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Year 6 Blog Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 22nd Sep 2023 @ 3:50pm

Welcome to the Year 6 weekly blog.

This week we have focused on our speaking and listening skills when having class discussions or working in groups. We also focused on presenting our work to be made as neatly as possible, with regular handwriting sessions to help.

On Thursday, Year 3 and Year 6 were fortunate to be invited to attend Mass for a Reception blessing.  

The 'Meet the Teacher' slides are attached to this blog, for anyone who missed the evening. 

This week’s learning in Year 6:

• We have learnt how to round numbers to the nearest tenth, whole number and a million, where we used number lines to represent our understanding. We then used counters to add or subtract any power of ten from any number.

• In English we learnt how to describe settings, using well chosen noun phrases with a mixture of prepositions and personification.

• In Geography, our topic of Mountains continued with research on one of the 6 following mountains: Mount Everest, Ben Nevis, Mount Fuji, Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Ararat and K2. Each group then delivered a short presentation on their chosen mountain.

• In PE, we split into small teams to work on the 3 main strategies we have been focusing on: find a space, communication and simple pass.

• In Art, we continued our topic, ‘2D Drawing to 3D Making’, by sketching a silhouette of a dog, focusing on proportion. We will scale up on large sheets next week.

• In French, we used our review sheets to practise responding to key questions: ‘comment ҫa va?’, ‘comment tu t’appelles’, ‘quel âge as-tu?’, ‘quelle est ta couleur préférée?’, ‘as-tu des frères et soeurs?’ and ‘tu as des animaux?’. We also recapped how to say the date and our birthdays, using a help sheet with the days of the week, numbers 1-31, the months and how to say the years.

• In Science, we developed our knowledge of classification by grouping animals using a classification key.

Home Practice

Please complete the following tasks by next Wednesday:

Reading – Use your Home Reading to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a Reading Journal/Diary that must be used for the title of the book and any reading challenge chosen.

• You may change your book any day between Monday and Wednesday.

Spellings (ei / ie words)

• Sumdog (ie / ei wk 3)
• chief, shield, receipt, receive, friend, patient, weigh, weird, protein, deceive, belief, ancient, medieval, glacier, mischievous,

Maths challenges:

• Counting:
  • This week we have been counting in decimal steps of 100, 100 and 250 Try to do the same out loud or with paper.
  • Draw a line with some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers as you count up or down, then double check it to make sure you have said the correct numbers.
  • Start with different numbers and count up 10 numbers then back again in 100:

645, 745, 845, 945, 1 045, 1 145, etc

and in 200:

645, 845, 1 045, 1 245, etc          

Start with different numbers and count up and back in 250s:

1 850, 2 100, 2 350, 2 600, etc    

• Sumdog (Times Tables - week 3)
  • Each child has their own tables target which they should know. The Sumdog challenge may relate to their target but this week we have focused on 3s, 4s and 5s, which will be great practice for the future. (Every Tuesday there is a tables test).

• Sumdog (Place Value - week 3)
  • This week’s learning is to round numbers to different powers of 10.
  • For further maths work, please visit the ‘Maths Training’ section which you can find in the tasks box on the left of the main screen. This will enable your child to push their learning further with the skills that Sumdog has given them, following a recent diagnostic test.

Year 3 Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 22nd Sep 2023 @ 12:55pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

We have had an amazing week of learning in Year 3. Everyone is showing a brilliant attitude to everything we do and we are very impressed! We are really improving our listening skills and independent learning. Keep up the hard work!

We have been looking at descriptive writing this week. We visited the Twit's home and garden and wrote some fantastic descriptions. Everyone has been trying to improve their handwriting and presentation, remembering to write on the lines and form our letters correctly. It makes a huge difference when our writing looks beautiful!  Amazing effort everyone!

In our maths learning this week we have been learning how to add and subtract 10s and 100s to three digit numbers. Next week we will be learning new strategies to add and subtract. Make sure you go on the Sumdog challenge as it is a warm up for the coming week's learning. 

In Science this week we explored the muscles in the arm and investigated how muscles can contract and relax and sometimes work in pairs.

Did you know there are over 600 muscles in the human body!

In Art we looked at chiaroscuro, which is an Italian art form exploring light and dark. We used our charcoal to create depth and form in our pieces. Check out our gallery.

In PE we practised our throwing and catching as well as feinting passes as part of our invasion games topic. We learned lob, chest and bounce passes and discussed when was best to use each. Have a look in our galleries.

In computing this week we explored different digital devices and what they can be used for. We debated whether it was best to use a digital or non digital devices in different scenarios.

Home Practice

Keep changing your books regularly and read for at least 15-20 minutes every night! 

Well done to everyone who completed their Sumdog challenges and even had some time to practise on the Sumdog Training. Three new challenges have been added today. Remember, little and often every night will benefit your children with their learning in school.

