Newsletters

We have had a fantastic week in Wrens.  We really enjoyed our teddy bears picnic on Wednesday to launch our "Into the Woods" topic.  Our story this week has been Goldilocks and The Three Bears.  The children enjoyed acting out the story at Forest School and showed good recall of the key phrases when we reread the story later in class.  We also thought of some new vocabulary to describe the different sizes of the 3 bears.  

In class this week, we have started our daily Little Wandle phonics lessons.  Squawk the parrot has been helping us out by bringing his sound bag to help us practise our phonemes (sounds).  We have also been learning to orally blend words and have started learning to write the graphemes.

In maths, we have been learning what the word match means (2 things that are the same).  We had fun completing some matching treasure hunts and matching games with our friends.  Next week we will be looking at sorting and putting things in sets.

In the afternoons we enjoyed music on Monday with Mrs Postlethwaite, E-safety on Tuesday and our first proper PE lesson on Thursday, which was lots of fun. We were very impressed with the children's skills at getting dressed and started to learn how to pull our clothes through when they are inside out.

Please could you remember to send your child with a waterproof coat every day as we do try to have some outside play even if it is rainy.  Thank you.

This week we have been very busy in Skylarks!

Year 1 have been working hard with their phonics. They have now all been given their Little Wandle reading book.

Year 2s began the week by making predictions about our new book 'I Love Bugs' by Emma Dodd. We discussed the clues we could use to be able to make sensible guesses, such as the title, illustrations and blurb. They have also been learning about adjectives and how we can use these to help our imaginations. They also worked very hard on their Accelerated Reader quizzes.

In maths, Year 1s have been counting objects from a larger group, recognising numbers as words and counting on from any given number. Year 2s have been learning to recognise tens and ones in a number, use a place value chart and partition numbers to 100. We have also begun our Big Maths which helps the children recap prior learning. 

In geography, the children looked at an aerial map. They were able to identify that the map showed Abberley, including our school. They looked closely to spot details such as the goal posts on the field and the painted activities on the front playground. We then went for a walk around to school to hunt for physical features such as trees and human features such as the school building and the adventure playground.

Our focus in art at the moment is sketching and drawing using the natural world as inspiration. The children sketched some natural objects and then had a go at 'feely drawing' where they didn't know what their natural object was but they had to sketch it from just feeling it. We have some very good artists in Skylarks!

We’ve had a fantastic week this week in English. We have read more of our story, “The Wild Way Home” and the children have really engaged with it. We are working towards writing a character description and the children are beginning to create some fantastic descriptions using expanded noun phrases. Next week we will be working on some similes that we can use to improve our descriptions.

In maths, we have been digging into place value and the children have used number lines to represent numbers to 100. We have used part-whole models to partition two digit numbers and solve calculations. Next week we will be investigating hundreds, thousands and working with calculations within these.

In English this week, we have continued to read Krindlekrax. It was audition day at school and Ruskin tried auditioning for the hero role he was desperate to get. Unfortunately, no-one could take him seriously as a hero so the role went to Elvis Cave even though he didn't know his lines. The children have been learning to write relative clauses and used their knowledge of the characters from the book to come up with more information about them to make them.

In maths, our focus this week has been on rounding. We started rounding to 10, then 100 and finally moved onto rounding to 1000. We have determined at which digit we need to look at in order to help us round correctly and also recapped the fact that if we get halfway between the number we are rounding to, we keep going up and don't turn back!

This week in Merlins class we have continued to read the poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. The children have been identifying and analysing the poet's use of figurative language and poetic features. We have spent time looking for similes, metaphors, rhyming patterns and repetition. Towards the end of the week the children have storyboarded an alternative ending to this poem which they will go on to write next week.

In maths, we have been continuing with our topic of place value. The children have been practising reading and writing numbers to 10 million and they have been solving problems that involve using the power of 10.

In computing, we have continued with our work on keeping safe online. We looked back at the work the children completed on this topic in Y2 to see how this year's work helps them to progress and how they could use their prior knowledge to help them.

In PSHE, we looked at the different people who are involved in the school community and the roles the children think they play. They all have responsibilities and rights and we discussed how all of these people are important and how everybody works as part of a big team to help them learn.

This week in history we introduced our Stone Age topic with an investigation into why timelines are important for historians. We looked at how far back the Stone Age was when compared to the modern day and the fact that it is a huge period of history. The children investigated the timeline difference between BC and AD as well as looking at some of the key events that took place during this time.

In science, we dived deeper into the living processes and using evidence based enquiry to determine the processes that all living things must perform to be classed as living. We looked in detail at how different living things move and the children investigated the living things in our local environment to determine how they move as well.

In RE, we are looking at what Christians believe God is like based on the story of Creation from the Bible. This week we looked at several different versions of the story and analysed them for clues about what God is like.

In science, we continued with our work on light. This week, our focus was reflection. We discussed reflection and incidence and then the children carried out an investigation to see if the angle of reflection was the same as the angle of incidence. This was a good refresher of the children's ability to use a protractor!

In music, the children looked at how to read rhythms as well as recapping how to read notes on a stave. The children then used glockenspiels and untuned percussion to learn 'God Save The King'. The children will be composing their own national anthems over the next few weeks.

We have also been learning to 'Be Internet Alert'.  We learnt about what online phishing and spear phishing were and took a look at some examples of real and fake websites and used the clues available to determine whether they were a phishing scam or not.

In PE this week, we have been learning to move the ball using forehand and backhand. We then went on to use these skills in a rally with a partner. In handball we have been learning numerous new rules to this interesting sport. We have enjoyed some 2V1 matches where children had opportunities to practise their throwing, catching, dribbling and space invading skills. 

In history, we were introduced to our new topic of World War Two and The Blitz. This week the children had the opportunity to empathise with those who experienced an air raid and learned about the process of evacuation. Next week we'll be learning about how the blitz affected other countries and making some comparisons between the destruction of other European cities.