Headteacher: Anna Moss

0121 445 1622

Red Class Friday Fanfare Spring 7

Hello Red Class,

This week, we discovered a time capsule in our classroom. After some investigation work, we realised that a little girl had left it in the classroom.  Inside we found pictures, books and artwork to help us to find out about the Ancient Greeks. Mrs Moss also gave us a little present this week...a new book! When we shared the story, we found out that the little girl from ‘The Big, Big Sea’ was the girl who had found the time capsule and left it in our classroom! Suddenly, it all made sense! We spent the whole morning asking questions, reading clues, making predictions, reasoning and creating pieces of art for the class display. We even used our philosophy work (we call this P4C- Philosophy for Children) to answer the question: Is it always right to open something that doesn’t belong to you? All this and it was only Monday morning!

Later in the week, we practised zigzag letters in handwriting (v, w and z). Next week, we will return to curly caterpillar letters to remind you how to use a round and back action and we will also focus on r, n, m and h to ensure correct formation as I can see we’re finding these a little bit tricky.  Now that we’ve looked at each letter, we will send home a handwriting book. You don’t need to write in the book every week. Instead, you can chalk letters on the patio, write letters in a tray of shaving foam or use your favourite pen in a special book from home.

In Maths, we looked carefully at 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19. Using equipment, we made each number, compared and ordered them.  As part of our Maths work, we wrote numerals 0-9 independently. This was a useful assessment to see which numerals were reversed (mostly 2, 3 and 7) and which numerals were formed correctly. The assessments are in your workbooks so your parents can see which numerals to work on at home and we’ll practise them at school too.

‘The Big, Big Sea’ was the stimulus for our Literacy lessons. We listened to the story, described the pictures, made predictions, linked the story to real life experiences and thought carefully about descriptive vocabulary from the text. We even looked at just one word ‘shiny’ and explored it in lots of different ways (dictionary definition, photographs, illustrations, context of the story) and we composed sentences too.

It’s really important to talk about the meaning of descriptive words, especially those we often take for granted that the children know. These activities support the children’s comprehension skills and help them to write purposeful, accurate sentences now and in the future.   

Last, but not least, our featured musical artist is Bob Marley. We listened to ‘Jamming’ this week and we even used it for our musical keyword game. See, I can put reading into nearly every activity! We’ll learn about Reggae in our Music lessons and listen to a new song each week.  On Monday, we’ll listen to ‘Three Little Birds’.

Have a wonderful weekend Red Class. Read, play, rest and have fun!

Mrs Webb, Mrs Reid and Mrs Cain xxx