Try and do a little counting at home as well. This will promote number fluency and understanding. There are lots of counting games here at ictgames.com that we use in school. You will also find lots of counting songs on YouTube.

We have given out your home spellings to practice for next week's test. In our spelling lessons this week we have been revisiting our spelling strategies. We have been breaking our words into syllables to help us spell more accurately and using what we already know to spell new words.

Here are your spellings for this week.

Have an amazing weekend!

The Year 3 Team

Reception Blog - Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 22nd Sep 2023 @ 12:54pm

We started our week doing drawings of some autumn treasures the children have been bringing in to class, for our Art topic; 'what can we see?' Whilst doing these drawings we talked about how the conkers felt and how different the shells were.

In phonics this week, we have been doing the s, a and t sounds. We have been learning the songs that go with the sounds, the rhymes to write them and having a go at writing them ourselves.

The Drawing Club has been lots of fun this week. We have been doing the story of the Little Red Hen. One of our challenges was to design our own disgusting bread and the other was to create a bad character to come and steal the bread. The children loved creating these and did some fantastic codes to go with their drawings.

In Maths we have focussed on a different number each day, from 1-5. What that number looks like and how to make it. Together we made posters for each number, for our wall in class.

Miss Whiting came in for French this week and we recapped bonjour and learnt our new word, au revior for goodbye. The children have loved saying this to each other every day. In Music with Mrs Winter we were using the maracas to find a beat. The children loved finding the beat whilst singing the name song. They even performed it to each other at the end, fantastic!

We have also had PE and did lots of throwing and catching.

In RE we have been talking about how special we are. We used a treasure box to see our reflection, talk about how God loves us and how we are special. We then made our own faces out of material for our worship table.

To finish our week it was Fab Friday. Each child took part in either Yoga or Forest School. We also had PSHE where we talked about missing people when we are at school. The children had lots of ideas on how to make themselves feel better about this. These included playing with our friends and painting. We then looked at our Understanding the World past and present topic, Ourselves. We shared the book 'Once There Were Giants.' The children loved seeing the young girl growing up throughout the story, relating some of the scenarios to themselves. We then watched a video of Mrs Robinson's and Mrs Stone's children and how they have grown since they were babies.

Another fantastic week Reception, well done!

Year 2 Blog Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 21st Sep 2023 @ 4:24pm

We have had a brilliant week of learning in Year 2 this week. Thank you to everyone who came to ‘Meet the Teachers’ on Tuesday evening, it was great to see so many of you. Our harvest box has arrived in class, thank you if you have already brought something in for the harvest festival. You still have a few weeks – Harvest festival is Friday 6^th October.

In Maths, we have continued our learning of Place Value. We have looked at partitioning one and two digit numbers. We have also learnt how to exchange using tens and ones. In English the children have written super poems all about autumn. The children came up with great ideas about what autumn is like, used talk partners to share their ideas and focused on beautiful handwriting in their presentation.  In RE this week the children have wrote lovely Psalms and created a beautiful picture to go with them. In History the children have compared London today and London in 1666. They looked at the similarities and differences and wrote what they found. In Computing we discussed what we thought about the use of I.T around our school. The topic for Science this half term is Living things and their Habitats. For Science this week, the children have compared things that are alive, not alive and never been alive. 

Home Practice

Reading

In Year 2, children should read for at least 15 minutes every night and talk about the book. This will help with understanding the text and learning new words.

You could look in a thesaurus and see what other words have the same meaning as the one you have found.

Please date, sign and leave a small comment when you have read with your child and make it clear that you have finished a book, then we know we can change it. For Example - 14.09.22 Max’s Box. Read to page 6, really enjoying the book or good sounding out of tricky words or struggled with the word – because/finished the book. MG.

Reading books are changed every MONDAY. You will receive 2-4 books depending on their length, they should last the week, if you read a little each night. However, if you need to change a book at any other time, we will change it as needed.

Spellings

Please practise these spellings for your quiz on Wednesday (27.09.23). A sheet will go home every Wednesday with the spelling list on. This is for home practise only and can be kept with you.

Here are the spellings for this week:

I                  has

is                was

be                you

he                your

his              they

Maths

At home, can you count forwards and backwards in twos? Start at 0 and count up to 24. Challenge yourself and go to 36!

Sumdog

You will have a place value and spellings challenge to be completed by next week.

Log in at www.sumdog.com

Our PE day is going to be FRIDAY.

Our BOOK change will be MONDAY.

You will get SPELLINGS on WEDNESDAYS and a quiz will be the following WEDNESDAY.

SumDog challenges will be set every FRIDAY.

If you haven't already brought wellies in for Forest School, please bring them in next week.

Have a good weekend.

Year 2 Team

Year 1 Blog Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 21st Sep 2023 @ 3:35pm

Welcome to your Friday blog.

English

We continued to learn about the Large Family through the story 'A Piece of Cake'.

