Derwent Class What’s Happening This Week Commencing 15th January 2018

Derwent What’s Happening This Week

(Week Commencing 15th January 2018)

In Derwent this week we are learning the following:

English:

In English this week we are writing letters for the aliens, telling their teacher all about what happened when they crashed landed in our school field.

SPaG/Phonics:

In spelling, punctuation and grammar we are continuing to focus on spelling split digraph and trigraph words in phonics, as well as continuing to look at suffix words and homophones. In our writing our grammar focus will be how to use inverted commas (speech marks) for reported speech, with year 3s experimenting with where the speech is positioned in a sentence. We will also continue to embed our knowledge of using expanded noun phrases, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions in our writing.

Maths:

In maths we are learning about money, recognising coins and notes, finding total amounts of money and finding change, as well as solving problems involving money.

Maths Basics:

Maths basics  are key skills/facts children need to know.  In maths basics this week we are focusing on the 2,5 and 10 times tables and the 3 times tables for year 3. We will also focus on our mental arithmetic skills, looking at the 4 operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing).

Creative Curriculum:

We work on a theme every term and this term our key question is ‘How should we care for our planet?’.  We are exploring our local area and where we live in the world, looking at villages, towns, cities, counties, countries and continents for the next couple of weeks.

Homework:

Homework is set every night.  From Monday to Thursday children will have:

• 4 very short maths questions or a maths problem solving challenge
• 2 sentences to write using their spellings
• reading (+ one more reading over the weekend)

Spellings are learnt in class but if you could help with practising at home, this would be brilliant.

Spellings we are focusing on in class this week are below, the first half are homophones – words that sound the same but mean different things and the other half (in bold) are words containing the alternatives sounds for the long vowel sound ‘a’:

Knowing times tables and number bond (pairs of numbers to 10/20 and beyond) well helps children make massive progress in maths so any help you can give your child will be great.  Your child has a Number Gym log in and password in their planners and if they could go on Number Gym at home, even for 5 minutes, it will really help them have a secure knowledge and faster recall of times tables and number facts.

Children also have a Times Tables Rockstars log in to help them practice their times tables in a different way.