Half way through the (academic) year!

 

Just like that, we are half way through the academic year!

We have had such a good half term. It was great to sit down with you all this week to catch up - thank you for your time. 

A few things:

Seesaw.
Hopefully now you all have access to Seesaw from home if you want to use it - you should have received a sheet during our parent meetings (if you didn't, let me know!). This is completely optional. Please let me know if you have trouble accessing your child's home account and I'll see what I can do!

Home learning folders
Starting this week, we are moving from home learning books to home learning folders. This is to save glue, and the time takes to glue things in! Your child will have a new cardboard folder where I shall put their weekly spelling sheet and any maths homework. I will also put in it their common exception word spelling list, on card to ensure it is durable! 

Becoming fire marshals. 
The children have taken on the role of fire marshals in our story. They spent some time comparing modern fire fighting equipment to that used in 1666. Did you know they only had leather buckets, fire hooks, ladders and hand-pulled carts? The children drew pictures of themselves with the equipment they'd need. Next, we did some work on materials - the children were given the question: 'if you had to make a fire hook to pull houses down, what material would you make it from?' This led to an interesting few  lessons about materials and their properties. After half term the children will attend their Fire Marshal training to find out how to fight fires in 1666!

Phonics and Spellings.
This week has been all about assessing the children's phonics and spellings. Their updated spelling cards will be sent home. This means there will be no spellings set over half term, but if you have some spare time please do help your children to practise their common exception words. As usual, I have highlighted the ones they can spell, so please work on the ones not yet highlighted!

At our parent meetings I mentioned the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check. As mentioned, the children will not know they are being tested at all. If you want more information about the check, and to look at some past phonics checks, please see this website: https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/article/phonics-screening-check#past-papers.

Maths.

Year 1 children have continued to look at numbers 20 to 50, then ended the week by making a giant 100-grid together in the hall. It took a lot of team work! 

Year 2 children have been looking at the five times table this week - multiplying and dividing by five. We had a good discussion about exactly what the division symbol means and came up with 'shared equally between' or 'shared into groups of'. 

Over half term.
Please do plenty of reading with your child, and if you'd like other things to do, have a look at the maths facts booklets I gave out during parent meetings for some ideas on learning maths facts. You can also, of course, help your child to practise some common exception word spellings!

I look forward to seeing you all after half term,

From Mrs Simpson