Greys class 7th February 2020

Date: 6th Feb 2020 @ 6:59pm

This week we continued with Meerkat Mail and worked towards writing a fact file about meerkats. We learned about the features of a factfile, the vocabulary  and the information we would need. We used dictionaries to find out the meanings of words, which was a pretty tricky task! The Year 1s ended up looking at how the Year 2s did this and then used picture dictionaries to find words, whilst the Year 2s continued with the primary dictionaries and by the end of the lesson felt a great sense of achievement and asked if they could now use dictionaries in their Phonics lessons to find out the meanings of their spellings. We spent Thursday researching meerkats on the ipads, using a variety of websites, like Kiddle, national geographic, ducksters and San Diego zoo to name but a few. We researched their habitats, diets and appearances and found out some very fascinating facts along the way. Armed with all this information we were ready to tackle Big Write on Friday and write our very own fact files.

 

Thank you all for your fabulous homework. It was lovely to share the different animals that you had chosen and are now on display in the classroom with our desert landscape and mob of meerkats. We are looking forward to a colder climate next week when we explore the North and South Poles. Please ensure that your homework is handed in by Tuesday so that we can share it together.

 

In Maths the Year 1s have been looking at place value and understanding that you need a ten and single digit to make a 2 digit number, such as, 60 + 4 =64. We have also been placing 2 numbers on a number line and finding 2-3 numbers, which might then go between these numbers. This was a lot trickier than it sounds and if anybody would like to practice this further at home that would be wonderful. The Year 2s have been working with fractions and finding ½ and ¼ of amounts. This was an extremely challenging couple of days and we used lots of resources to help us with this, by counting the number of items then dividing by half and then half again. By the end of the week we were all extremely proud of ourselves for persevering and not giving up. We have also been revising telling the time on an analogue clock as many of us have digital watches, and although we can securely tell the time on these we still need lots of practice on the good old fashioned analogue clock.

 

In Phonics Year 1 looked at the ar sound spelt with a, al, ar, are and ear. This was a fun exercise as we know that we spell a in bath, past and grass words just as Mrs Hawkins says it. Year 2 revised some of the common exception words, which coincidentally were the a sound as in bath, past and grass, like the Year 1s. We enjoyed looking up their meanings in dictionaries as requested.

 

In Topic we continued with our current topic of Why can’t a meerkat live in the North Pole? whereby we will be exploring seasonal weather in the UK and hot and cold climates. We began by making a list of the different types of weather. We were surprised to discover that winter and wet is not a type of weather! We then watched some videos of different types of weather and described what type of weather it was and used adjectives to describe it. We digressed slightly and started to talk about extreme weather and watched a video of a sandstorm. We were very relieved to know that we won’t get a sandstorm in Peppard!

 

With the introduction of our class library we have noticed a new love of reading within the class and would be grateful if you could try and read at home every night, even if it’s only a couple of pages. This makes such a difference and the children that are reading regularly are becoming much more fluent and confident, but also improving their writing with the new vocabulary and ideas that they are encountering. 

 

Our weekly timestables tests continue for the Year 2s and many thanks to those who practice regularly at home as you are being rewarded with the progress  that you are making. We do practice them within the classroom as part of our Maths lessons, but obviously can’t do this as regularly as you could at home.

 

Show and Tell next week is either our current topic of Seasonal weather and hot and cold climates or if you have not done so you may still show Toys and Games.

 

Tuesday – Summer

 

Wednesday – Amelie

 

Thursday – Georgia

 

Friday  - Teddy

 

Have a lovely weekend!