Highlights of the week:
Topic:
Our topic for this term is all about monarchy and power. The children will be researching different monarchs, looking at the role they played for their country. We will be having a dress up day on the 5th May to coincide with our parent event. The children have been talking about the different ‘character’ they could be, a servant, queen, knight, jester or perhaps maybe a horse!
Phonics:
We have been looking at a different sound each day this week as part of our revision for the phonics screening. The children have been reading and writing words with the following letter groups; oi, oy, ow, air and ear. We will be continuing with our revision for the next few weeks looking at a different letter group each day. The children have particularly enjoyed learning a song to support them remembering the ‘air’ letter group. Feel free to watch it with your child using the link below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdC72XSMuoc
We will be practising a past phonics screening ‘test’ with the children. Please be reassured that these are completed with a familiar adult and for the children it is just like reading with an adult!
If you would like to play some games online to support your child with their phonics screening please click on the link below. In this game your child needs to read words and sort them into real and nonsense words.
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/resources/phase/2/picnic-on-pluto
Maths:
This week we began our unit on multiplication and division. We will use pictures, arrays, number lines and 100 squares to help the children gain a deep understanding of multiplication and division. We have started this unit by looking at adding equal groups, recognising and explaining how they know when a group is equal or not. At this stage children do not explore multiplication formally.
We have been spending time counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and reminding ourselves of the different numerical patterns when counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. We have been enjoying singing lots of maths songs to help us remember them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8CEOlAOGas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nokRGhevCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_awKlEMyleA
English:
In English we will be learning about non-fiction texts. This supports our learning through topic and history.
The children have really enjoyed looking at lift-the-flap books this week, in particular finding out different facts about castles. They will be using the information they learn about non-fiction texts and information they learn on our Portchester castle trip to create their own mini non-fiction texts about castles. We look forward to sharing these with you at our parent event.
Computing:
This week we spent some time looking at ScratchJr. to help us develop our understanding of programming and coding. We created a ‘Sprite’ and spent some time learning how to move it around the screen. A ‘Sprite’ is a little cat character that the children can manipulate, change into a dog and change the colour of.
Science:
Our new unit is all about materials. This week we spent some time talking about all of the different things we already knew about materials. We encouraged the children to start using some of the scientific vocabulary we will be learning, including ‘waterproof’ and ‘absorb’. We have been discussing the different materials that could be used to build a castle to prevent enemy attack!
