Friday 29th November

Happy Friday everybody!   We hope that you have all had a good week. The children have all been busy writing explanation texts on what the Romans did for us.

Please make sure that coats, gloves, hats etc. are labelled with your children's names to avoid them being lost. Any property that remains around school, is located in The Learning Hub (Old Opal Class). Please collect the items as soon as you realise they are missing to avoid them being thrown away.

Upcoming Events

A few notes for your diary for things coming up soon - more details will be on the newsletter as we get nearer to the time so keep a look out!

• 6th December - PTA Movie Night
• 10th December - KS1 Pantomime Trip
• 12th December - Christmas Jumper Day & Christmas Dinner Day
• 13th December - PTA Christmas Bazaar
• 16th December - KS2 Pantomime Trip
• 17th/18th December - KS1 Christmas Production

Christmas Jumper Day

Our Christmas Jumper Day is Thursday 12th December. On this day, the children can wear their fabulous festive jumpers and donate £1 which goes to our sponsorship of Khadiza in Bangladesh. The charity Action Aid use this money to ensure that Khadiza and the other children in her community enjoy their rights just like all of us at Down Hall. (Articles 28 & 29)

Spelling Frame Rule 10 - https://spellingframe.co.uk/

This week we would like the children to focus on: Spelling Rule 10
Your child has their login details glued into their reading diaries. They will be tested at the end of every week on these spellings so PLEASE practise at home. These have been stuck in your child's little blue book. If your child did not have theirs in school, they were given the spelling list.

Times Tables

This week we are looking at the 11x tables and the children will be tested and taking part in times table activities throughout the week. These have been stuck in your child's little blue book. If your child did not have theirs in school, they were given the spelling list.

Spelling and Times Table Books

The children will bring home a book with their weekly spellings and times table focus stuck in. Please initial these to say you have gone through them with your child. We will continue to practise these in class through testing and handwriting practice but extra practice at home is vital.

Year 3/4  Homework Tasks

Year 3 English - Page 82 - Word endings with 'sure' and 'ture'

Maths - Pages 16+17 - Solving Number Problems

Year 4

English - Page 82 - Word endings with 'sure' and 'ture' Maths - Page 6 - Counting in Multiples

Must Do

Reading: 

Remember 15-20 minutes everyday is super important but we understand this is not always manageable. Make sure you are reading as much as you can - at least 3x a week and recording what you read in your child's reading record. These will be collected by teachers and checked regularly.  When you have finished your Accelerated Reader book, you can take a quiz at school. Remember that you need 3 100% scores to move up a level.

Times table practice - Please log on to TTRS and complete your challenges.

Can Do
Continue logging on to TTRS and Sumdog -  your logins are stuck in the front cover of your reading records. 

Romans

This is a good site we have used this week: 

https://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/Romans.html

Reading Skills

Every week we encourage you to keep up all your reading at home as this makes such a huge difference. We wanted to spend a little time this week speaking more about reading skills.

Understanding what they have read (or comprehension) is vital for the children  and we support this through our VIPERS reading skills. This stands for:

Vocabulary    Infer    Predict    Explain    Retrieve    Summarise

You can explore these ideas with your child after reading using some of the following question prompts:

Vocabulary - have a good range of vocabulary in order to understand the text

• What does the word _____ mean in this sentence?
• Find a word that means _____ on this page.

Infer - understanding reached through reasoning about what you have read

• Why was _____ feeling _____?
• Why did _____ happen?
• How do you know?

Predict - what you think will happen based on what you have read

• What do you think will happen next?
• How will this character's action affect what will happen next?

Explain - what your thoughts and opinions are about the book

• Who is your favourite character? Why?
• Would you like to live in this setting? Why?

Retrieve - discuss the characters, events and setting of the story

• Who did _____?
• Where did _____?

Summarise - pick out the key events

• Retell the story in your own words.
• Pick out the important parts.

We hope this helps you discuss the books your child reads at home as the more they practice these skills the more fluent in comprehension they will become.

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Harvey and Mrs Devlin