Summer Term 1 Update 1

Hello Squirrels one and all. I hope you had a lovely Easter break. We are super happy to be back at school, even better with the sunshine too! 

Our first week back has been filled with plenty of outdoor learning and time in the sunshine. Highlights from this week are meeting the chicks and an outdoor collective worship with Reverend Dove at the church on Thursday. We celebrated creation and Earth Day 2021, as you can see from the photos below!

It is Squirrels' responsibility to let the chickens out on Monday mornings, Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings. We cleaned them out for the first time at Forest School on Tuesday and we're learning about them all the time. 

There has been a slight staffing shuffle across the school this term. Mrs Wright is now splitting her time between Squirrels and Hedgehogs, which means Miss Swain and Daphne Dog are spending more time in Squirrels in the mornings. 

Helping at Home

Following the disruption of lockdown 3.0, it will be hugely beneficial to keep key skills ticking along at home. The children are reminded regularly throughout the week to update/change their reading books when they need to, but please prompt your child to do so when you drop them off in the morning. 

This week's SPAG:

• Plurals - this week we covered a lockdown SPAG topic of plurals. We practised adding -s or -es to words depending on their ending. For most nouns, we simply need to add an -s. For nouns ending in sh, ch, x, z, or s, an -es needs to be added to show there is more than one of the noun. You can help your child by spotting when this occurs in reading and thinking of nouns to turn from singular to plural (or the other way around). Applying this spelling skill in sentence writing is very important. 
• Determiners - 'a' or 'an'. We also looked at determiners this week and are doing a good job of recognising when to use 'a' or 'an' in front of a noun. If a word begins with a vowel or a vowel sound, 'an' is needed. E.g. an orange, an apple, an Easter egg. Some of our favourite words from the week are 'an honest ...', 'an heir to the throne' and 'a university'. 

This week's maths: Fractions!

• We've talked about nothing but fractions this week. The children got off to a great start with recognising when shapes have or haven't been shared into equal parts. 
• Year 3 were able to explain that the bottom number on a fraction is called a 'denominator' and this tells us how many equal parts the shape has been shared into. The top number is called the 'numerator'. 
• Year 2 have been learning to recognise 1/2, 1/4, 3/4 and 1/3 of shapes and recall the words 'half', 'quarter' and 'thirds. Please practise this at home using pictorial representations or concrete objects (pizza and cake work well for this!)
• Year 3 have been counting in tenths and practising adding and subtracting simple fractions. For example, if I cut a pizza in 5 equal parts, I have fifths. If I eat 2/5 of the pizza, how many fifths of pizza will I have left? 5/5 - 2/5 = 3/5. Please practise simple addition and subtraction fraction number sentences at home, making sure the denominator is always the same. 

Doodle Homework

I have set additional maths (fractions) and English (determiners) homework on DoodleMaths and DoodleEnglish to help reinforce this week's learning. If you are able to, please complete this work on Doodle within the next week. 

Finally, below are some photos from our science experiment week. We've been learning all about different forces and investigated then taught each other about friction, gravity, air resistance, buoyancy and magnetism. 

 

  

Have a lovely weekend Squirrels!

From Miss Cartwright