8.2.18 Sandymere Learning Update

Date: 8th Feb 2018 @ 9:25am

Firstly a huge thank you to those of you who attended the All Ages Service on Sunday. It was a wonderful service and the children were absolutely fantastic. Both Mrs Snowden and George expressed how impressed they were with the children’s performance. Well done children!

Another thank you goes to those who read the blog and spotted the secret task. There were five children who brought in their explorers names and journeys. These are now proudly displayed on our ‘excellent examples’ board and ready for using next week!

This week in Sandymere has been all about writing. In English we are now planning and writing our own version of The Lion Inside. We began the week by reflecting on all the new and important skills we have learnt in English since Christmas and created Skills posters. It has to be said that even I was surprised at how much we have learnt in just four weeks! 

· Capital letters

· Full stops

· Using ‘and’ to join two clauses

· -er, -est, -ed suffixes

· Un- prefix

· Using ‘because’ to give reasons

· Collecting and using new vocabulary

· ? marks

· ! marks

· All with a good sprinkle of phonics!!

 

Phew! We are going to be fabulous writers if we can add all this into our own stories. On Tuesday we planned our own version where we swapped the lion for an elephant and the mouse became a marmoset. SECRET TASK ALERT – could you and your child find out a couple of facts about marmosets?

The story writing process is going really well with some fantastic vocabulary and use ‘and’ to extend sentences further. SHOUTS OUTS to Isaac and Izzy this week for their independent writing and application of basic skills. The children have really embraced the idea of story writing and I can’t wait to read the finished versions on Monday.

In maths this week we have been reinforcing our bonds to 10 and 20, addition to 20 and the use of a range of different mathematical equipment to help us to arrive at our answers. The children have shown greater independence and really enjoyed applying their learning to games and activities. SHOUT OUTS to Archie and Grace for spotting how the base 10 x 2 helped us to count on quickly for addition. Next week we are moving on to subtraction.

Also this week we have worked hard on our phonics and we also looked back at common exception words. We still need to work on the spelling of these words in particular like, was, they, said. If you could practise these at home we would really appreciate it.

Guided reading has focussed around Dougal’s Deep Sea Diary and the children have been looking at how the text is a diary, uses days of the week and personal pronoun I. Their challenge this week was to write the days of the week in order and spelt correctly. Most children are showing positive progress with these spellings but again there are a couple of days that are trickier. So practicing Wednesday and Saturday would be beneficial. 

That’s all for this week.

See you on Monday, hopefully with a voice!

Mrs Williamson on behalf of Team Sandymere