Week 12 (08.06.20)

Hello Chestnut and Maple!
 
Thank you all for your wonderful work last week! I am really pleased with how hard you are continuing to work at home. In fact, I’ve been delighted to hear about some of your exploits outside of home learning too! Tommy camped out in his back garden, evening building a fire, and Ethan has been working hard to earn another Cub Scout badge. In fact, Ethan’s work to present to a whole group of Scout leaders over Zoom and creating a PowerPoint presentation to go with it means that he is this week’s Maple Star of the Week! Also, William’s hard work in his English and maths means that he is Chestnut’s Star of the Week! Well done to both boys!
 
A week on Friday (19th June) we have the opportunity to take part in the Northumberland Tyne and Wear Virtual School Games between 10:00am and 3:00pm. The event will be on Active Northumberland’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnP_2E9H6RmYXHEYVh4rrFQ as well as their social media channels, such as Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ActiveNland/. Every hour there will be different events, competitions and activities which will require minimal equipment. When we hear more from Active Northumberland we will share this information with you.
 
The annual Summer Reading Challenge is launching earlier than usual and this year has a “Silly Squad” theme; being a celebration of funny books featuring artwork from award-winning children’s author and illustrator Laura Ellen Anderson. The challenge website www.sillysquad.org.uk is free to access and is a place for children to rate and review their books and work towards their reading goal. It features video content, games, quizzes, and digital and downloadable activities to incentivise and encourage children to take part at home. Northumberland Libraries are joining the Reading Agency in celebrating the digital start of the challenge, which will be launched on Saturday 11th July. There will be more details of digital events on the Northumberland Libraries website www.mylibrary.co.uk and social media pages.
 
English
Activity 1 (Spellings)
Please may your child practise their week 2 set of spellings, guided by their sheet in the work pack.
 
Activity 2 (Independent Reading)
Please read The Abominables for half an hour. Here are some suggested questions you could ask your child about what they have read.
Activity 3 (SPaG)
Please may your child complete pages 39 and 40 (as shown by the shield in the bottom right and left corners) of the SPaG worksheets. These are about using apostrophes. Remember, we only use apostrophes for contraction  https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zvwwxnb/articles/zcyv4qt  (e.g. do not --> don’t) to show where letters have been omitted, or for possession https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zvwwxnb/articles/zx9ydxs where something belongs to a noun (a noun is a name of something, common nouns are general things like school whereas a proper noun is the name of a specific person, place or thing such as Swansfield Park Primary School).
 
Activity 4 (Reading Comprehension)
This week, please may your child read and answer the questions to the text about birds.
 
Activity 5 (Independent Writing) @EMAIL
To help with ideas for writing, please may over the course of the week your child get up to the end of chapter 17 of Mr Stink, where Mr Stink has been interviewed. If you are following along with the audiobook on YouTube this is to the end of part 7 or about 62 minutes from the end of part 3 (approximately 102 minutes from the start). Again, this does need to be listened to all in one go.
 
Last week children came up with ideas for a possible backstory for Mr Stink and practised writing dialogue between two characters (the Pip and Sir Ansell SPaG sheet). This week children are going to plan and write an interview which gets hijacked by the person or people being interviewed (similar to what Mr Stink does in the book). They will need to think about:
  • Who (this is entirely up to them) is being interviewed and why,
  • What goes wrong (from the presenter’s point of view), and
  • How the interviewees make it humorous.
Your child may also want to act out their interview before writing it down.
 
When writing their dialogue, please may your child remember the rules of direct speech that they practised in last week’s SPaG activity. There is also a quick activity attached here to remind them, as well as an overview of what correctly punctuated direct speech looks like; including a new line for each new speaker. If your child is feeling ambitious, then they could also include at least one possessive apostrophe and some apostrophes for contraction / omission from this week’s SPaG activity.
Mr Stink Audible audiobook:
 
YouTube playlist:
 
TV film adaptation:
 
Maths
Activity 1 (Time) (You don’t need to worry about how to email this; I can see how children have gotten on in the Busy Things teacher overview)
 
PLEASE NOTE: I have been made aware of a bug in the Busy Things activity, whereby in round two, question 6 when you are asked which TWO clocks show the correct time, you can only select one at once, potentially affecting your final score. I say potentially because I have just tested it and even though I could only select the one clock it still accepted my answer as correct. If it does affect your child's score, please tell them that I am treating 'incorrect' answers for this question as correct because of this bug, which I have reported. I have looked at results so far and 5 of the 14 children to have completed this activity at the time of writing were affected whereas the remaining 9 weren't.
 
