Class 11

Class Teacher: Mr D Collins
Learning Assistant: Mrs F Summerfield

Hello and welcome to Class 11,

I am very excited and looking forward to a fun, hardworking and successful term in Class 11. Our class page will include lots of important information about our upcoming learning so please remember to check back regularly for any updates. Keep your eyes peeled for any photos too!

In Class 11, we have very high expectations of exceptional behaviour and attitudes to learning. All children are expected to stay on green by following our school rules, listening carefully and trying their best. However, they should be striving for gold by showing the Ghyllgrove Learning Powers. You should aim to be getting your green certificates to take home every Friday to show how fabulous you have been at school.

Curriculum

In Maths, we will begin by exploring numbers with up to 3 digits, learning about place value and our number system, and using this learning to compare and order numbers up to 1000. As we move through the term, we will be developing our mental strategies and written methods of addition and subtraction. Later in the term, we will explore multiplication and division using a range of equipment and representations. Throughout the term, we will also be practising our new times tables for Year 3 (3, 4 and 8) as well as consolidating our 2, 5 and 10 times tables from Year 2. Developing these key number skills are vital as they provide a foundation for all other Maths learning to be built upon so practising these skills at home will really help you to make excellent progress this year. Throughout our lessons, we will tackle a range of problem solving and reasoning activities which will allow us to apply all of our learning from this term.

During our English lessons, we will be reading all about The Enormous Crocodile’s mischievous tricks as he tries to eat the children. This wonderful story by Roald Dahl will help us with our writing, as we write character and setting descriptions, action sequences and our very own story too. Later in the term, we will learning all about different African Animals for our non-fiction reports before writing a letter to our Headteacher to persuade them to let us visit Africa on a safari trip. We will be learning how important it is to use high quality vocabulary and conjunctions to extend our ideas and add more detail to our writing. Additionally, we will work on using a range of sentences openers, including prepositions and adverbials. Also, we will be practising a range of reading skills during our Guided Reading and VIPERS sessions as well as working on our handwriting, spelling, punctuation and grammar too. Remember to read regularly at home so you can move along our reading game!

Our topics for this term are ‘Time Travellers’ and ‘The Invisible Force’. During our Time Travellers topic, we will be travelling back to the Stone Age times to find out what life was like for these hunter-gatherers and how learning to farm changed their life. We will explore cave art and look at what it tells us about The Stone Age times before creating our own pieces of cave art using paint and oil pastels. As we move into the Bronze Age and Iron Age we will compare how different aspects of daily life, such as housing and tools changed. Our Science topic, The Invisible Force, is all about materials and magnets. Throughout this topic, we will be exploring how magnets attract and repel, learning about the north and south pole and investigating which materials are magnetic. We will then use all our scientific knowledge about magnets to design and make our very own magnetic game and fishing rod during DT.

Our PE lessons will take place on Monday and Wednesday. PE kits (white t-shirt, red shorts and trainers) are to be kept in school and will be sent home half-termly to be washed. Please can you include a cold weather P.E. kit (plain joggers and sweatshirt) as a number of PE lessons will take place outside.

With so many exciting things going on in school, there will be lots to talk about on those journeys home. Make sure you’re impressing your parents and telling them all about your learning.

Homework

All of the staff in Class 11 will work tireless to ensure everybody does their best this year. We will regularly hear the children read and set them times table challenges too, so look out for these in the Home School Diaries.

In order to help your child achieve and accelerate their progress, we ask for the following commitments from you at home too:

• Listen to your child read at home at least 4 times a week and record this in your child’s Home School Diary. Please take the time to put a small note and we will also do the same every time we hear your child read in school.
• Practise your times tables and spellings regularly.
• Complete the weekly homework task on Google Classroom. This will be set on Friday and must be submitted by Tuesday.

We are incredibly lucky to have access to some fantastic online resources, which will also support their learning too. Your child’s login details are included at the front of their Home School Diary.

Times Table Rock Stars is a fun and challenging online programme designed to help pupils master their times tables by playing the different games and answering different questions to improve their Rock speed and status. Children will earn coins for correctly answered questions which they can use to improve and upgrade their Rock Star Avatar. Just go to https://play.ttrockstars.com and use the login information inside your Home School Diary.

Please remember, if you have ANY concerns during the year then come and see us. We will always help you if we know about anything that is worrying you. We want to keep everybody at Ghyllgrove safe, happy and achieving.

Mr Collins