Another week has flown by I can barely believe it’s almost the end of November!
In English we are continuing to read The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Michael Morpurgo and the children are becoming really engrossed in the story. We’ve written character and setting descriptions so far and this week enjoyed lots of role play and hot seating to prepare for writing our newspaper report. We have been focusing on using conjunctions – because, but, if and when – and making sure we are using the correct tense when writing.
Last week in Maths we started our unit on Shape, focusing mainly on refreshing their knowledge of 2D shape names and properties, learning to talk about the number of sides and vertices different shapes have. This week we have moved on to 3D shapes, learning to name and describe them by talking about their faces, edges and vertices.
In computing the children are learning about digital photography and how they can use framing, positioning and lighting to ensure they take good photos as well as learning about the right to privacy and asking for permission when taking a photo of a person.
They are enjoying learning about The Great Fire of London in History, finding out about the events of the fire but also what it was like to live in 1666. They have been quite surprised by some of the jobs that existed then and how they are different today. In geography We’ve spent some time exploring atlases and Google earth to help us compare London to Shrewsbury and have been exploring building structures in D&T.

Please note, next week only PE will be on WEDNESDAY (29th) and Thursday (30th), instead of Tuesday and Thursday. Please ensure children are in their PE kits on those days. If you have any queries, please email me on the class email elm@crowmoorschool.co.uk

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Jones & Mrs Evason

What a busy first week back we have had! It was lovely to see the children again and hear all their half term news.

In English this week we have started our new book “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” by Michael Morpurgo. We started by reading the start of the story where the rats have just began to invade Hamelin. The children have been intrigued by how the children were living in the story and have written some fantastic character descriptions for the boy and the Mayor. We will continue to read this book over the term and use the text as our stimulus for writing.

In Maths we have completed our unit on Addition and Subtraction. Next week we will start our unit on Shape.

This term we are learning about The Great Fire of London in history and our D&T, Art and Geography will also be linked to it. If you have any everyday small and medium sized cardboard boxes that you want to recycle, please send them in over the next few weeks so we can use them for our D&T project. In Geography we are comparing Shrewsbury to London and will eventually be producing a little travel leaflet for tourists to visit both places.

Just a little reminder that PE is now on TUESDAYS and THURSDAYS. Please ensure children are wearing their PE kits on these days and ear-rings should be removed as per school policy.

Today we had a class assembly to talk about Remembrance and held a 2 minute silence after listening to The Last Post. It was lovely to hear how much the children already knew about why poppies are worn during our discussion and the children were all very respectful during the silence.

Also, just to let you know that this year, Chestnut and Elm class will not be putting on a Christmas Production of their own. We will be taking an active part in the whole school Christmas Celebrations instead. More details of this to come!

Have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing you next week!

Miss Jones & Mrs Evason

What a great half term we have had and how quickly it seems to have passed!

This week we have been reading the story of ‘Amazing Grace’ by Mary Hoffman and the children have been writing diary entries for her using the information from the text. We have also been discussing the message from the story which is that if you put your mind to it, you can be anything you want!

In Maths we have continued our unit on Addition and Subtraction, adding and subtracting two 2-digit numbers crossing a ten. The children have found this a little tricky and we have spent some additional time working on this to build their confidence. We will complete the unit after half term. As I mentioned at Parents Evening it is key that the children are confident with recalling number bonds to 10 especially, but also bonds for other numbers within 10, as having those foundations supports them when working with larger numbers. Children can access their Mathletics accounts using the login details in the back of their reading records, as well as their Numbots accounts to help with this. There is also a free, no account needed, White Rose Minute Maths app children can use to support them with subitising (recognising small numbers of objects without counting) and practising their fluency of number facts – addition within 10, bonds to 10 and higher. If you have any queries about how to access these please let me know.

It was great to see you all at Parents Evening on Monday and Tuesday and chat about how the children are getting on. Hopefully you enjoyed having a look through their books and seeing all the great work they have been doing. Please remember if you have any non-urgent queries or messages, just send me an email on elm@crowmoorschool.co.uk and I will get back to you. Anything urgent should always be phoned through to the main office on 07143 235549.

After half term our timetables will be changing and PE will be on a Tuesday and Thursday. Please ensure children attend school in their PE kits on those days.

Have a great week and we look forward to seeing you after half term to start our learning about The Great Fire of London!

Miss Jones & Mrs Evason

This week the children have completed their new chapters for the story ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’ and we will be passing them to the Year 3 children next week as they read the book last year and we would like to know what they think of our versions. Everyone had some great ideas for their new characters and what they would think of the dark. They have tried hard to use adjectives and adverbs to make their writing more interesting, and have also included questions they thought Plop the owl might want to ask their new character.

