17.5.18 Sandymere Learning Update

Date: 17th May 2018 @ 9:16am

We are now steaming towards half term – how time flies when you’re having fun! We have certainly had lots of fun this week in maths where we have been exploring finding half. The children have investigated how splitting shapes and objects in half means they need to be equal on BOTH sides and then went on to cutting up food and creating half of our own ‘fake’ pizza. Shhhhh - hopefully we will get the chance to make real ones next week! SHOUT OUTS to Ash and Astyn for their excellent positive attitude to maths this week.

 

In English we have revisited our basic skills checklist and discussed the importance of trying to use all our skills in all our writing including forming our letters correctly. On Monday we revised the letters we have learnt so far using the cursive script and we have been focussing on making sure we use these all the time in our writing. For further support with cursive handwriting please follow this link: https://www.teachhandwriting.co.uk/letter-formation.html and click on ‘How to form continuous cursive’. Also this week we are concluding the writing of our own versions of Supertato and writing a book review of Sue Hendra’s original book. SHOUT OUTS to Aiden and Isaac for their fabulous story writing. Lots of lovely ideas!

We have covered lots of science this week and have learnt a whole host of new vocabulary. We started the week by groupings animals in different ways then we learnt about animals groups such as reptiles, amphibians, and mammals and explored the features of each animal group. The children really enjoyed trying to sort their animals into the right groups with a few surprises along the way. A shark is a fish! A human is in the same group as a bear! Also in science we began to look at animal’s bodies and learnt that although animals have hands and feet, there are different names for these such as paws, hooves, claws. Next week we will continue to explore this vocabulary and also start to learn about the human body. SECRET TASK ALERT – Could you draw and correctly label your favourite animal? Make sure you use the correct animal body part names.

Mrs Pile took the children outside for PE this week and they enjoyed using small equipment to develop their skills in skipping, throwing and catching and moving in out of a space safely and carefully.

Such a busy week and there is still so much more to come - Don’t forget the children are having their Royal Wedding Celebration Picnic today!

Phonics homework is a practise screening list. Please encourage your child to sound button the words first so we can see their knowledge and understanding of the different phonemes. 

Remember:

Digraphs – two letters that make one sound sh/oa/ch/er

Trigraphs – three letters that make one sound igh/air/ear

Split Vowel digraphs – adding the e after a constant to make the vowel a long sound cake/bite/poke 

Many children have been Benchmarked in their reading this week and continued to make progress. Don’t worry, we haven’t finished working our way through the children yet so more will be done before the half term.

Have a lovely weekend (rumour has it that it’s going to be warm!)

Mrs Williamson on behalf of Team Sandymere