Friday 8 February 2013

Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter

What another busy week we have had in year 3/4! The children participated in our Sign2Sing record breaking attempt on Wednesday along with the rest of the school and thoroughly enjoyed it! We’ve also been very impressed with the children’s attitude to their learning this week!

Home Learning

Thank you for your continued support at home with the children’s reading, writing and numeracy. Ensuring they have this support really does help them to make even more progress in school as it supplements and reinforces what they are learning in class. As our literacy unit is story writing, we would like the children to show off all of their skills learned in class by writing an adventure story in their star write challenge books. We have not been copying their writing to send home this half term as they have been producing a guided paragraph a day, instead of writing it all in one session. However, it would be good to see if they can put all their skills into a story at home and will be good practice for them ahead of next week’s assessed write.

Literacy

This week, as part of our narrative unit, we have been continuing to write mystery stories. The children have been learning about conjunctions and how to use them to create effective compound sentences. As well as this, they have learned more about complex sentences. Why not ask your child what a subordinate clause and a main clause are in a sentence? See if they can give you an example! We have been really encouraging them to not just go with the first sentence they think of, but to then try and improve it with adverbs, adjectives and powerful verbs and we have been blown away with some of the beautiful prose they have come up with!

Numeracy

In numeracy this week we have been learning about capacity. The children have found out how to convert litres to millilitres and read different scales on measuring jugs. They’ve then had to apply this to word problems to find the difference (subtract) or add the extra amount. This has involved a lot of sophisticated skills and we have been impressed with their willingness to learn and tenacity they have shown when tackling such problems.

Topic

The children are continuing to enjoy our Ancient Egypt topic and this week has seen them all begin to create their own Pharaoh mask using paper mache. Next week, they will be carefully decorating them according to the designs they created in their books last week. In addition to this, they have also produced a great fact file about the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb as well as a Kar2ouche animation on the computer to re-tell the story of this great discovery.

Reminders

·        All year 4 boys need to ensure that their swimming shorts are above the knee and girls need to take their earrings out for swimming. If they have been recently pierced their ears must be covered up with a swimming hat

·        Next week’s PE session will be outside so please ensure all children bring a warm tracksuit and trainers.

Have a lovely weekend!

Team 3/4