You will be able to see all their work at parents evening on Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th October. Forms were sent home yesterday and times are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, so please remember to return the form as soon as possible. Thank you.

In Maths we have continued our unit on addition and subtraction. This week’s focus has mainly been on using their knowledge of number bonds to 10 to support them in adding and subtracting 1’s from a 2 digit number, crossing a 10. E.g. If solving 34 + 8 they would firstly add 6 to make the next 10 (because they know 6+4=10) so the problem would become 40+2 which is easier to solve as they know equals 42. They have found subtracting to be a little more tricky, but we will continue to practice and revisit this as we move on.

Our computing unit this term has been all about identifying and understanding IT in school and the wider world and how it helps us complete tasks. This week the children took on the role of being a bar code scanner and till in a shop, discovering the processes involved in scanning an item, identifying it and giving a price to be printed on a receipt. It was quite a task and the children decided that it was definitely quicker and better being done by IT than humans!

This afternoon in Geography we have been looking at and trying to construct some of the famous landmarks of London. Although it ended up being a little trickier than anticipated the children all tried hard and kept persevering to complete their model with a friend.

Have a lovely weekend – hopefully the weather will improve a little!

Miss Jones & Mrs Evason

We’ve had another super week reading the story ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’. After working on using conjunctions and asking questions, the children have now started to plan their own new chapter for the book, following the general structure of the other chapters. Next week they will finish planning them and write their new chapter ready to share with the Year 3 children.

In Phonics we have completed our Phase 5 review sessions and will be completing assessments next week to identify any gaps the children will need to continue working on.

In Maths we started our new unit on Addition and Subtraction. We have been revisiting bonds to 10 and learned how these help us work out bonds to 20 and related facts to 100. We have also been adding tens and ones as we learn more about the structure of the number system.

The children have been learning about recycling in Science this week and talking about what we can do to help recycle and prevent plastics from ending up in our oceans! They have also completed some lovely landscape paintings based on the work of Van Gogh.

Please remember to read with your child as often as you can and always record in their reading records when you read with them. Any children on Accelerated Reader books must complete a quiz before moving on to another book so it’s important they are reading fluently and able to answer questions about what they have read.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the warm weather!

Miss Jones

Another week has flown by already! We have now started out new English unit based on the book ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’. We started with reading the picture book version initially to get a general idea of the story, but the children are really enjoying listening to and group reading the full chapter version in preparation for writing their own chapter in a couple of weeks. We have revisited identifying and using verbs and learned about adverbs. They have been trying hard to write sentences using suitable adverbs (sit quietly, dance gracefully, shout loudly etc) and have begun learning to join sentences using conjunctions.

In Maths we have revisited counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s and begun learning to count in 3’s. Children can continue to practice and consolidate these skills on their Mathletics accounts where they have been assigned some tasks. Or they can practice using the White Rose Minute Maths app. We have now completed our unit on Place Value and will begin our new unit on Addition and Subtraction next week.

In Geography we have been learning about aerial views and used Google Earth to look at where we live before zooming out to see our school in comparison to the whole country! We talked about landmarks and learned how to draw journey lines, using familiar journey like walking to school or going into the town centre, thinking about significant things we may pass on the way. In Science we’ve also explored how some materials can be changed by squashing, twisting, bending or stretching and in Art we have created pastel skylines based on Monet’s cityscapes, using different pastel colours to make orangey-red or pinky-blue skies.

Don’t forget to keep reading and write in your child’s reading record each time you read. It’s really important the children read and re-read their books to help build their fluency. Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Miss Jones

This week the children have continued to review Phase 5, practising reading and writing words using the alternative ways of making the ‘oo’, ”air’ and ‘er’ sounds as well as learning to recognise whether the grapheme ‘ow’ makes the ‘oa’ or ‘ow’ sound in a word. It’s getting quite tricky but the children are becoming more confident with practice and will take their spellings home on Monday.

In Literacy we have been identifying and writing nouns and adjectives in sentences and next week we will be making up our own characters for the story and writing character descriptions for them.

In Maths we have continued our unit on Place Value, partitioning the same number in different ways, writing numbers to 100 words, numerals and in their expanded form as a number sentence. Today the children were finding the missing number on number lines to 100, even when the intervals were not numbered and they only had start and end points. I was really proud of them.

We have started our Geography unit by learning about the features of a town and the countryside and had great fun in Art this afternoon painting a landscape in the style of Claude Monet. We hope to finish them next week and share some pictures with you.

Please remember to keep reading and always record in their yellow reading records when they read at home with you. Thank you.

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Jones & Mrs Evason