The Large Family were struggling to stay healthy as they were tempted by a cake given to them by Granny! We drew our own cakes, sorted healthy and unhealthy food, wrote about what the characters were saying, read the Large Family books and wrote sentences about how they were being healthy.

Click here to watch some Large Family videos.

Phonics

Some of us have been recapping phase 3 oi in coin and ear in dear and some of us have learnt phase 5 ea in leaf and oy in toy.

Click here to sing the oi song.

Click here to sing the oy song.

Maths

We learnt about how numbers are made up of tens and ones. We made numbers using bundles of straws, base ten and ten frames. we had a go at marking our own work as this helps us to understand the learning.

We practised counting in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s.

R.E.

We learnt all about being a part of God's family. We wrote about how God takes care of us and drew some lovely pictures of Him watching over us.

P.E.

We practised running fast and skipping. This was quite tricky but we persevered. We learnt that it isn't always the girls who are better at skipping, the boys are too.

Science

We learnt all about the human body and our different body parts, such as leg, arm, foot, knee and elbow. We drew around our bodies and labelled each body part. We even played a game of 'Miss Fisher says' (SImon says!) and sang head, shoulders, knees and toes.

Art

We continued learning about the spiral pattern and focused on snails. We drew our own snail shell and used oil pastels to emphasise the colour. They looked great!

P.S.H.E.

We have been celebrating our similarities and differences this week! We read a lovely story together called 'The same but different too'. Listen to the story here.

We played a game, similar to 'Guess Who' where we had to describe someone in our class using 'This person has...' sentences. It was a lot of fun!

Geography

We learnt all about school's address this week and what an address tells us. We found school on Google Maps and answered some questions such as 'how do you get to school?'

Computing

We used the iPads to practise digital painting on Paintz. This time, we made our own version of Piet Mondrian's abstract art. We used the straight line and fill tools to do this.

Forest School

In our first session we read a story about Firey Fox which explained how we need to behave around a fire.  We watched the fire being lit then collected apples which had fallen off the trees in the nature area. We cored them and cut them into segments. We dipped them in sugar and cinnamon and then toasted them of the fire. Yummy! We were sheltered from the rain in our new fire pit area.

Some of us had a go at starting a fire using a flint and steel.

The weather was beautiful for our second session. We went on a leaf hunt and found as many different leaves as we could. We used shape cutters to make holes in the leaves. We had many ideas about how to develop our learning by glueing, colouring, sewing and investigating pattern.

Home Practice (Sumdog)

Phonics - ff, ll, ss, zz sounds OR oi words OR oy words

Maths - Count blocks and objects (within 10)

Counting - Count in 1s forwards and backwards from different starting numbers. Try to go beyond 20.

The log in for Sumdog is on a white laminated card in the reading book bag.

Please try to read every night, even just for five minutes!

Thank you to everyone who came to the meet the teacher. Our PowerPoint presentation is below.

Year 5 Blog Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 21st Sep 2023 @ 3:33pm

Happy Friday and welcome to your Friday Blog. 

Thank you to everybody who came to Meet the Teacher last week, if you couldn't make it don't worry, the slideshow is attached to this blog with all of the information you need. 

It has been another amazing week, we didn't let then rain dampen our spirits. 

In maths we have been looking at rounding numbers to the neartest 10, 100, 1000 and 10000. We did this by placing numbers on a number line and identifying what they were closer to. Everybody did an amazing job! 

In English we have been describing a setting to intrigue the reader. We wanted the reader to read our setting description and ask themselves questions like:

What is behind the door?

What was the noise?

Why is it so dark?

What is at the end of the corridor?

We also learned some new vocabulary to include in our writing. See us in action here. 

Everybody did a really great job! 

In computing we have been looking at different types of systems. We identified that a system is a set of things working together to make something happen. All systems have inputs, processes and outputs. We thought about how computer systems work such a sensors in traffic lights, Amazon lockers, washing machines, etc. 

In PE we have been mastering our throwing and catching skills including chest pass, bounce pass, and shoulder pass. We have also been thinking about how to outwit an opponent and how to communicate effectively with our team. We put these skills to practise playing various netball games, it was great fun and everybody was a great team player. 

This week in French we used our review sheets to practise responding to key questions: ‘comment ҫa va?’, ‘comment tu t’appelles’, ‘quel âge as-tu?’ and ‘quelle est ta couleur préférée?’. The children did very well to remember some of these. We also started to look at how to say the name of family members and whether we have any brothers or sisters. We listened to ‘Ma Famille’ song to help us.

In geography we were looking at key facts about the UK. We then used an atlas to label the capital cities, seas and oceans of the UK.  We found this quite tricky but we will keep practising. 

You can learn more about the UK and other places on this website, everybody has a login. 

Click on:

Explore the world

Places

Europe

United Kingdom 

https://www.oddizzi.com/teachers/explore-the-world/places/europe/united-kingdom/

You can see what we have been up to in art in our gallery here. 

