World Book Day!
Yesterday we celebrated World Book Day by visiting the younger classes to enjoy a good book. Year 5 headed to Mrs Latham’s class where we were met by some very enthusiastic readers. Some year 5’s read to the younger children, whilst some of Mrs Latham’s class showed off their amazing fluent reading to their older peers. I even enjoyed Mahli reading ‘Funnybones’ to me – my favourite book when I was little. What an awesome reader she was!
World Book Day
This morning, year 6 children took a trip over to nursery. They read stories and talked about their favourite characters.
World Book Day
One of the ways we have celebrated World Book Day is by shared reading. The year 5/6 children visited KS1 this morning to read our favourite books to us. The children enjoyed being read to and sharing why they liked their books.
The adults have also been sharing their favouirte books with the children.
Wanted! Baby photos
Next week, we’re learning about growing up and looking at how we change as we get older.
It would be great if we could look at some photographs of children when they were babies and toddlers. If you are able to, please send us an email with one photograph of your child as a baby and one photograph of them as a toddler. We’ll use these in group time and will also be adding them to our Home Corner family display.
Science: We are chemists
We have continued to be chemists in our science learning and conducted an experiment that produced a chemical reaction. The children mixed two liquids – vinegar and warm milk. The vinegar altered the acidity in the milk and made it curdle. The children sieved the liquid to retrieve the curdled mixture and then moulded and dried it. This chemical reaction had created a type of plastic. The children recognised that this was an irreversible change as it could not be returned to its original state. We were quite amazed by the whole process and also quite overwhelmed by the weird smell that the mixture made!
Help at home: Could you recreate this experiment at home so your child can talk you through the process? Can they use any scientific vocabulary in their explanation?
Reading: book club
This half term, the children will be bringing home a group reader book. They were given the opportunity to look at a range of books and read the blurbs. They discussed which books they liked and which they disliked. They then grouped together according to the book they’d selected. The children will still be set a target page each week and they will be choosing their weekly task – this will still be recorded in their journals. The team that reach their target page and complete their tasks well, stand a chance of being our weekly trophy winners. Who will it be this week?
Help at home: continue to read daily with your child. This will improve understanding and fluency. Reading to an adult can also increase a child’s enjoyment of a book.
Reading with automaticity and fluency : Poem of the week
We really enjoyed our Poem of the week last week. After reading it every day, we become fluent and read with more and more automaticity. This makes the children feel like ‘real readers’. It also inspired us to draw our own aliens.
Help at home by encouraging your child to read the poem of the week to you when they bring home a copy of it on Fridays.
World Book Day 2023 (but we’re doing all week!)
We enjoyed a brilliant video chat with Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler today. They read stories to us and Axel showed us how he does his illustrations. You can enjoy their new book, The Baddies, here. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
Class 5/6A News
A big welcome back to all of our pupils following the half-term break. I hope you are all relaxed and refreshed and ready for the new half-term. Already a jam packed week of learning is behind us. Let’s catch up with what Class 5/6A have been up to.
In Maths we are revisiting fractions, looking at multiplying an integer by a unit and non-unit fraction. Using our existing fractions and times table knowledge, our Year 5 pupils have made an excellent start to the half-term. How to help: continue to support your child’s maths learning at home by encouraging daily use of Times Table Rockstars.
In Writing, we are working towards writing a spooky narrative and setting description. This week we have watched an animation of Whitby Abbey to help us generate some vocabulary which we can use in our piece. We have also brainstormed figurative language to describe a number of spooky scenes such as darkened forests, lightning and moonlight skies. Our pupils have come up with some excellent description, and I can’t wait to see the pieces they produced.
The spooky theme has also appeared in our Reading work. We have been reading passages from Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ and using descriptive language from them to recreate drawings of the lead character and his surroundings.
Also in Reading we have our Friday Book Club. This half-term pupils have been given a selection of texts to choose from, which they can take home to read alongside their classmates. On Fridays we will get together to share our thoughts on what we have read so far, identify similarities between texts, and share our opinions.
We are Chemists this half-term in Science. Our work this week has seen us mixing bicarbonate of soda with vinegar and using balloons to test how much carbon dioxide can be created to inflate a balloon. Once a test experiment had been established, pupils then changed some of the variables of the experiment to see how this would affect the outcome.
Being able to recognise both positive and negative feelings and understand how to deal with them has been focus in Living and Learning. Our circle time discussion has seen us look at a wider range of vocabulary to describe feelings we experience every day, how we can express these, and what to do if we experience a feeling we are not sure of. Pupils discussed how they would support a peer who was struggling to deal with a particular scenario, and turn it into a positive.
Mr Wolf’s Pancakes
It was lovely to see everyone return to nursery this week and to hear all about your half term adventures.
On Tuesday, we talked about ‘pancake day’ and the reasons why some people celebrate Shrove Tuesday. We read ‘Mr Wolf’s Pancakes’ and found out how to make our own pancakes. We enjoyed smelling them as they cooked and we enjoyed eating them even more! During snack time, there was lots of excited conversation about our favourite toppings.
Mmmmmmm lemon with sugar sprinkled on top! Delicious!
Outside, children have started to notice some changes in our garden; they spotted snowdrops, crocuses and other plants and flowers starting to grow.
Next week, we’ll learn more about this and will read Jack and the Beanstalk. If you have a copy at home, enjoy reading it together at bedtime to help familiarise your child with the story. If not, there are lots of versions online that you could watch together.
Reminders
- Please join us if you can for our Nursery Coffee Morning – straight after drop off on Tuesday.
- It’s World Book Day on Thursday and children are invited to bring their favourite book to school to share with their friends. Parents/carers are also invited to stay for a while to share a story with your child. Please see previous post for more details.
- Please ensure that your child’s water bottle is marked clearly with their NAME. (Lunch boxes, too!)