29.11.19 Sandymere Learning Update

Date: 29th Nov 2019 @ 9:41am

Brrrrr… it’s a cold day and is definitely starting to feel a little festive out and about.  Within our classroom we have been busy practising the Christmas songs ready for Monday’s trip to St Chad’s Church to sing the Christmas story.  The children have been so enthusiastic with the songs and many know lots of the words off by heart.   Well done Sandymere!  If your child wishes to listen along at home then they can access the songs via this link

https://www.outoftheark.co.uk/everyone-loves-a-baby.html

This link gives a sample of each song so a fabulous reminder of the tunes they will be singing along to.

Thank you to everyone who has signed consent and paid the money for Monday’s visit.  It’s certainly going to be a magical experience for everyone involved.

In English this week we have looked at the traditional tale of Jack and the Beanstalk but Nibbles the book monster has been up to mischief and changed the story again!  I think Nibbles was a little curious and wanted to meet the giant.  We went on to describe the giant in our own words then imagined we were Nibbles and wrote a diary from his perspective using personal pronoun I and also bringing our plurals work into the lesson by adding ‘s’ and ‘es’ to items that there were more than one of.  An excellent idea came from Ruby with the giant ‘big, stompy boots’.

In maths we continued to look at subtraction but we introduced a new term of ‘finding the difference’ between two numbers.  Such as ‘what is the difference between 8 and 10?’  The children worked hard and began to use number lines and Numicon to help them to work out the calculations.  They have also explored fact families this week.  This is proving to be a little trickier so we will be revisiting this again.

Don’t forget to keep practising the weekly spellings at home.  The words we set are words that we expect the children to be able to spell by the end of year 1 and use consistently within their day to day writing.  There are many words to learn so it is important that these are practised regularly so that your child is confident and secure in spelling the common exception words and tricky words.  The new words are now live under the homework tab on our class page.

Guided reading has been fun this week with us continuing our journey with the book Whoops!  We are getting very good at making predictions based on the text and images.  We have had lots of discussions around why we think the characters are feeling and behaving in a certain manner and are now considering the characteristics of the old lady.  The children have predicted that she is maybe magical!  All will be revealed next week.

Thank you to all the parents who are reading regularly with their child.  Don’t forget to make a note in your child’s diary if they read their book banded book or phonically decodable book or tell us what they think of their library book.  We have started the process of Benchmarking your child and hopefully there will be many children moving on through the book bands.

Mrs Pile tells me that the children were amazing in PE this week and she was very impressed with their quiet and sensible attitudes.  It’s lovely to hear positive feedback about our class.  Well done children.

Don’t forget that next week is Enterprise Week where each class is setting up their own business with a view to selling a product or experience at the Christmas Fair on Friday after school.  It’s sure to be a wonderful event.  I can tell you that there will be many festive treats on sale which will be perfect stocking fillers. Keep your eyes peeled next week for poster advertising the class stalls.

Thank you for the donations received for the class Christmas themed hamper.  We have just a few more days to fill it up so please send any festive items such as mince pies, Christmas cake, nibbles, after dinner mints, tea/coffee into school next week. Thank you.

Have a wonderful weekend.  See you all on Monday.

Mrs Williamson on behalf of Team Sandymere.