Week 14 (22.06.20)

Hello Chestnut and Maple!
 
Mrs W and I are proud to announce that Henry arrived safe and sound last Tuesday afternoon, after going into the hospital on Monday morning. We stayed in overnight and were back home for Wednesday night. Both mother and baby are doing really well.
 
I have hopefully now replied to most of you, but I am still playing catch-up. I am prioritising questions about the work then going on to look at the examples of work itself.
 
I was amazed though at the standard and creativity of Annabel and Ollie’s science and both have been awarded Star of the Week for Maple and Chestnut because of it. Annabel created not just one volcano, but two… and one was even under water! Ollie, meanwhile, didn’t stop at making a cross-section of the Earth using plasticine, instead he baked one! He even used a ball of aluminium foil as a core and iced one side to show the oceans and continents! Incredibly creative, I’m sure you’ll agree!
 
English
Activity 1 (Spellings)
Please may your child practise their week 4 set of spellings, guided by their sheet in the work pack.
 
Activity 2 (Independent Reading)
Please read The Abominables for half an hour.
 
Activity 3 (SPaG)
Please may your child complete page 31 of their SPaG booklet. In it they need to find words with similar meaning to the ones which have been underlined; these alternative words are called synonyms (if a word as an opposite meaning, it is called an antonym). Authors often use alternative words to avoid repetition and keep their writing interesting. It also helps to demonstrate a broad vocabulary. Your child may already know some synonyms for the underlined words but please encourage them to be ambitious. If you have a thesaurus at home this is also a great opportunity to practise their dictionary skills, alternatively https://www.thesaurus.com/ is a free online version (be careful though because it is American and therefore uses American spellings, although it will recognise and recommend alternatives. So if you search for ‘colour’, whilst it will say that it is spelled incorrectly, it will ask if you meant ‘color’). There is also both a dictionary and a thesaurus on your child’s School360 homepage but neither appear to work, you however may have more luck.
 
Activity 4 (Reading Comprehension)
This week, please may your child read and answer the questions to the text about Pompeii, which is an excerpt from a story about a pack of dogs and their shepherd owner set against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. If your child enjoyed this extract and wants to read more, I have uploaded the full book below as a PDF.
 
Activity 5 (Independent Writing) @EMAIL
Please may your child finish listening to ‘Mr Stink’ by David Walliams. Now is the time for them to pull everything that they have been preparing and practising these past few weeks. The plan your child made last week should have been structured into four parts, meaning that their story this week should easily translate into four paragraphs. Your child has also practised writing direct speech, the two uses of apostrophes, finding and using alternative words, and expanded noun phrases (the second part to last week’s SPaG activity using pair of adjectives to describe a noun).
 
Please may your child write the final version of the story that they planned last week, remembering to include examples of the above as well as basic punctuation such as capital letters for the start of sentences, for names (including both names of a person, not just their first) and for the very start of speech. It would also be great if they could include fronted adverbials (including marking them with a comma) and different types of conjunction to link ideas. Here is a non-child-friendly version which explains what a lot of them mean as sometimes it can be tricky to explain why we would use ‘yet’ instead of ‘but’ https://www.citationmachine.net/grammar-and-plagiarism/conjunction/conjunctions-list/ and a child-friendly word mat is attached below.
Mr Stink Audible audiobook:
 
YouTube playlist:
 
TV film adaptation:
 
Next week your child will be writing a book review comparing and contrasting ‘Mr Stink’ with ‘Billionaire Boy’ (they will also make a timetable for their ideal school as well as thinking of some teacher and parent / carer catchphrases). There’s no need to do it now, but you child may want to get ahead and listen to the audiobook. Like ‘Mr Stink’ it is also available on Audible (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Billionaire-Boy/dp/B00557HRKE), a YouTube playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAMRFZEkp6Le01WXPeRU8Bds5_v-foHmE) but this time read by a 12-year-old, and on BBC iPlayer for free https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06t0xym.
 
