Nine children from year 3 and 4 took part in a festival of badminton at King Alfred's. It was a fantastic afternoon and the children all really enjoyed the opportunity to learn and practise some new skills. 

Dear parents and carers,

In our English lessons this week we have been finishing off the editing and revising of our wonderful "Glide" stories. I am really impressed with how carefully the children have worked and how much progress they've already made in their writing. Next term we're going to be working on a different story- Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce, as part of our Space topic work.

In maths this week we've been rounding off our work on statistics by looking at how to read and interpret tables. The children found using timetables difficult, so it would be fantastic if you can have a go at telling the time and thinking about duration (how long something lasts) at home. I know that people don't tend to use timetables as much these days, but if you can find any (like the Radio Times or even bus timetables) that would be brilliant. After half term we're going to be working on multiplication and division, including multiples, factors, prime numbers etc, as well as multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000.

​In science this week we've finished our work on Earth and Space. We carried out our first end of unit assessment, and the children did exceptionally well. Next half term we're going to be doing some work on living things and their habitats. 

I have set some spelling on Spelling Shed for half term, but other than that, there's no official homework. 

I hope that you all have a wonderful half term and that the children return refreshed for the run up to Christmas :)

Mrs B
Three things to ask your child this week:

1. How do you read a timetable?
2. What was the best thing about writing your Glide story?
3. What's the difference between orbiting and rotating?

​In English this week we have been working in pairs to write our own poems about a character in a school class, inspired by the poetry collection that we have been looking at, ‘A Kid in My Class’. We started off by thinking of different personalities that we could write about; there were lots of brilliant suggestions, from a book worm to a gymnast! Then, the children thought of lots of ideas to describe the personality they had chosen and began to put the ideas together as a poem.
In our computing lesson today we learnt more about using a Word Document. We learnt how to edit our work and format the text by changing the font size and style. We then worked in our pairs and typed up our poems. I was really impressed with the finished products!
In maths we have focused on adding two 3-digit numbers. We began by getting used to adding two 3-digit numbers without any exchanges and once we had become confident we moved on to questions with exchanges.
This week’s spellings have been set on Spelling Shed; we will have a short test on Tuesday after half-term.
Spelling Rules:  Words with the prefix ‘re-’: means ‘again’ or ‘back.’
Redo
Refresh
Return
Reappear
Redecorate
Revenge
Review
Reply
Reaction
Rebound

This week Thames Class enjoyed a tag Rugby session with Danny Taylor to celebrate the Rugby World Cup.

We had a great Tag Rugby session yesterday with Danny Taylor to celebrate the World Cup!

In English, we have come to the end of our Train Ride story and have focused on using adjectives to describe the sea/ sand and used verbs/ adverbs to think about the action that Grandma did to Molly when they met at the train station and how she did it. Next week we will be planning and writing our own train ride stories. 

In Phonics we have focused on the 'ar' digraph and the 'igh' trigraph. We very much enjoyed playing this game to help us to spell words using the sounds that we have learnt www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/alien-escape?phase=3

In Maths we have continued our work on addition and have focused on writing addition number sentences, using part whole models and exploring number fact families within 10. 

In Music we have come to the end of our unit of work Hey You where we have listened to and appraised some old school hip hop tracks such as It's Like That by Run DMC. We have worked hard on learning to rap/ sing the Hey You song and finding the pulse of the music. We have used a variety of musical instruments to find the pulse too. 