Home Practice

Geography

Go onto this website, everybody has been given a login. Read more about the UK and also have an explore of the website, what else can you find out?

To find out about the UK click on:

Explore the world

Places

Europe

United Kingdom

https://www.oddizzi.com/teachers/explore-the-world/places/europe/united-kingdom/

Reading

Read out loud to an adult every day for 20 minutes. Talk about whether it is written in the present tense or the past tense and how you know. 

Present tense: an action that is happening right now or in the current moment e.g. she is running, he is ready, they listen, I like it.

Past tense:  an action that has already happened or used to happen e.g. she was running, she ran to the shop, he was ready, they listened well, I used to like it. 

Counting

Count out loud in:

0.1s from 5.12 to 7.12                               5.12     5.22     5.32

0.01s from 76.23 to 76.43                         76.23     76.24     76.25 

100,000s from 135, 609 to 935, 609         135,609     235,609     335,609 

Times Tables

Please practise your own target every day. 

Spelling

Your spellings this week all have a silent letter. Please practise every day, play close attention to the silent letters, how can you remember them? 

doubt          island          lamb          solemn          thistle          knight          thumb          numb          autumn          whistle          muscle          build          February

Sumdog

Maths Competition - individually this time instead of teams

Times Tables Challenge

Spelling Challenge 

Have a happy and fun weekend 

Year 4 Blog Friday 22nd September 2023

Date: 21st Sep 2023 @ 8:54am

Welcome to your Friday blog. We have had a very busy week in Year 4! Here’s what we have been learning:

In English, we continued reading our class novel ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’.  We discussed Michael’s personality and then wrote a character description, attempting to use different sentence openers. In addition, we looked at the features of an informal letter. Next week we will be planning and writing our own letter from Michael to his best friend Eddie Dodds.

In Maths, we practised rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. We also investigated adding and subtracting 1, 10, 100 and 1000 from 4 digit numbers. This was especially tricky when we needed to bridge the tens and hundreds.

In RE, we heard the story of Esau and Jacob. We discussed their differences and how Jacob managed to get God’s blessing!

In Computing, we refined our symmetrical patterns by accurately rotating, resizing and recolouring different shapes.

In PSHE, we recapped our ground rules and then discussed what we thought ‘self-esteem' meant. After watching a video, we shared and wrote down our ideas about how we can boost our self-esteem. Some suggestions were: be confident in the things you do, keep practising, believe in yourself, be positive, try to achieve new things and don't give up.

In Science, we continued our topic Living Things and their Habitats and learnt how we can group animals in different ways. We recapped the five animal groups and their features: Fish, Mammals, Amphibians, Reptiles and Birds.

In PE, we continued with our netball skills, practising a chest pass and thinking about our footwork. We then applied these skills in a match.

This week in French we used our review sheets to practise responding to key questions: ‘comment ҫa va?’, ‘comment tu t’appelles’, ‘comment ҫa s’écrit?’, ‘quel âge as-tu?’ and ‘quelle est ta couleur préférée?’. We also started to learn how to say names of family members, for example, brother and sister.

In Art, we had a brief look at the work of Shaun Tan. We also made our own 'scene' and gave it a title. Following this, we practised sketching our scene carefully in our sketch books. Over the coming weeks, we will be exploring how we can create sequenced imagery to share and tell stories.  Have a look at us hard at work sketching in the gallery.

Home Practice

Reading

Please read for 20 minutes each evening to an adult at home.  Make sure you discuss the story and the characters.  Find the meaning of any new words too.  Reading every night will help you read more fluently and with understanding. 

Counting

This week, please practise counting in 100’s – draw a line and some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers down as you count up.  When you count down, cover the numbers up, say the number, then reveal what you have got written down to check you’ve said the correct number.

Count in 100’s

For example, start at 0 and count up to 1500 and back again 

0   100   200   etc                      1500   1400   1300   etc

For example, start at 278 and down up to 1878 and back again

278    378    478           etc              1878   1778   1678   etc

Times tables

You should have been given your times table target this week. Please therefore practise your times table in preparation for your test next week.  Ask someone at home to test you on your tables – can you recall them quickly and accurately?

Remember you can also practise your tables playing Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

Another app for practising tables and number facts is One Minute Maths from White Rose.  It is free to download from the AppStore and PlayStore. There are lots of excellent games you can play which will help you brush up your mental maths skills.  Please do your best to access this fabulous free resource!  Knowing your tables and number facts off by heart is crucial and will help you in many different areas of maths.

It is crucial that you learn all of your table facts as this will help you with many aspects of maths.

Spellings

Next week, our spellings will involve revisiting and revising the possessive apostrophe with singular proper nouns. Therefore, there will be no spellings to learn. Instead, we will practise this spelling rule each day in class. You will be tested on this rule next Wednesday.  

