Our first full week back (and now we have another short one coming up--not that I'm complaining) and we've had our first try at the new homework scheme. As a recap of last week, there will now be a maths and English activity in the homework every Monday along with the weekly spelling words. The children will have three nights to work on those activities. I will also give them time during the average day to practise their spellings. On Thursday morning, first thing, I will collect all homework books and if someone does not have one or has not completed everything, I will record that data and they will attend the "Homework Club" in Year 3 with the head teacher during lunch. Please understand that a large aspect of the point of homework is to get the children used to hard deadlines and being responsible for their work, so if they have done the work at home but forgotten to bring it in, we will still have them attend Homework Club. Hopefully it will get them to start remembering their work. We are just over two years away from Secondary School, after all.


I have also learned a bit from the first go at homework and will try to make sure that the instructions for each part of it are clear in terms of expectations and accurate. One of the maths activities turned out to have a mistake in it that I didn't notice until I made up the answer sheets. So if I can have the answer sheets made up before I hand out the homework, I can clarify/correct any misconceptions early. At least, that's the theory. We'll see what happens in practise.


As next week is short, homework will go out on Tuesday and we'll have it due on Friday, so Homework Club will be Friday lunchtime. That way there will still be the same three nights to work on everything.


Since we're on the subject, here are next week's spelling words, still from the list of top misspelled words:

minute

opposite

pressure

remember

straight

through

address

build

certain

disappear

I think that's about it for major news. I laid out the structure of the half-term last week, so please see that if there are any questions. Also please remember to have PE kits and swimsuits on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Several children have been forgetting them quite regularly and this is not acceptable. They are missing out on an important aspect of their education, and potentially getting their uniforms soiled.

Thank you for your understanding through the first week of the homework. Hopefully we have most of the kinks ironed out now, but there's always something new to gum up the works, isn't there?

Have a happy and healthy holiday weekend!

Welcome back, everyone, from what I hope was a fun and relaxing break. We're pushing through to the end, which is only 13 weeks away now!


We are starting a new English topic around traditional tales and mythology, which will tie nicely into the geography topic of Spring term, which was India, as well as our history topic this term, which will be the Roman Invasion of Britain. Along the way we will hear traditional stories from Africa, North America, and Asia, and study some important myths along the way.


After that we'll read and write some reports, which will match up partially with our science topic of Animal Habitats and Food Chains in the second half of the term. We will be writing up a report on an animal in its native habitat at the end of the unit.


In science we will be studying electricity and circuits. We will spend the entire first half term on this topic, which will tie in with magnetism, electrical power production and culminate in constructing complex circuits with switches.


Our topic in History, as mentioned above, in the Romans, and for that I have already booked our Summer field trip. We will be spending the day at Verulam Park. In the morning we will have a self-guided tour of the Verulamium Museum and then an artefact-handling lesson, followed by lunch. In the afternoon we will be taking tours of the Roman city, theatre and hypocaust in around the park. The trip should take all day and I will need some parent volunteers. The day will be Wednesday 7th of June, which is some way off so there is no urgency to my request. But if you could have a look at your diary and see if you might be free to help manage a small group of 6 or 7 children during the day, I would appreciate it.


Our art and design technology will have Indian and Roman themes, for the most part, and will be scattered amongst the other topics. We will be making some art reminiscent of traditional Indian designs as well as making Roman mosaics and possibly some sculpture.


As you already know, our PE time will be taken up with swimming every Tuesday afternoon and Invasion Games with Mr Clarke on Thursdays. Please remember to have swimsuits, towels and caps for anyone with long hair for Tuesday, and the normal PE kit every Thursday. Several children have been forgetting their kits habitually, which means they miss out on PE or end up running around in their uniforms, which is not good either way.


