Celebrating your child’s reading: eBooks
We hope that you’re enjoying listening to your child read their eBook at home and that your child is enjoying celebrating their super reading skills!
At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.
We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!
Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.
Happy reading!
Forest School Fun
The Year 5’s have been having a great time at Forest School every Monday and the rain yesterday didn’t even dampen their spirits. The children have had the opportunity to create some bug hotels to encourage insects to the site. Yesterday, they put their culinary skills to the test and made some garlic flatbreads. They cooked these on the fire and they were delicious! The children arrived back at class absolutely covered in mud but they’d had so much fun.
Spring is here.
This week, children enjoyed drawing and painting daffodils to create a Mother’s Day card. Before children drew them, we talked about the shape and colour of the stem and the petals on the flower. They were all really proud of their pictures and couldn’t wait to take them home; we hope you liked them.
We have been completing our Spring checklists too, so far we have spotted daffodils, white blossom on the trees , green leaves, buds and snow drops.
Help at home
What signs of Spring can you spot when you are out and about?
In Maths this week we have been matching numerals to quantity by putting the flowers on the grass. Checking we had the correct amount by counting carefully.
Our beanstalks are growing! The children have been taking very good care of their beans watering them every day. This week we noticed roots and shoots appearing.
Outside we got busy in the Nursery garden too, tidying the planters ready for planting some of our own seeds in the coming weeks. . The children decided that we would like to grow some carrots and peas.
Next week
Nursery rhyme of the week
Sound of the week
Hh for helicopter.
Reminders
Thanks to everyone who has sent in a baby and toddler photograph for our learning next week. If you haven’t had a chance to yet, please see our previous post and e-mail us one if you can.
scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Green group parents and carers don’t forget to book an appointment for your parent teachers consultation (Wednesday 01 April) .You will have received information about this from the school office. On this occasion the meeting is via zoom, next time it will be in person.
The Hundred Decker Rocket
We have been reading the book The Hundred Decker Rocket.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on a mission to space. On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, all the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
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.
We have designed our own ‘Hundred Decker Rockets’ with a deck each.
“Mine needs a swimming pool so we can all go swimming!”
“I’m going to have unicorns and yummy food!”
PE
We were lucky enough to get outside in the sunshine at the beginning of the week for our PE. We’ve been working on our ball skills with early games of ‘Mouse Trap’
Phonics
We’ve been recapping the digraphs we’ve learnt previously, looking at longer words we may have to chunk such as ‘farm/yard’ or ‘sun/set’. Chunking mean breaking the word into smaller parts (chunks) to help children read it more easily.
Maths
We found lots of different ways to represent number 7 and number 8 this week. We even explored the different parts to 7 and 8.
Help at home
Ask you child to find a way to represent 7 or 8 at home. They might count out 8 Lego pieces.
Computing-Using Bee Bots in 1/2B
1/2 B have been using Bee-Bots. They are small, friendly robots that look like bright yellow bees. They can move forwards, backwards, turn left and turn right when we press the buttons on its back. We use Bee-Bots to learn about coding. Coding means giving the robot clear instructions so it knows where to go.
Our Living and Learning statement this week is: I know the importance of personal hygiene, including handwashing. KS1 have enjoyed seeing the effect that soap has on our fingers when we put our soaped fingers in a dish of water and pepper. It’s a great visual to demonstrate the powerful effect that soap has on germs. This, hopefully, encourages the children to continue their great handwashing habits.
The pepper just runs away from my finger!-Myla
The soap will scare the germs away!-Oscar
Class reward. Each class has a target and when we have met the target, multiple times, we get a class treat! 1/2B have responded positively to their ‘3,2,1, Stop’ instruction. Their chosen class treat was to go to the adventure playground. Well done 1/2B!
Reading: Beware the Jabberwocky!
Year 5/6 have been reading poetry this week. We have read and analysed Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. Children retrieved information from the text and drew what they thought the Jabberwocky might look like.
Help at home: enjoy the poem together. Have fun trying to work out what each word means. Some words are two words spliced together.
Living and Learning: I know the importance of personal hygiene, including handwashing
This week, Year 5/6 have been learning about personal hygiene. We watched some videos about the importance of using a tissue when sneezing. We discussed the difference between using hand soap and sanitiser. Children were shocked to learn that at any point in the day you might be in contact with 10,000,000,000,000 (10 quadrillion) microbes.
Help at home: discuss the importance of washing hands at key points in the day.
World Book day in 1/2B
Children in 1/2B had a superb World Book Day too! Here is the photographic evidence of their book filled day:
Writing: Suspense, Shadows and Semi-colons
This week in writing, the children have been turning into masters of suspense. We have been learning how authors carefully build tension in a story to keep the reader hooked and wanting to know what happens next.
The children have been planning and writing their own terrifying narratives, set in places like dark bedrooms, quiet woods and even a terrifying old hotel. Our main focus has been on the different ways writers can build tension. The children have been experimenting with short, snappy sentences, describing what characters can see, hear and feel, and choosing vocabulary for effect so the reader can really imagine the moment.
We have also been practising how to use semi-colons to join two closely linked clauses together in a sentence; a small piece of punctuation that can make writing flow beautifully when used correctly.
There have been some wonderfully eerie ideas appearing across the classroom, and it has been brilliant seeing the children carefully plan their stories and then build the suspense step by step.
Help at home: ask your child to tell you about the spooky narrative they are writing. Can they explain how they are building tension or show you where they have used a semi-colon in their work?
Reading
We’ve been reading Jabberwocky this week in reading. This is a poem written by Lewis Carroll, who also wrote Alice in Wonderland. This is a nonsense poem about the main character killing a creature called ‘the Jabberwock’. The children had to read the poem and make sense of all the nonsense vocabulary. They managed to pick out and retrieve some description of the Jabberwock. The drew their representations of what they thought it would look like. There were some interesting ideas!
