Hello everyone,

We hope you are well and safe. What a first half term it has been. We are incredibly proud of how the children have settled so well into their learning and we would like to thank you for all of your help and patience along the way.

In English, the children have continued to research lots of facts and statistics about hairy eight-legged beasts and have made a bank ready to write their own fact file on a spider they have designed. This week we have also been exploring different sentence structures when using subordinating conjuctions and looking at how we can move our main and subordinate clauses. On returning back to school the children will be well equipped to plan, draft and edit their own non-chronological report inspired by the class text ‘Spider Diaries’.

In Maths this week we started to look at money problems. The children explored the different values of money and their equivalnce (100p = £1). With this knowledge, they were able to answer multistep problems that included addition (how much altogether), subtractoin (change) or even both. To help them answer these problems children were using a range of strategies and representations such as bar models and numberlines in order to help them. Our next Maths topic, we will be focusing on length studying conversion, perimeter and area.

In Science this half term, we have been exploring simple electrical circuits. Children now understand what a closed and open circuit is,  what components a circuit needs and how to modify one. Children are now prepared to make their own circuits for our next DT project ‘Making torches’ whereby the children will be making safety torches for children to use on Bonfire Night. We have asked the children to keep hold of materials like toliet tissue rolls, so if you have any lying about we would really appericiate the donation.

Some quick reminders,

• Please continue 10 minute daily reading with your child over the half term.
• Spelling and vocabulary homework has been sent out and will be due back the first Thursday of Autumn 2.
• Reading journals will be due back on the first Thursday.
• MyMaths and Timestable rockstars have been set. A really good timestable resource on Times Table rockstars is the soundcheck tool!
• Please send your child in their PE kits on first Thursday.

We really hope you have a fantastic half term and look forward to seeing you in November!

Stay safe and keep on smiling,

Miss Jackson-Nash, Miss Honeywell and Mrs Cairns.