As was discussed in the weekly newsletter, there have been changes to the homework policy, so there will be no large project due this term. Instead, the children will receive a maths task and an English task each week, which will tie into the week's work in some way. These will be given out each Monday along with the Spellings and will be due in on that Thursday. To help streamline this process and keep parents informed, all tests will be taken in the Homework books from now on (the orange book). Obviously, if children forget to bring their Homework books in, they will have to do the test in a different book and parents might not see the results. Please try to help your child remember to bring the Homework book in every morning just as we work to make sure the books go home every night.


As we are just starting this, we may have kinks to work out and may change things around. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to email or call the office, or catch me after school.


As this will be week one of the new homework policy, we'll start with the coming week's words. We start up where we left off last term, working on the 200 most frequently used words. Here's this week's selection:


thought
women
actually
breathe
century
difficult
eighth
forwards
guide
history


Have a good weekend.

Before I go into anything else, I have to say what a wonderful couple of days the class has had with managing its behaviour on Thursday and Friday. With only a couple of exceptions, everyone focussed, followed directions and worked well together. As a result, we managed to have a lot of fun in our lessons and got a lot done. Really looking forward to the same thing next week, and that it wasn't just a "one-off."


Of course, the biggest news is that projects are due on Monday, as that is the day we will start giving the presentations and assessing them. I have already had a couple of them turned in and have had a few children breathlessly tell me about their A2 posters or their colourful brochures. I am really looking forward to seeing what creativity they have put into it.


We have started a new English topic on narrative poetry and the class really got into the idea of memorising a poem. We studied the "Willow Pattern" by Tony Mitton and rewrote our own version of it on Thursday. I've had a few children even shine by showing me their ability to self-edit and redraft their pieces.


In science we studied pitch and echolocation, which was a great way to explore how sound travels through air and water. The children generated a lot of their own questions and did their own investigating. Next week we will perform a test that they have designed themselves.


We're nearing the end of our gym course in PE, and still have so many children to sign off on abilities so that we can hand out skill award badges. I hope we can get to them all, but we were delayed early on by behaviour problems and we now only have two lessons to go.


We've also been studying Easter in RE and how important it is the people of a Christian faith. It has spawned a lot of questions that I hope to be able to address in the next couple of weeks.


As with last week, here is next week's promised spelling list so that you don't have to go hunting around in backpacks and crumpled piles of paper:

various

weight

accidentally

bicycle

caught


describe


earth


favourite


group


heart


Have a great weekend!

Happy Friday everyone. With only three weeks to go until the end of term we're gearing up to do our assessments of the children's learning and finishing up several units. Speaking of which, it's only one more week of working before the Geography project is completed and turned in on the week of the 20th of March. We have just finished our English unit on persuasion, and yesterday's Extended Writing was all about writing ad copy to convince someone to travel to either New Delhi or Mumbai. So at this point everyone should have the tools they need to give a truly persuasive presentation.


We've been looking at the Christian holiday of Easter in RE and more specifically the concept of the Eucharist. In Geography we spent time on laptops looking at India using the powerful Google Maps software that comes free with the popular browser. We were able to walk some of the Mumbai and New Delhi streets and virtually tour some of the hot spots.


In science we are continuing our exploration of sound, what it is and how it works. We looked at waves, frequency and how sound needs a medium to vibrate in. Most recently we've been looking at decibels and how they measure sound volume.


In maths we've been working on identifying key words in word problems that tell us whether to add or subtract, and then doing two-step problems to find solutions. We also went over factor pairs again and used them to make mental calculations easier. Next week we will look at our geometric shapes again, including identifying shapes by name and finding symmetry in different 2-D objects.


As many of the children have been forgetting/hiding their homework books and spelling lists on Mondays, I will print next week's here for you all to see. Hopefully this will eliminate the hassle of finding a family whose student did bring them home.


This week we are on week two of looking at the list of most often misspelled words for Years 3 and 4. I have seen many of these spelled wrong in children's books, so don't let their apparent easiness fool you. They all contain letters that are either hidden in pronunciation or are pronounced differently from what children may think.


Here they are:

learn

material

natural

occasion

particular

possession

quarter

recent

sentence

therefore

I hope this makes your Monday evenings a little less stressful.

