Wow! What a fantastic first week back – we’ve delved enthusiastically into our new topic ‘The Dark Side’ exploring different activities that we like to do in the dark and other things that interest us about the dark such as nocturnal animals, stars and planets.
In English this week we have created some amazing pieces of firework art. We have also been learning all about onomatopoeia (the word is what you hear! Like “Boom! Zap! Whoosh!“) words and using these to write our very own sentences to accompany a variety of dark images such as fires, sparklers and owls. Can you challenge yourselves to write down some onomatopoeia words for these pictures?
In Maths this week we have been reviewing the partitioning numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8. We have been building these in different ways and deepening our understanding and explaining our thinking. How many ways can you make these numbers at home? Could you represent these as a part-whole diagram or an equation? You could even try and solve some missing part problems like the ones below.
I know that if 5 is the whole, and 3 is a part, the other part must be 2.
In Topic, we have been exploring the beauty of seasonal change and understanding the cyclical way that nature works. We have enjoyed exploring the colour and shape of leaves and are beginning to ask questions about why leaves change colour at this time of year. We have also adopted our very own tree in the forest that we will revisit over the year to observe.
In Phonics we enjoyed reviewing the ‘ur’ and ‘oi’ sounds – can you write all the ur words that you can see in this poem? Can you find any more words that have digraphs in them?
It was my turn on Saturday
to cook purple turnip soup – hooray!
But I burnt it – oh no!
In the bin my burnt turnip soup did go…
So I made purple burgers instead.
Next week:
In English we will be exploring poetry relating to fireworks and other things associated with the dark starting with the ‘Firework Poem’ in Zim, Zam, Zoom by James Carter. We will be writing our own dark adventure stories revisiting this genre which we explored extensively last half term. We will also be brushing up on our editing skills, looking at pre-written sentences and checking if they have capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.
In Maths we are recapping partitioning 7 and 8 and will be deepening our understanding of this process. This will be through challenging children to represent part-whole relationships using a range of concrete objects (such as counters, numicon and cuisenaire rods) and also in more abstract ways such as part-whole diagrams, equations and bar models.
In Topic we will be reflecting on the tree that we adopted and creating observational drawings of our special tree, we will also be asking questions and learning more about the moon, something that children have been expressing interest in as part of our dark side topic.
In Phonics we will be revisiting the air and ear sounds.
Important Notices:
- Thank you to all those who returned to school with PE Kits and wellington boots, could we kindly ask all those who have not brought these items back to bring them next week so that children can fully participate in physical activity and outdoor learning.
- A gentle reminder that reading books are collected on Friday and redistributed on Monday, if you have any feedback about the books you are given or if you are missing a book please do mention this to your class teacher or email enquiries so that we can ensure your child gets a book and is suitably challenging for their current reading level.