Sumdog challenges

You have been set 2 challenges on Sumdog:

• A maths challenge adding and subtracting numbers mentally
• A times tables challenge based on the 5 and 10 times tables

Please make sure you log on and have a go!  Little and often is the key to success!

Have a fabulous weekend

The Year 4 Team

Year 5 Blog Friday 15th September

Date: 15th Sep 2023 @ 3:57pm

Happy Friday and welcome to your Friday Blog. 

It has been our first full week in Year 5 and it has been fantastic. 

We loved our well earned Golden Time on Friday. 

Golden Time Gallery. 

In English we have been reading our class novel Goth Girl. We studied the main character Ada and then described our own character. 

We have also been looking at proper nouns and common nouns. 

A proper noun is the name of a specific person, place or thing, it usually has a capital letter. 

Spain, Primark, KitKat, Lucy. 

A common noun is the name for a type of person, place or thing. 

country, shop, chocolate, girl. 

In maths we have been using place value to order and compare numbers with hundreds of thousands and thousandths. 

We started our new science topic on forces. We investigated to answer the question, What is a force?

We used playdough, toy cars, ramps, and magnets to answer this question. 

We found that a force is a push or pull that can:

Make something move, speed something up, slow something down, change the shape of something, or change the direction of something. 

You can see us in action here. 

In RE we spoke all about our qualities and how we were made to be like God. 

We came up with some qualities like:

I am honest

I am humble

I am positive

I am passionate

I am thoughtful. 

Home Practice

Reading

Please read out loud every day for 20 minutes. Try to identify proper nouns and common nouns. 

Spelling

All of your spellings have the letter string -ough. They make a different sound in different words. Please practise in different ways every day. 

bough          cough          dough          enough          bought          plough          though          thought          through          thorough          rough          although          brought 

Counting

Count out loud in:

6s from 0 to 72 and back again          0, 6, 12, ...

7s from 0 to 84 and back again          0, 7, 14, ...

12s from 0 to 144 and back again       0, 12, 24, ...

Times tables

Please practise your tables target every day. 

Sumdog

Times Tables Challenge

Spelling Challenge

Maths competition

Have an amazing weekend! 

Year 6 Blog Friday 15th September 2023

Date: 15th Sep 2023 @ 3:41pm

Welcome to a Year 6 weekly blog.

We have had individual and sibling pictures taken this week with everyone looking super smart in their autumn uniforms. They should take a couple of weeks to come back to us, if you are thinking of ordering any.

Our leadership roles have been announced this week. Congratulations to everyone for receiving a leadership role, whether that be as the house point team, sports captains, eco team, reading ambassadors, school council, science ambassador, golden team or digital leaders.

On Thursday, St Oswald’s football A and B teams began their leagues. The A team came away with a win and a loss, with the B team winning both games. The pupils did themselves proud and gave a super effort as a team.

This week’s learning in Year 6:

• We have continued our place value knowledge in Maths through comparing, ordering and rounding whole numbers and numbers with three decimal places.

• In English we worked hard to describe the character, The Moor, from our Aladdin story. We discussed how evil he is, gathering great vocabulary from each other. We then analysed a character description from another story to understand how we can portray the evilness in our own character description. The results can be seen in our Year 6 gallery.

• In RE, we read passages from Isaiah who spoke about the power of God’s love. We used these quotes to make links to our lives and how it makes us feel.

• In Geography, we introduced our topic, Mountains, and used atlases to search for the largest mountains ranges in the world and where they are located.

• In PE, we focused on using tactics in small teams against single opponents, including ‘finding a space’, ‘communication’ and ‘pick the easy pass’.

• In Art, we began our topic, ‘2D Drawing to 3D Making’ by exploring the artist Lubaina Himid, who is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire and has artwork displayed at the Tate Museum in Liverpool. Our project will explore the idea that our 2-dimensional illustrations can be transformed onto surfaces which can be manipulated into a 3-dimensional object.

• In PSHE, we explored how to be respectful to others when online. We discussed the word ‘boundaries’ and watched a video on how we can respect other people’s boundaries with different scenarios. We then created a ‘respect charter’ for young people to follow.

• In Science, we developed our knowledge of classification by grouping various animals into a range of categories.

This is the first week of our Home Practice. Please complete the following tasks by next Wednesday:

Reading – Use your Home Reading to read every night for 30 minutes. You also have a Reading Journal/Diary that must be used for the title of the book and any reading challenge chosen.

• You may change your book any day between Monday and Wednesday

Spellings (-ible / -able words)

• Sumdog (-ible / able wk 2)
• edible, horrible, possible, impossible, invisible, sensible, terrible, incredible, comfortable, considerable, enjoyable, miserable, reasonable, respectable, unacceptable.

