Information and Reminders
Thank you very much to all those who were able to come to our milkshake cafés this afternoon, we hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did!
Please help your child find a small, clear plastic bottle (e.g. baby food jars, spices jars, food colouring bottles etc.) for an experiment we will carry out in topic during the first week back – see below for more details.
A reminder that school starts at 8.30am prompt. Please ensure your child arrives at school ready to be in class at 8.30am.
Wednesday 17th February – Junior parent workshop and coffee morning 10.30am – 11.30am. The theme for this workshop will be eSafety, how we use iPads in the classroom to enhance learning and advice for parents on screen time at home.
We wish you a wonderful new year break and a happy and prosperous Year of the Monkey.
English
When we return from the holidays, our English lessons will take on a poetry focus. The children will read a range of poems in a variety of styles and they will have the opportunity to discuss which ones they like and dislike, and consider why they feel this way. They will then learn about narrative poems and try writing their own in a free verse style. Towards the end of the week the children will watch and evaluate some famous poets performing some of their work, before rehearsing and performing poems to their classmates.
We will also have a grammar focus; the children will learn the difference between the past simple and present perfect tense, and learn where and when to use each.
In Guided Reading the children will use clues from stories to make predictions about the books they are reading.
Maths
To begin the new half term the children will continue to develop their learning about fractions. They will learn how to use multiplication and division to help them find equivalent fractions and also how they can apply this to ordering fractions with different denominators. They will also learn how to add and subtract fractions (some children will extend this to improper fractions and mixed numbers). To complete our unit on fractions, we will ask the children to apply their new learning to solving problems using fractions.
Topic
We have an exciting start to the new half term planned as we will begin our new Science unit; Time and Place, Earth and Space. During the first week of this unit, we will share with the children the planned learning and hold our knowledge harvest – where the children share with us and each other what they already know about the topic, as well as what they would like to find out. We will also begin some fun practical experiments into the different ways people have measured time over the years. One of the experiments involves making a sand timer and for this, the children will need to bring with them a small, clear bottle. Anything small and clear would be ideal. E.g. baby food jars, spices jars, food colouring bottles etc.
Please find more information about our new topic in the introduction letter attached below.
In Computing, the children will collate the feedback from the surveys given out in the cafes today and use the data to draw graphs and charts using different software.