Week Five Term 1 2021

Dear Parents, 

I hope you had a fabulous long weekend enjoying the beautiful weather and spending time with family. I am feeling much better today after quite a few awful bedridden days and had a wonderful day back with everyone today.  

Learning

 We've been busy mathematicians continuing to collect data each day by reading a question, classifying, sorting and tallying our information.  It can be confirmed that we have found out that most of us would prefer to be invisible rather than have flying carpets and that a vanilla sponge cake is more popular than carrot or banana bread!  Our daily maths lessons have been focusing on the concept that numbers can be composed and decomposed, in other words each total number can be made up of parts.  We are learning that this is what addition is and that we can count the total number from the start, count on from the big number and we are learning that our friends of ten (and twenty) facts and doubles addition facts can help us to be even faster and better mathematicians.  

Our reading sessions have been focusing on learning new tricky words and recognising parts of words that aren't spelled or read like many other English words such as want, many, where and what.  We have also been learning about some common digraphs which we learn as "two letters that make one sound".  So far this term we have focused on reading and spelling words with sh, th, oo, ng and ay.  

We have also been learning how important it is to not guess words and really look carefully at the letters in each word.  We know it is important to "sound out hard words out loud so our ears can hear it" and saying it out loud helps us to put the sound puzzle pieces together to work out how to read the words.  Sometimes we might need an adult to tell us about a new grapheme (letters for sounds) that we don't know yet to help us say the sounds out loud and work out what the word is.  We then read the whole word and then go back to the sentence beginning to read again (and sometimes again) so that we can "read like a river, not like a robot".  Reading fluently makes it easier for our brain to imagine what we are reading - real readers can imagine or see what they are reading.  

We are also learning about the text genre of recounts and how to write about event in sequenced order with time connectives and the importance to include details.  We are currently in the process of writing a 'creative recount' where we have chosen to pretend a special person has come to visit our school and the people and places we would show them.  Keep an eye out for the finished products soon...

Just a few quick notes about the upcoming week and fortnight:

Swimming Information 🏊‍♀️🌊
Swimming commences next fortnight Week 7 Monday 15th March to Friday 19th of March.  I will send more details next week's blog post but here is some information in regards to some wonderings you may have: 

We are very lucky to be heading to the pool for the afternoon session leaving OLC at 11.30 am and we will return to OLC by 2.20pm.  We will be swapping the recess and lunch breaks, eating lunch meal at school and then having a small recess break at the pool between lessons.  Please bring their towel, goggles and a spare plastic bag (for wet bathers) in either a separate sports bag or plastic bag which will hang outside on their bag hook until our swimming time.  They are welcome to wear their sports uniform for the entire week if you wish, with bathers ready underneath if they would like although I would recommend your child bringing the rashie separately as it can get hot under their uniform.  Plus don't forget to name everything - trust me!

Homework

Just a little reminder that Homework is due this Friday 5th March. Please ensure your child brings their red reading folder and their homework book so it can be viewed and the next fortnight set of work can be glued in. If your child will not be at school Friday, please bring it in tomorrow so homework can be glued in for next fortnight's set of homework.  We are still continuing the process of listening to each individual child and assessing their reading but feel free to add comments that you think will assist book selection for your child.  

Parent Teacher Interviews

The end of the term parent meetings are fast approaching and will commence between Week 8 and 9 (22nd March to the 1st April). There will be more information to follow, so please keep an eye out. 👀  Please feel free to contact us if you would like to inform us of anything, have any questions or would like to meet earlier to discuss anything.  

Thank you for your continued support.

Kind regards, 

Penny and Gemma