Term 5 Marvellous Minibeasts

Term 5

Welcome Back!

We hope that you have all had a fantastic Easter break and are feeling relaxed and ready for the new term ahead. It was lovely to meet with you all at the end of last term. Please remember if you have any questions or concerns to speak to your child's class teacher.

Marvellous Minibeasts

Welcome back to Term 5. How quickly this year seems to be going! Our next topic is called 'Marvellous Minibeasts' and we are sure your children are going to love this topic! We will be making the most of good weather and being outside as much as possible to explore seasonal changes and also local microhabitats at playscape. We will be going on minibeast hunts and thinking about the different kinds of minibeasts there are. We will be developing our use of questions and using this to write super minibeast riddles and hopefully be able to design and make our own minibeast clay sculptures. Who knows, we might even have some interesting little friends joining us in the classroom and watching them grow and change. What could they be? We are sure you are going to love this topic as much as we do!

Homework Tasks and Expectations:

Please also read the latest newsletter for further details of home work tasks starting this term

Reading

Please continue to read with your children as much as possible. We recommend short daily reading opportunities and regularly rereading familiar books. We do expect children re-reading the same book three times per week to help to build fluency and develop sight reading skills. It is also important to remember to ask simple questions as you go as this will help children's comprehension. These could be about what has just happened, how a character is feeling, why they choose to do something or what might happen next. It is also important to discuss new vocabulary with children.

Phonics

Children need to regularly recap the learnt phonemes from their phonic sessions in school (these will be shared on a regular basis). This helps children overlearn the phonemes and supports them in recognising the phoneme as graphemes which not only supports fluency in reading but improves writing too.

Year 2 Homework

Y2s will continue have homework on a weekly basis. This alternates between English and maths tasks. We expect the homework to be returned on Fridays so it can be marked and new homework prepared by staff for the next week.

Useful Websites & Apps

Websites for additional learning opportunities:

Below is a list of useful websites that can support you and your family during this time:

Espresso Education

username: student5731

password: paulton

Websites that offer interactive games:

Websites for Reading Support:

Oxford Owls (Online Reading Books)

Children have individual log ins and passwords

Useful Youtube Channels:

Apps:

These are useful apps that we have used in school which we encourage you to use as required at home. Some of these are free but will need you to make an account whilst others are paid apps.

Teach your monster to read
Hairy Letters
Scratch Junior
Tux Paint
Beebot

If you discover something really useful that you think others might enjoy, please share with us so that we can share the links and information with our school community. Thank you for your continued support.