Maths
Activity 1 (Coordinates)
Last week your child was introduced to reading positions on a grid using coordinates, following the rule ‘along the corridor and up the stairs’. This week’s learning moves this on. Your child has been given some coordinates and they need to plot them on a grid, joining each coordinate to the next as a series of lines. This will create a picture. If your child wants to really challenge themselves (and you!), then they can use a blank sheet of squared paper, draw an x and y-axis, a picture on the grid and then write the coordinates for different lines that someone would need to plot and join if they were going to copy the picture. Then, using a second piece of square paper someone else has to plot the coordinates to reveal the mystery picture.
 
I have attached some worksheets to give your child a choice of picture. Please note that some are more difficult than others.
 
It is vital that your child puts their crosses to mark the coordinates at the points the two lines meet NOT in the boxes as this is a common mistake.
 
Activity 2 (Arithmetic)
Please may your child complete the short division worksheet from their work pack. If your child is not confident with their times tables, there is also a times table mat in the home learning work pack which they can refer to. This will allow them to focus on the method rather than needing to also worry about remembering number facts. There is also a worked example of the method in the pack to go along with the worksheets. Common mistakes include if the divisor (the number you are dividing by) doesn’t go into the first digit of the dividend (the number you are dividing) to not carry and go straight onto the second digit (e.g. in 248 ÷ 8, 8 doesn’t go into 2, so we carry the 2 into the next column to give us 24 and 8 goes into 24 three times. Then we divide the final digit, 8, by the divisor and in this case it is 8 ÷ 8 which is 1; giving an answer of 38. However, children will often skip the 2 and go straight to the 4 and 8 doesn’t go into 4 either. They then go to the final digit, 8, and will do 8 ÷ 8 = 1 giving a final answer of 248 ÷ 8 = 1, which it clearly isn’t and when asked they will know it is the incorrect answer but be puzzled how their working out is incorrect). Another common mistake is to keep on carrying the same number each time rather than changing it as necessary (e.g. in 732 ÷ 4, 4 doesn’t go into 7 exactly so we carry the remaining 3 into the next column to give us 33. 4 goes into 33 eight times to give us 32, meaning there is 1 left over. Children, however, may often carry a 3 instead because that’s what they did at the beginning. Alternatively, they may always carry a 1 instead because that’s what they’re used to when adding or subtracting two numbers) or to give a remainder which is more than the divisor (which is can’t be, because if you are dividing by 2 you can’t have a remainder of 2 or more because 2 will go into it). Children often find division the hardest of the four written methods so please encourage them to take their time, keep on referring to the worked example and their times table mat and to not rush.
 
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 ‘fourth group’ of three sheets (Week 10, Week 11 and Week 13. I skipped Week 12 as this was the 10 times table) which focus on the 8, 9, 10 and 11 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. Big Maths sheets for Stages 1 to 6 continue to be available from my Google Drive in the Big Maths folder https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SxMvlQZho_ZOpXhbzYKcXSmbTAlgDxsf?usp=sharing.
 
Activity 5 (Schofield & Sims)
Please may your child complete the next two pages in their Schofield & Sims arithmetic book.
 
Geography
More Volcanoes
This is our final look at volcanoes before learning about different kinds of rock next week in science. This week’s learning introduces terms such as ‘dormant’ and ‘extinct’ as well as asks whether children think there are any volcanoes in the UK (Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh is probably the most famous, but did you know that the Cheviots were formed from a volcano?). As always, to match this lesson I have attached a lesson plan and PowerPoint presentation. There’s not really a worksheet as such to go with this lesson, instead it’s more to do with discussing why people continue to choose to live near areas of volcanic activity. Could there be some benefits as well as the obvious downside? If your child wants to do something different, then they could use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to create a database of volcano facts to compare height etc. of different volcanoes around the world.
 
Once again, thank you for all your help supporting your child and stay safe,
 
Mr W