In Computing this week we have started our work on E-Safety. We talked about what personal information is and the importance of keeping this private when online. For further information regarding E-Safety take a look at the thinkuknow website: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

 In English this week we have continued with our poetry work based on the collection ‘A Kid in My Class’. We have been really focusing on using our voices effectively by thinking about the expression we could use, by making our voices louder or quieter and even by changing the tempo. I was very impressed with the performances that the children did this week!
In maths we have carried on with our work on addition and subtraction. We have moved on to using 3-digit numbers and 2-digit numbers where there are 2 exchanges and everyone has been using the column method. The children have become much more confident using this method and we will continue to practise it next week.
We had a great Computing lesson on Friday afternoon. The children learnt how to use punctuation in a Word document and had fun writing quiz questions for their partner to answer. We also learnt how to save a document and find it again.
Next week we are having our second PE lesson on Monday instead of Thursday; we will be having a World Cup-inspired tag rugby session with Danny Taylor, our local sports partnership leader.
​
This week’s spellings have been set on Spelling Shed; we will have a short test on Tuesday.
Challenge Words:
Actual
Answer
Bicycle
Circle
Earth
Enough
Fruit
Island
Often
Popular

Dear parents and carers,

In our Engish lessons this week the children have worked very hard on editing, revising and now redrafting their "Glide" stories. This has been tricky for the children, but they have really been Steadfast Squirrels and persevered well. We've worked particularly on picking up on key writing skills, including what a sentence actially is (and how to spot where it finishes!) and also how to control the tense of our sentences by choosing the appropriate form of verb. Next week we'll be rounding this off by finishing the redraft and sharing our finished stories.

In maths this week the children have been working on reading and interpreting line graphs. They've drawn line graphs, read and interpreted them and also started solving problems with them. Next week we'll be moving on to looking at tables, including two-way tables and timetables before carrying out a quick end of unit assessment.

In science this week we've finished off our work on Earth and Space by looking at the movement of the Moon, including working out why we can only see one side of the Moon from Earth. We discussed our different ideas, before role-playing as the Sun, Moon and Earth to find out what really happens. We discussed the Moon's rotation and orbit of the Earth. Next week we'll be rounding this off by addressing any remaining misconceptions and doing an end of unit assessment.

On Monday next week we'll be doing a World Cup-inspired tag rugby session with Danny Taylor, our local sports partnership leader. 

As we are on an INSET day on Friday, I will be doing the weekly spelling test on Thursday instead (I have told the children this too!). It's a tricky set of "challenge" words this week, so I'd like the children just to have a really good try at learning as many as they can.
appreciate
cemetery
conscious
convenience
environment
immediately
language
sufficient
thorough
vegetable

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. When might you see or use a line graph in everyday life?
2. Why do we only see one side of the Moon from Earth?
3. How is your "Glide" story going?

On Tuesday Ock Class finished their DT work on cooking, by making the salads that they had planned for members of staff. The children worked hard on their hygiene skills as well as the skills they needed to cut and prepare the salad items. The salads were designed for each member of staff's needs and likes, as well as making sure that the meal was balanced.

Despite the look on my face in the photo, the salads were really delicious and we were all very impressed with the work that had gone into them. Well done Ock Class!

This week in maths we have started our unit on addition and subtraction beginning with adding and subtracting 1, 10, 100, 1000 from 4 digit numbers. We have been enjoying playing place value millionaire! We have also started a new initiative to support the children with progressing with their times tables in preparation for the new government testing in June. ‘Times
Table Tuesdays’ give the children an opportunity to test their knowledge of their times tables in curriculum steps. Each week the children try to match or better their score from the previous week. If they achieve 18/20 or more they can take another step up our class ladder. We are delighted with the children’s enthusiasm and look forward to celebrating their weekly achievements with a boogie to M People’s ‘Moving on up’ . To help support your child with their times tables please encourage them to practise verbally and through the MyMaths homework. Timestables.co.uk is a really useful website and includes a multiplication tables check which can help children to know which tables they need to work on.  

In English we have been continuing writing our newspaper report on Charlie and Grandpa Joe's visit to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. We have been focusing on relative clauses and use of inverted commas and other punctuation for direct speech.

Our spelling list to learn for this week are some challenge words from the year 3/4 spelling list:

1. calendar
2. appear
3. believe
4. grammar
5. increase
6. interest
7. opposite
8. straight
9. strength
10. women

In our topic work we have been finding out about Anglo-Saxon villages and in science we have been finding out about how changing environments can have a negative impact on the plants and animals that live there.