Maths challenges:

• Counting:
  • This week we have been counting in decimal steps of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.25 Try to do the same out loud or with paper.
  • Draw a line with some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers as you count up or down, then double check it to make sure you have said the correct numbers.
  • g. Start with different numbers and count up 10 numbers then back again in 0.1:

5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, etc

and in 0.2:

6.5, 6.7, 6.9, 7.1, 7.3, 7.5, 7.7, etc          

Start at a number with two decimal places like 8.12 and count up 10 numbers and down again:

8.12, 8.32, 8.52, 8.72, 8.92, 9.12, etc        

Now try to count in 0.25 from 7 and 23 and 54:

7, 7.25, 7.50, 7.75, 8, 8.25, etc

• Sumdog (Times Tables - week 2)
  • Each child has their own tables target which they should know. The Sumdog challenge may relate to their target but this week we have focused on 3s and 4s, which will be great practice for the future. (Every Tuesday there is a tables test).

• Sumdog (Place Value - week 2)
  • This week’s learning is to practice questions on the value of each place and be able to compare numbers up to 1 000 000.
  • For further maths work, please visit the ‘Maths Training’ section which you can find in the tasks box on the left of the main screen. This will enable your child to push their learning further with the skills that Sumdog has given them, following a recent diagnostic test.

Year 3 Friday 15th September 2023

Date: 15th Sep 2023 @ 12:51pm

Welcome to your Friday Blog

This week we have been working hard in all our subjects and are continuing to shine as juniors!

We have been enjoying The Twits and have been looking at speech in the story. This has helped us to write in full sentences, remembering to write one idea at a time. The children acted some scenes out and even wrote their own scripts. 

In maths we have been learning how add and take away 10s and 100s. We have also been working hard on our place value and explainging our ideas. This has been tricky but everyone has worked hard and made super progress with their learning this week. 

In our PE we have been learning some new tactics and strategies to pass the ball in a game of netball. We explored bounce, chest and lob passes as well as working as a team.

In our Geography learning we have been finding out about the counties of England and describing where they are located using our geography vocabulary. Here is a knowledge organiser showing the learning we will be meeting in the coming weeks.

In our Science we planned an investigation asking if longer arms resulted in longer throwing distances. We deecided to meassure our arms and see if the longest arms threw the furthest. After taking our experiment outside we found out that arm length and throw length we not linked. We then talked about what we could test next. Super Science Year 3! Check out our gallery.

This week in French our lesson was all about ‘La France’. We looked through some photos and information about France, discussing each point and sharing what we already knew. This included: the French flag, the French Speaking World, the location of France, the capital city of Paris, La Tour Eiffel, Le Sacré Coeur, Notre Dame, Les Champs Élysées, Le Louvre, La Siene, Disneyland, the Euro currency and some typical French food. The children then designed their first page in their books to show everything they knew about ‘La France’.

Home Practice

Reading

Read every night for at least 20 minutes. Regular reading is a great habit to get into. It will make all the difference as your children move through the juniors, allowing them to access more and more of our curriculum.

Spellings

Your children will have brought home a spelling card with their spellings to practise.

We have been learning to apply our phonics knowledge to our spellings and finding patterns. 

We have also added some ideas on how to practise these at home. They are also available on Sumdog, practising little and often is the key!

Maths

We have set two maths challenges this week on Sumdog. Please practise the three times tables to improve accuracy and recall speed. We have also set a challenge on reading and counting three digit numbers.

Please also practise counting regularly to build up number fluency.

Count forwards and backwards in 10s from any 3 digit number. 

Eg. 157, 167, 177,187, 197, 207

Have a lovely weekend

The Year 3 Team

Year 4 Blog Friday 15th September 2023

Date: 15th Sep 2023 @ 11:17am

Welcome to your Friday blog. We’ve had a great week in Year 4.  We’ve been settling in to our new routines and been working extremely hard.

In English, we listed ideas for and against Michael and his family sailing around the world. We then wrote a balanced argument explaining in more detail arguments for and against the sailing adventure. We tried our best to give detail and use paragraphs.  

In Maths, we learnt more about place value to 10 000 using part whole diagrams, and partitioning and recombing numbers.  In addition, we built on our learning of decimal tenths and used place value counters to help with our understanding. We also compared whole and decimal numbers using the greater than and less than symbols.   

In RE, we learnt about Jesus’ human family and discussed the names we recognised from the Bible. In addition, we read the story of Abraham, the father of a great nation, who trusted God and discussed the reasons for his actions.

In History, we started our Romans topic.  We learnt where the Roman Empire started and when. 

In Computing, we explored Publisher. We used different shapes to try and make a symmetrical pattern, including rotating, resizing and adding colour to the shapes.

In PSHE, we discussed what makes a person happy. We shared our ideas and then wrote words and illustrated our thoughts in our books. We came up with some lovely ideas including family, friends, compliments, smiles, sports and hobbies. We also discussed as a class what our ground rules should be during the PSHE lessons. 

