All about Christmas

This week, it's been all about Christmas! We have been writing letters to santa, making Christmas cards and decorating our classroom full of Christmas crafts! We were lucky to have two parents volunteer on Friday to help us to make salt dough Christmas ornaments; thank you Cynthia and Maria! We can't wait to decorate them next week! This week we have also been working hard on our Christmas performance ready for next Tuesday. We can't wait to show you our Christmas play!

The older children had lots of fun learning about coordinates in Maths this week. When we gained a deeper understanding of how x and y axis' works, we played games of Battleship, which everyone really loved! Later in the week we looked at how we can use coordinates to translate whole shapes to different areas of a grid using positional instructions. 

In Literacy we read a short book called Baby Jesus' Christmas Party, which tells the nativity story from the Innkeepers perspective. We then wrote diary entries as the Innkeeper, retelling our account of the night Jesus was born. 

We looked at different ways to make Christmas Pop up cards in Design and Technology, and will continue to do these until next week. 

On Friday, the school went into Llinars market to perform songs from our Christmas play to the public. We raised lots of money for our end of year trip, and everyone had a great time.

Work experiences

This week, we have been working hard on our handwriting and using lines to help us to form letters correctly with ascenders and descenders. We will take some of these handwriting sheets home with us so we can practise over the Christmas holidays.
In Phonics, we have been consolidating our knowledge of digraphs. We are finding them rather tricky to remember so we need to practise them every day! The sounds we have learnt are: oa (goat), ee (leek), oo (moon), ai (rain), ch (chicken), sh (shoe), ng (ring)
We have been making Christmas decorations to get us in the festive spirit. This included snowflakes to help us with our fine motor skills and paper chains which we made in pairs where we had to work as a successful team.
We have also been practising for our Christmas play and can't wait to share our acting and singing with you!
In Key Stage 2/3 we welcomed the younger children to join in with our Christmas production rehearsal, and they have been fantastic. As always, may I ask that you encourage the children to listen to the songs for the production at home as regularly as possible. 
We also had fun designing and creating a Christmas banner to hang in the streets of Llinars. It was amazing how fast we were able to create the pictures by the end of the week. Well done to all involved! 
The older children had an invaluable experience as they spent time volunteering to work at local businesses around the town. They became waitresses, mechanics and veterinarians in a fun-filled few days.

Presentation of Projects november

This week the older children have been continuing to use different  methods for adding, multiplying and dividing fractions, as well as simplifying other fractions.

In Literacy, we studied poems by the poet Pie Corbett, who uses repetition and similes to describe different themes. We all wrote two verses each for a class poem using the same repetition techniques as Pie Corbett. 

Later in the week, we were solving "What Am I?" riddles and had a lot of fun creating our own. 

We also began learning a new song, Launch Party, to be included in our end of year Christmas performance. 

Finally, I'd like to say a huge well done to all the children for their excellent presentation of their learning from the previous month at our Presentation of Projects ceremony.

This week in English, the children have been continuing their work on rhyming and there's been a noticeable improvement in their understanding in this area. We will continue with this unit for one more week and will write rhyming couplets by the end of the week. 

In Maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge of place value, counting in 2s, writing numbers and learning numbers up to 100. We have been using number lines and 100 squares to help us. 

We have been carefully watching our plants grow with much excitement! The younger children are excited to see their plant each day and love watching it steadily grow and watering it. They are continuing to learn the vocabulary: stem, leaves, root, soil, seed and using the vocabulary to talk about it. 

We have also been learning about different professions so that we are ready to go out in the local area to visit some work places and businesses. We talked about the different job roles, places of work and what we would like to be when we grow up. We presented this information in our presentation on Friday to the parents.

Homo Sapiens

The older children began the week in exciting fashion by visiting the local police station in Llinars. They spoke to police officers and even had a look in one of the holding cells! 

In Literacy, we finished off our Monster Poems and began looking at the differences between structured and free verse poems in preparation for next week's lessons. 

We continued working on geometry in our Maths lessons by investigating area, as well as perimeters of compound shapes. 

We also thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the Science museum on Wednesday.

Finally, we have been completing our projects on Antarctica for our Geography lessons during the week.

This week in English, the children have been learning how to rhyme for our unit on Poetry. It's a difficult skill to learn and we have been working on it all week using picture cards to help with vocabulary and playing games such as rhyming bingo. We will continue this unit of work next week. Please reinforce rhyming at home! 

In Maths, we have been consolidating our learning of numbers up to and past 20, counting both forwards and backwards. The year 1s and 2s have been counting in 10s, ordering numbers up to 40 and have a much better understanding of place value and a better recognition of numbers. We will continue learning numbers up to 100. 

We planted peas at the beginning of the week and have been watering them and watching them grow carefully. We are recording our observations and now that we have learnt the vocabulary associated with plants, we will be able to apply this to our observations. 

In Phonics, the children have been learning some difficult sounds: th, sh, ch and ng. Please reinforce these sounds at home. Some suggested words to read and write are: 

thin, thick, ship, shot, fish, wish, chip, chop, sing, wing, gong.