Terrific Tigers Newsletter – Summer Term 1 2021

I hope everyone has had a great Easter and enjoyed some family time together. We are back for the final third of what has been another strange year. Hopefully though we can have a full term together and enjoy the summer term.

This half term our topic will be focused on rivers and geographical features and will look at Matlock Baths. In this geography-driven topic we will learn about parts of a river and we will explore some of the main vocabulary connected with this topic (source, stream, tributaries, etc).

In English, we will look at honing some of our grammatical skills. We are going to be paying particular attention to sentence structure and continue to master the different types of complex sentences. We will also be writing a descriptive recount of events from books.

Our Maths lessons will continue to focus on fractions which will include looking at tenths, fractions of sets of objects and equivalent fractions. We will then move onto telling the time to the nearest five minutes and minute and will also look at 24 hour clocks and comparing durations.

Microsoft Teams

Homework will continue to be posted on Teams but I will always aim to remind you of this on ClassDojo. I will also continue to put a brief learning overview on Teams each week for any child that needs to work remotely due to self-isolating. If there is ever any work or instruction that you don’t understand, please send me a message so I can try and make it clearer.

PE

Our PE days are still on Mondays and Wednesdays. Please make sure that your child comes to school in their P.E kit on these days. Please make sure they are wearing the correct PE kit. At the moment we will all be doing PE outside wherever possible. Please make sure your child brings a warm tracksuit top/hoodie and tracksuit bottoms if it is a particularly cold day.

Targets:

Reading:

• Reading books at an age appropriate level (within the year 3 Lexile Range)
• I can take note of punctuation when reading aloud.
• I can discuss my understanding of the text.

We will listen to children read in school in a variety of situations. We will still not be sending home school reading books at this time. All children will have a book to read in school. The expectation will be that parents listen to children read their own books at home at least 3 times per week. Children will not be bringing home a school reading book at this current time.  You can continue to access online Scholastic Reading Pro at home as well. Your child will need to continue using their reading record at home (if you need a new one, please let me know) but this will remain at home for now. Every two weeks, I’ll restart the ‘reading record check’ and will ask you to take a photo of their reading record logs to share with me. This is just so I can try and keep track of who has been reading at home.

Science:

• I can classify animals into groups.
• I can identify invertebrates.
• I can identify the seven different life processes.
• I can describe environmental dangers to endangered species.

Homework

Your child will continue to receive homework every Friday to be handed in by the following Wednesday. Maths and English homework books should already be at home. The expectation will continue to be that as soon as your child has done their homework please send in a photo of the completed page(s) and upload to the relevant assignment on Teams. Please send me a message if there are any issues with this or if there is an activity your child has found difficult and, where possible, we will follow this up in class. 

I have already uploaded the week-by-week spellings for this half term onto Teams so that you can see which spellings we are working on each week. I won’t send home the spellings each week but will continue to put them on ClassDojo on a Friday to remind you of what your child needs to practice. We will be having spelling tests every Friday based on these words. Spelling books will go home on Friday night so that you can see how your child has done in the test but these must come back to school with your child on a Monday morning. We will also be having a times tables test every Friday on a specific times table each week. Again, I’ll continue to put this on ClassDojo each Friday.

If you have any questions or if there is anything I can do to help then please do not hesitate to ask.            

Kind regards

Mr Calcutt