Have a good weekend and I will see the children bright and early Monday morning.

It was National Book Week and the school had some special things planned. We had the special book exchange on Tuesday and every child in the class was able to exchange for at least one book. The books were all donations from other students throughout the school, and the generosity was apparent as the selection was very good.


On Wednesday the class was introduced to Alexander Martin, author of the Stanley Smartpants series. Martin read to us from some of his books and gave a tutorial on how to create and describe characters. He then led a workshop where he had the children try to describe his titular character. He sweetened the pot by suggesting that anyone with a particularly good description might have it put into his next book.


The class then began telling a story with a character they had made up. We will be submitting these to Martin, who will pick a "winner" and give that child a free book. We changed our extended write for this week so that the children could write theirs in class. I will be looking through these over the weekend and am quite looking forward to the imaginations of Year 4.


Today, of course, was dress as your favourite character from a story day. It was wonderful to see so many ingenious costumes in the class.


Next week will be back to "normal," with a full week of maths, English, science, geography, art and RE.

With a new half term comes a new group of units. Having finished our science unit on solids, liquids and gases, we are now starting a new topic on sound. In it we will be dealing with what sounds are made of, what their properties are, and how vibration works.


As we do not have music with Ms. Kelly this half term, I have instead planned an art unit on Indian Art to go along with our Geography.


Speaking of which, we have just started two topics that should help the children complete their end-of-term homework projects: We are looking at some cities in India in depth in our Geography class, and we've started a unit on persuasive writing in English that will help the children put on their best sales pitch. Our first task was to come up with something that Ms Roberts (head teacher) might consider doing (such as a day without uniforms or, as was very popular with the class, an "electronics day" once a week). They have been practising their very best strategies, but they are still new at this, so we will try a second draft next week and see if Ms Roberts is any more convinced.


We will begin checking children off on the gymnastics they can do over the next five weeks so that those who have earned them can get their various coloured badges. We've only got this half term to get as many as we can, so we'll be encouraging the children to practise their moves.


We've started a unit on East in RE leading up to the actual holiday. And in Maths next week we'll be reviewing our place value again through rounding, multiplying and dividing mentally using our knowledge of the times tables, and remembering what happens when we divide by 1 and 0.


So, have a restful weekend and I will see the children for a week of fun work!

As of this afternoon we are officially halfway through the school year (but who's counting?). We've passed some big milestones and are now preparing for others. After a welcome week off we need to return ready to work!


We just finished our topic on states of matter, looking at different substances and their properties as solids, liquids and gases, ending with a look at the water cycle and how important it is to our planet. When we start back we'll be going to a new science topic: habitats and food chains. We'll be looking at the relationships between predator and prey and the complex connections all plants and animals have to one another.


In Geography we have looked at a variety of different earth sciences such as mountain and river formations and how landscapes form over thousands and millions of years. We have then been looking at the features of India and how they are used by the people who live there. One fun fact that amazed the children: the Ganges River has over 300 million people settled along it, and Great Britain has only about 75 million people altogether! In the next term we will continue to look at the physical and social landscape of India and prepare the children for their projects by showing them some of the cities of that ancient country.


In English, we just finished a unit on story settings, looking at mood and atmosphere and how to show that with good positive and negative descriptive words. Many of the children really had a try at writing some good similes, metaphors and personification. After the break we will do three weeks on persuasive writing, which again will help them with their homework project.


In RE we will focus on the holiday of Easter and what that means for Christians, as well the importance of sharing food in different communities.


We will also continue our gymnastics unit in PE. I would like to remind everyone that we do PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we require a complete PE kit. Quite a few children have been missing shirts or shorts and have had to wear their uniform.


In Maths we are beginning our cycle of teaching again, so we will revisit many of the concepts we did before, this time combining some together or delving more deeply into them.


It was lovely to see so many of you again in the parent conferences. My voice was starting to sound like Chewbacca near the end due to the cold I'm getting over, but it was great to update all of you.


Enjoy the week of respite, and I will see the class again in a week and a half.