
Mathematics
- ICT Games (can also be used for Phonics) – a range of different games to support learning across a range of concepts: https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/index.html