In Science, we started the topic Living Things and their Habitats. The first lesson was learning about the 7 Life Processes: Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition. We used the acronym MRS GREN to help us remember what these were and explain what each one means.

Home Practice

Reading

Please read for 20 minutes each evening to an adult at home.  Make sure you discuss the story and the characters.  Find the meaning of any new words too.  Reading every night will help you read more fluently and with understanding. 

Counting

This week, please practise counting in 10’s – draw a line and some marks on it like I do in class. You could write the numbers down as you count up.  When you count down, cover the numbers up, say the number, then reveal what you have got written down to check you’ve said the correct number.

Count in 10’s

For example, start at 0 and count up to 120 and back again 

0   10  20   etc                      120   110   100   etc

For example, start at 157 and count up to 207 and back again

157   167   177        etc              207   197   187   etc

Times tables

You should have been given your times table target this week. Please therefore practise this times table in preparation for your test next week, on Wednesday (20^th September 2023).  Ask someone at home to test you on your tables – can you recall them quickly and accurately?

Remember you can also practise your tables playing Hit the Button and timestables.co.uk

Another app for practising tables and number facts is One Minute Maths from White Rose.  It is free to download from the AppStore and PlayStore. There are lots of excellent games you can play which will help you brush up your mental maths skills.  Please do your best to access this fabulous free resource!  Knowing your tables and number facts off by heart is crucial and will help you in many different areas of maths.

Spellings

Here are this week’s spellings. You will be tested on these words next Wednesday.

treasure      measure       pleasure       enclosure    closure

displeasure  composure    leisure         exposure      disclosure

address       appear         breadth       answer         accidentally 

Sumdog challenges

You have been set 3 challenges on Sumdog:

• A maths challenge to recognise the place value of each digit in a 4 digit number
• A times tables challenge based on the 2 and 10 times tables
• A spelling challenge based on the spellings above

Please make sure you log on and have a go!  Little and often is the key to success!

Thank you for attending our Meet the Teacher meeting on Thursday evening.  We have attached the PowerPoint below.

Have a lovely weekend

The Year 4 Team

Year 2 Blog Friday 15th September

Date: 14th Sep 2023 @ 4:08pm

We have had a great week of learning in Year 2 this week. We are becoming more confident in our new routines and becoming part of Year 2. Our focus this week has been ‘Super Listening’.

In Maths, we have continued our learning of Place Value. We have looked at tens and ones, both with the equipment and drawing lines and dots.

In English we have read ‘The Bear and the Piano’. The children have also written sentences about different WOW pictures from Pobble. The children are continuing their focus on sentence structure.

In RE this week the children have listened to the creative story. The children have drawn what they ‘Wonder’ about the beauty around them.

In Art, our topic is Draw and Explore. We have explored the outdoor environment to create our very own pictures of nature. The children created brilliant nature pictures including; butterflies, boats, faces and fire-pits.

In computing this week the children have explored ‘what I.T is’ and what we use computers for.

Forest School

In our first session we played a game around the log circle and talked about we are looking foward to.

We went for a walk to see what is growing. We also heard bird song. We sat around our new fire pit - we can't wait to use it!

It was all about team-work in our second session. We worked together to build an obstacle course using logs and branches.We tested the courses to make sure they were safe and we had a go on each others. Some of them had quite challenging balancing and jumping elements.

Thanks for sending in wellies.

Home Practice

Reading

In Year 2, children should read for at least 15 minutes every night and talk about the book. This will help with understanding the text and learning new words.

You could look in a thesaurus and see what other words have the same meaning as the one you have found.

Please date, sign and leave a small comment when you have read with your child and make it clear that you have finished a book, then we know we can change it. For Example - 14.09.22 Max’s Box. Read to page 6, really enjoying the book or good sounding out of tricky words or struggled with the word – because/finished the book. MG.

Reading books are changed every MONDAY. You will receive 2-4 books depending on their length, they should last the week, if you read a little each night. However, if you need to change a book at any other time, we will change it as needed.

Spellings

Please practise these spellings for your quiz on Wednesday (20.09.23). A sheet will go home every Wednesday with the spelling list on. This is for home practise only and can be kept with you.

Here are the spellings for this week:

a                     are

do                   said

to                    says

of                   were

the                  today

Maths

At home, can you count forwards and backwards in ones? Start at 0 and count up to 30. Challenge yourself and go to 50!

Can you notice numbers around your home and outside on a walk?

Sumdog

You will have a place value and 2x table challenge to be completed by next week.

Log in at www.sumdog.com

Next week we will send home Sumdog codes in case the children have forgotten these from last year.

Our PE day is going to be FRIDAY.

Our BOOK change will be MONDAY.

You will get SPELLINGS on WEDNESDAYS and a quiz will be the following WEDNESDAY.

SumDog challenges will be set every FRIDAY.

