10.5.18 Sandymere Learning Update

Date: 10th May 2018 @ 9:56am

Well I must begin with a HUGE thank you for all the families that created and ‘flew’ in their superhero fruit and vegetables. They look amazing! Well done. Also a SHOUT OUT to Mya for completing the secret reading task. Raffle tickets have been placed in the box. 

Our superhero theme is continuing in English with a look at the villain in the story the Evil Pea. We have created our own villains and considered some of the mischief they might get up to then recorded our ideas in sentences. The children in Sandymere are developing their independent writing skills and using full stops, capital letters and ‘and’ with less prompting form an adult. Let’s really practise this at all opportunities – perhaps you could keep a diary at home? Send a letter to a friend or relative or even write to Team Sandymere. Today the children are going to be looking at the story map for Supertato and begin to consider changes they could make to the story so that they begin to plan their own. I can’t wait to see what they come up with!

The superheroes have flown into our maths lessons too and we have been weighing and comparing the Superveg using balance scales. We quickly realised that Supersquash (butternut squash) was a lot heavier than the Superbaby Potato. The children used lanaguge such as heavier, lighter and equal to and generated lots of mathematical discussion around the weight of items. Great job!

In Science we have learnt about animals eating habitats and the words omnivore, herbivore and carnivore. We then sorted animals and statements into the three categories. To help the children to remember the meanings of each word we came up with some fun recall strategies:

Carnivore - C ARRRRRR nivore (roar like a lion eating his meat)

Herbivore – HERB ivore (think of herbs then think of plants and flowers)

Omnivore – OM NOM NOM NOM …. (Enjoys eating everything!)

We also found time for a true/false quiz to recall the key facts for these key groups of animals. SECRET TASK ALERT - can your child draw and label one animal from each group? Simply pop it on my desk on Monday morning.

The children took part in a wonderful dance lesson this week with Mrs Pile. They were using their bodies to create movement’s link to the theme of Fog. The lesson began with a video clip of foggy weather then the children took their inspirations in to the main hall and practised their own moves. A SHOUT OUT to Brooke for her excellent listening skills and creative moves.

As we are fast approaching the phonics screening in June it is really important that all children are reading regularly at home, practising segmenting and blending tricky words and completing their phonics homework. Of course all of these things should be happening on a regular basis anyway but it is ever more important this term to ensure that our children are well prepared. With that in mind we will be sending home a past phonics screening paper for you and your child to work through. There are 40 words to segment and blend. 20 real and 20 alien words. Your child can use robot arms, sound buttons or snowballing to support them. There are some children who prefer to sight read them however this is challenging with alien words therefore some of the above strategies are necessary. Thank you for your continued support. 

Also this week we had the most wonderful visit from Pamela who has travelled all the way from Uganda to share her experiences of school life in Uganda. We were so lucky that Pamela had time to visit our classroom to answer questions about life in Uganda. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Williamson on behalf of Team Sandymere