Owls Term 3 Letter

Happy New Year to you all, we hope you had a fun and relaxing holiday.

Our topic this term is Creature Homes. We will be looking at all types of homes for humans and animals and learning about the history of some of those homes. One of our new displays this term is pictured below:

There will be a piece of A5 card in everyone’s book bag as I would love some/all children to draw a creature to add to the home – or a creature and it’s home to place in an appropriate place on the display. (A creature can be human!)

Homework

Instead of weekly homework I wanted to set a term project for the children, to be handed in by Monday 8^th February. As we are all owls I would like the children to each make their own owl home which we can display at school – even better if they can make an owl to live in their home! There are 5 stars for every child who makes an owl home and brings it in to school. You may remember seeing some displayed last year at parent’s evening. I’ll send home some pictures and a link for a video clip I’m going to show in class.

Please read below to find more information on our learning this term:

Literacy

Our daily literacy lesson will continue to be Read Write Inc. All children are placed into small groups so they can learn at their best and at an appropriate level. They are regularly assessed by their group’s teacher and our Read Write Inc manager, Mrs Linden, and then moved on accordingly. This is a fast paced lesson in which children read and write daily, using their knowledge of sounds and helping their class mates along the way. We will also use our topic learning to give us plenty of writing opportunities, in particular, we will be looking at “That Pesky Rat” and “Owl Babies”. For our class book the children can choose to hear “Wind in the Willows”, or “Paddington”.

Numeracy

Our numeracy is taught through the Maths Makes Sense scheme which uses concrete objects such as cups and DM (decimetre) sticks so children can act out maths in addition to reading and writing it. This term we will be working towards vertical additions with 2 digit whole numbers; division with 1 digit whole numbers; measuring lines in cm and mass in g and kg; making 2D shapes and rotating them and addition and subtraction “real life stories”.

Topic

In science we are learning about the plants around us and their parts; and some building materials. In geography we will be looking at different environments around Britain, and building on our map knowledge as we use maps to record animals in our environment. For history we will be looking at  river barges and the Victorian era. Art and DT gives us lots of opportunities to consolidate our topic learning as we will practise our own river barge designs and make a booklet about creature homes.

We will continue to practise letters and numbers for our handwriting and aim to hear the children read as much as we can. We want to build confident readers who enjoy reading, and choose to do it for pleasure. So, we will change books twice a week so the children can read their books a couple of times and start to read with expression. To read for pleasure it is also essential that children understand what they are reading, so please ask them some of the questions below as you are reading:-

• Who was your favourite/least favourite character and why?
• Where was the story set?
• Can you think of a different ending to the story?
• What was your favourite/least favourite part of the story?
• How did the story make you feel at the end?
• List 2/3/5 new words you learned in the book
• Can you draw a story map for the book?

Show and Tell (Friday)

So that all children get an opportunity to share their items and news each week different groups will be given priority to go first. The group at the beginning of each list goes first and then if time allows we’ll work across. If children bring in topic related show and tell they will get a star!

8^th January – Surnames beginning with A-C, D-J, K-N, O-W

15^th January – Surnames beginning with D-J, K-N, O-W, A-C

22^nd January – Surnames beginning with K-N, O-W, A-C, D-J

29^th January – Surnames beginning with O-W, A-C, D-J, K-N

5^th February – Surnames beginning with A-C, D-J, K-N, O-W

12^th February – Surnames beginning with D-J, K-N, O-W, A-C

As always, if you have any queries or concerns please do come and see us. Looking forward to another fantastic term.

Mrs Gurney, Mrs Crockford and Miss Delaney.