This week children will be learning how to convert analogue time to 12 and 24-hour digital time. There is an assignment saved in Busy Things which can be found by first signing into School360, then clicking on ‘Resources’ and when the new screen opens up looking for a picture of a yellow monster titled ‘Busy Things’. Once you have clicked on the monster it will probably ask you whether you want to continue with or without the Flash plugin, it recommends that you don’t and as far as I can tell it makes no difference either way. You then need to click on the Key Stage 2 section on the far right followed by ‘Maple & Chestnut’, which at the time of writing was the third picture along. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and in the bottom right hand corner there will be an ‘Assignments’ tab. Click on that and it will tell you which games you need to complete. Please note, however, that if you go to this section before the 8th June nothing will appear.
 
There are more games in Busy Things which may help in preparation for converting time and reading clocks:
 
Crunch time
What time is it? – Level 3
Tell the time – analogue 1 (and 2)
Tell the time – digital 1 (and 2)
Quick conversions – analogue time to digital time 1 and 2
 
You don’t need to complete them all, but the games and quizzes are there to help support your child in case they find the assigned work too tricky on its own. To find these games you repeat all the previous steps up to and including clicking on ‘Maple & Chestnut’. Rather than selecting ‘Assignments’ from the bottom right, choose ‘Mathematics’ from the main screen, followed by ‘Measurement’, then scroll down until you get to the ‘Time’ area (if your screen is set to 100% it will be past halfway).
 
If you don’t want to use Busy Things to practise before working on the assigned game, then there is this website https://www.visnos.com/demos/clock which rolls everything into one. Alternatively, you could practise around the home using the different clocks you have to hand (pun not intended!) comparing the time on a wall clock with that on a phone, oven, digital watch etc. Some smart watches and phones allow you to change their face, which could be another alternative.
 
The key to the children’s learning is knowing that there are 24 hours in a day but we often only talk about 12 of them, with times after midday being pm (post meridian) and times before midday being am (ante meridian). Analogue clocks only ever display 12 hours which is why we need to use the terms am or pm so that we know whether we mean before midday or after it. When converting from 12 to 24 hour we continue counting past the twelfth hour to 13 all the way to 23. When the time gets to midnight we do not say 24:00, we say 00:00 as on the stroke of midnight it is a brand new day (it goes 23:59 to 00:00). Also, when writing digital 24-hour time, when there is only have a single digit in the hour, we put a 0 in front of it (i.e. 01:00, 02:00, 03:00 … 09:00, 10:00, 11:00 etc.) although we don’t need to if it is given in 12-hour time with am and pm. Am and pm are only ever used in 12-hour analogue or digital time, we don’t use them in 24-hour time.
 
Activity 2 (Arithmetic)
Please may your child complete the column subtraction worksheet from their work pack.
 
Activity 3 (Times Tables)
Whether your child wants to complete their times tables online at https://ttrockstars.com/ or on the sheets provided in the work pack is up to them. If they choose to complete them on paper, then please may they complete the ‘second group’ of three sheets (Week 4, Week 5 and Week 6), this week the focus is on the 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 times tables. If they choose to complete this activity online, then there will be 10 sessions for them to complete. Online games will test all the times tables, however. If, on the other hand, your child wants to complete the games online, there is nothing stopping you giving them some of the sheets to do too!
 
Activity 4 (Big Maths)
Please may your child complete their next Big Maths sheet. As always, if you need more, I can email them to you.
 
Activity 5 (Schofield & Sims)
Please may your child complete the next two pages in their Schofield & Sims arithmetic book.
 
Geography
Structure of the Earth
Our next topic of investigation combines both geography and science; insofar as ‘rocks and soils’ is part of the science curriculum and the physical structure of the Earth is geography. Before investigating different types of rocks I think it is much more meaningful to put them into context, so for the first couple of weeks children will look at the structure of the Earth and how volcanoes are formed before ‘doing the science’. This BBC video https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zwwxn39, although basic, is a helpful visual guide as it compares the Earth to a peach. It’s up to you and your child, but they can either make a model Earth with Plasticine or draw a cross-section through the Earth and label it. Alternatively, in the past I have made papier mache Earths with the class using an inflated balloon, covering roughly ¾ of the balloon with the papier mache and leaving it to dry. When it’s dry, they popped their balloons and cut out two pieces of cardboard to make a cross-section; one lying horizontal and the other vertical from the top so that they meet at a right angle. I won’t lie, there is a reason I’ve only done it the once as it took rather a long time! The children enjoyed it though as they get to model continents or volcanoes on the surface before painting it.
 
As always, to match this lesson I have attached a lesson plan (again, don’t feel you need to follow it to the letter, if I the children were in school I would be tweaking and changing it to match the needs of the class or what materials I had to hand), PowerPoint presentation and some worksheets. There is a video on the PowerPoint which is the one I pasted a link to above.
 
Mrs W is due to give birth this week, so please forgive me if email responses aren’t as swift as usual (or if they come at odd times of night!) but I will still be working to continue to provide remote learning materials and provide feedback. Once again, thank you for all your help supporting your child, and stay safe,
 
Mr W