They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, so you must be fairly fond of my updates to date, particularly since this is my first.

Transcription

1 They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, so you must be fairly fond of my updates to date, particularly since this is my first. This has not been because of a lack of things to tell you about, but more to do with finding out about everything that needed to be done. So, I offer my apologies. I hope that the assembly we did on the 15 th November gave you some idea about what we have been up to and the sorts of things Skylarks have been learning.

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5 This entry is a brief update of those things we spoke of in our assembly. Subsequent updates will show more detail and will be about recently completed or ongoing work and will, therefore, be more timely and of more immediate interest. Our WW2 Evacuees History Topic culminated in a successful and enjoyable trip to IWM Duxford. The learning beforehand gave the children a good understanding of the hardships endured as an evacuee, but also of the even harsher experiences of others during WW2.

6 The children had the opportunity to hear first-hand what it was like to be an evacuee. They understood why food was rationed and what items everyone had to have with them at all times. The children found out why children and others were evacuated, how many times this happened and where children were sent to.

7 Duxford was their first adventure as a class and I was proud to be able to help them enjoy it and learn from it. You will no doubt remember helping them to make the gas mask boxes and with the letters they wrote home as an evacuee. They were asked to write an account of their Duxford trip as well. The class display features the letters they wrote, the ration books and gas mask boxes they made, photos from their wartime classroom experience and a timeline of events in WW2. This all sits on a wonderful night sky backdrop of searchlights in the Blitz Courtesy of hard work from Mrs Ashman from Barn Owls Do drop in and take a moment to see it. Geography We are now looking at Spain and comparing it to The UK- This links in rather well to the Spanish Skylarks are learning Greetings and politely asking about that person s health, as demonstrated by the brief Spanish dialogue we include in our assembly.

8 Literacy Poetry, information texts, descriptive writing, Drama for writing, comprehension, compound and complex sentences, 1 st and 3 rd person writing, folktales and their features, prepositions, expanded nouns and adverbial phrases. We have looked at all of these. However, it may not come as a complete surprise for you to learn that we will now be looking at writing letters around a certain popular festive period. The format, purpose and content, in particular. PE Net and wall games such as Dodgeball have proved very popular. The Current activity which is proving to be hugely enjoyable by all (including Pink Pig ) is Tag Rugby. We have been extremely fortunate with the weather so far and the children are certainly getting lots of exercise on the field and loving every moment of it.

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10 Music The children are learning to play the clarinet. Even Mrs Weight and Mrs Lee are joining in. However, the children sometimes need to keep an eye out to help the adult learners. The children have not simply been taught how to play the clarinets, but how to look after them, clean them and maintain these valuable instruments as well. Numeracy Much emphasis has been placed upon staples such as number bonds, place value and knowledge of number facts generally. The children are using number lines and jumping frog to help with addition and subtraction, partitioning and expanded grid method to help with multiplication, and most recently how to use multiplication to solve a division problem, through chunking. Miss Mills and I propose to hold a mini masterclass one afternoon after school for the benefit of any parents who would like to know a bit more about some of the methods we use to address the four functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Pirate Problem Solving Day

11 The Cap n and his mates lost their compass and decided to use some o this ere Science to make their own. They used a magnet, a needle, a bottle top and some water to do it. Ask some of the shipmates how they did it and then sailed to Treasure Island. Don t let them scare you just cause they be pirates now. Design & Technology Before we get onto making their own picture frames, Skylarks have had a go at designing and creating their own free standing structures..

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15 The free standing structure is on the table, the other one needed some support.

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