● Practice this week’s spellings and common exception words using the type of activities we usually do in our spelling journals

● read, read, read (try the e-books on Oxford Owl)

● Numbots

● card games, board games or cookery

English:

We are beginning work on a new book this week. Please do not read any of the book (or listen to my reading) until day 5 and don’t read beyond that section.

Day 1: Look at the image (Day 1 image). Discuss what can be seen through questioning: What is happening? Why are people running away? What might they be feeling? Saying? What might the black thing be saying? Where has it come from? What will it do? What do you think it (the black thing) is like? Imagine being the people in the scene. Talk about what they would be feeling. Now ask your child to write what the people are thinking/saying on speech bubbles on the image (Day 1 image with speech bubbles) or in their book.

Day 2: Discuss with your child what they think our new book will be about from what they saw yesterday. What sort of story are you expecting? Why? What sort of creature do you think the black thing is? Why? Look at the front cover (Day 2 front cover). Talk about the image and the title: what does it mean to be lonely? Why do you think he is lonely? Why is he standing on a cliff edge? What can he see? What might he be thinking about? Have your ideas about what the book is about changed? Why? Now ask your child to write about their ideas for the story.

Day 4: Spelling investigation and spellings – explore homophones

Day 5: Listen to my reading of the first part of the story. (If you have your own copy please do not go beyond: ‘At last he reached the shore.’) Look back over this part of the story and talk about what we now know about the Beast. You may wish to pause on each page and discuss what we find out about the Beast. (There are lots of direct references such as “They are very quiet creatures” and “They like…drinking tea” and some where the children may need to infer eg he is determined and brave because he keeps going even when he’s nearly caught by an octopus, trapped his foot in a giant clam and walked through the jelly fish.) Now ask your child to record their thoughts – they could use the outline image of the beast or draw their own – inside the beast they need to write words and phrases to describe what he is like and what he does, around the outside they can add words and phrases to describe him physically, what he looks like.

Maths:

For the next two weeks, we are not going to use the White Rose videos. Our maths focus is position and direction, which fits in with the map work we will be doing in our Learning Journey sessions over the next few weeks and with the coding we are exploring in computing.

So, instead, I have prepared a PowerPoint for each session, which includes me talking it through, for you to use instead. These have been converted to MP4, so you should be able to play them. Please let me know if you are having any difficulties.

There are also associated worksheets and challenges, all with answer sheets.

If you have the opportunity, play games involving directional movement, eg Simon says (move left, move backwards, etc) or dance to Cha Cha Slide. Practising your left and right is important. It may help to know that when you look at your hands in front of you, like the picture below, your left hand makes a capital L!

Science:

This week’s science is continuing to explore healthy humans, focussing on hygiene. There’s a PowerPoint which explains everything and includes an experiment and another task.

Learning Journey:

To be successful sailors on our pirate ships we need to know about maps. We’re going to begin by finding out about birds-eye/aerial views. Use the PowerPoint to explore Amazing Aerial Views and then there are 3 fun tasks.

Hanwriting practice is about building muscle memory for how letters are formed which can be done though the standard copy handwriting practice, but, whilst it is an important way to practice, this can be seen as dull and boring. So I would suggest interspersing it with more 'fun' muscle memory skills (either way the importance needs to be on formation). Using coloured pencils or even felt tips or using a finger or stick in sand/flour/shaving foam to practise formation and joins. Giving handwriting practice a purpose - to write a note/letter, to write a shopping list, etc where the emphasis is on what each word looks like can also help.

I have included a PowerPoint which demonstrates how to form individual letters, which can be used for reference or practice.

There is also the cursive formation sheet which shows all the letters, grouped in letter families.

This week, the sheets focus on 'one-armed robot' which are the letters that all have the ‘arm’ in the same place, formed by going up, down, up and over.