We have our harvest festival in a couple of weeks. Please send in any spare tins and packets for our class collection. Thank you.

Have a great weekend.

Year 2 Team :) 

Year 1 Blog - Friday 15th September 2023

Date: 13th Sep 2023 @ 5:15pm

Welcome to your Friday blog. We were all more comfortable in the cooler weather.

English

This week, we have been reading '5 Minutes Peace' by Jill Murphy. We learnt all about a mum who just wants some peace and quiet from her children! We learnt the names of the characters and labelled pictures of them, we have ordered the story, made puppets, wrote our own independent sentences about the story and wrote about how the characters are feeling. (Furious was one word that was mentioned!)

If you have any of the Large Family books at home, please read them together!

Phonics

Some of us have been recapping phase 3 igh in sigh and ear and dear and some of us have started phase 5 and learnt ay in day and ou in shout.

Click here to sing the igh song.

Click here to sing the ay song.

Maths

We learnt about making numbers from 10 to 20 using a 10 and some 1s, "one 10 and 6 ones is 16'. We used ten frames and counters, straws and blocks to represent the numbers. 

In our counting we sang songs which practised counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. 

R.E.

We started our 'families' topic this week and learnt all about different families. We found that lots of people can be in a family! We drew a picture of our family and labelled them.

P.E.

We focused on our hopping and jumping skills this week. We are so good at this already!

Art

We had an amazing art lesson! We started our 'spirals' topic. We watched a video on how to draw a spiral and then made two of our own - one on a big piece of paper and one in our sketchbook.

P.S.H.E.

This week, we talked about likes, dislikes and how we are all unique. We learnt what unique means and put our finger print into our class PSHE because, we have unique finger prints!

Geography

We continued to learn about Longton, focusing on our school and our classroom. We learnt about aerial plans and photographs, and drew our own birds eye view map of our classroom.

Science

We started our animals including humans learning this week. We compared different animals by how they look. We learnt that humans are mammals and how we are similar/different to other animals.

Forest School

In our first session we played a game around the log circle and talked about we are looking foward to.

We went for a walk to see what is growing. We also heard bird song. We sat around our new fire pit - we can't wait to use it!

It was all about team-work in our second session. We worked together to build an obstacle course using logs and branches.We tested the courses to make sure they were safe and we had a go on each others. Some of them had quite challenging balancing and jumping elements.

Thanks for sending in wellies.

Home Practice (Sumdog)

Phonics - ay (day) OR ear (dear) OR revision words

Maths - Numbers to 20

Counting- Count in 1s forwards and backwards from different starting numbers. Try to go beyond 20.

The log in for Sumdog is on a white laminated card in the reading book bag.

Please try to read every night, even just for five minutes!

Reception Blog - Friday 15th September 2023

Date: 13th Sep 2023 @ 8:16am

Our first full week in School has been fantastic!

All of the children have remembered our school routines for the new week; coming through the gate by themselves, finding their peg and their carpet places, fantastic!

This week this children have continued to learn everyones names, how to choose in our classroom nicely and how to tidy our choosing areas the correct way.

We have done a drawing of who is in our family, started the Drawing Club, which is all about the Story of the colour Monster, had our first PE lesson and learnt all about circles in Art.

On Friday (we will call this Fab Friday) we had our first Yoga and Forest school sessions with Hannah and Mrs Corbett, whilst Mrs Robinson was in class and we learnt all about how families grow and change, we also talked about how God loves us.

To finish our fantastic week, we all went to our very first Golden Assembly with the rest of the school. We were so good that all of the staff throughout the school have said how fantastic we did!

Big well done to Reception!

Year 6 Blog Friday 8th September 2023

Date: 8th Sep 2023 @ 6:46pm

Welcome to the first of Year 6s weekly blogs.

Well done to all the pupils for completing the first week of Year 6. They have all been exceptional in transitioning into the routines and getting used to the expectations of this new year.

Thank you to everyone who has worked hard to complete their summer holiday autobiographies. They read really well, which has created a super display. Next week, we hope to hear about everyone's life story next week.

This week in Year 6:

• We have improved our place value knowledge in Maths through identifying, comparing and partitioning whole numbers and numbers up to 10 million.

• In English we are reading ‘Aladdin’ by Phillip Pullman. The children have used clues to predict what this edition may be about and have written well as the new version of Aladdin.

• In Geography, our first lesson focused on using atlases to search for various cities around the world, and using coordinates to help others identify them.

• For RE, we have also begun our first topic of ‘Loving’ and what the class believe unconditional love means to them.

• In PE, ‘Invasion Games’ is our theme for the next few weeks, focusing on improving our throwing and catching skills and starting to develop advanced tactics to give an advantage for the attacking team. We have used the sport of netball and handball to explore this through.

• In PSHE, we have started our topic, ‘Online Safety’ by discussing scenarios of the impact on sharing online content.