Willow Newsletter Term 1 – “Awesome Inventors”

Posted on

Click here to download a printable copy of this newsletter

Dear Parents,

Welcome back, we hope you have had a lovely and relaxing summer holiday! We are excited to start our new school year with the topic ‘Awesome Inventors’, the children will become inventors themselves and will share their creations in a Class Super Show Piece at the end of term!

We will be using the story ‘The Lost Thing, by Shaun Tan to inspire their learning across the curriculum. We are asking each child to bring in a large white shirt to help them turn into Inventors for the term- please make sure it is labelled.

Helping to enrich our topics

It would be really great to have books or artefacts from home that relate to our topic and for the children to share. If anyone knows of any friends or relatives who might work within a scientific context or engineering/inventing and would like to visit the class, please let us know!

Reminders

Please remember your PE kit needs to be in school for Mondays and Wednesdays and ensure your child has a named water bottle in school daily.

Home Learning

Reading Please read with your child 3 times a week and record this in their reading record.  Reading records will be checked weekly.
Spellings* Spellings: Spelling words will focus on phonics sounds learned in class and words from the Y2 or Y3/4 spelling list. New spellings will be recorded in the front spelling books each Friday, those words will be tested on Thursday. The result of this test can be found in the back of the child’s spelling book for parents to be aware of.
Maths* Maths homework will be given and is completed on Mathletics (this will start as soon as possible).  Maths homework will be differentiated for your child. It should be completed independently.

Times Tables: All children should know 2s, 5s, 10, 3s, 4s and 8s and inverse rules by the end of Year 3 and should know all tables and their inverse by end of Year 4. Times tables challenges will occur in class weekly.
Grammar* Grammar and Punctuation: It will be sent home fortnightly on Fridays and due in on the Thursday a fortnight later.  Grammar and punctuation homework will be based on learning from the previous week/s.

Homework is an expectation and a requirement for all children. For the whole school, all homework will be released and due in on the same day for each year group: new homework* will be given out on a Friday and due in on a Thursday. Homework club is run every week (at lunchtime) to allow children to have a space in school to complete their homework if they were unable to complete it at home.  Rewards for completion of homework are available!

Project Based Home Learning (optional)

This term, being inventors, we would like you to choose a task from the following:

  • Create your own creator character profile.
  • Create a new invention.
  • Research an inventor.
  • Research an invention

We will be sharing these during the week of the 9th October, we can’t wait to see how creative you are!

Many thanks for your continued support,

Miss Axell and Mr Mackarness

Reading at School and at Home

Useful websites

Awesome Inventors Learning Map