Primary 3/4

Home Learning

Dear Parent/Guardian,

Due to the unexpected closure of our school, we have put together a timetable of activities to be completed through worksheets, textbooks and Education City. We have also attached a list of useful apps and websites to support your child’s home learning.  Please see below an outline of work for your child to complete during this time.   

Phonics:

In your pack you will find new targeted sounds and spellings, due to be covered over the coming weeks. Please continue to learn the new sounds using segmenting and blending techniques. You will find plenty of help for pronunciation of sounds on the, ‘Jolly Phonics’ YouTube Channel. Please look back through your spelling diary for previous learnt sounds and spellings. Also attached are, ‘High Frequency words.’ Please continue to revise this list.

Literacy:

We are currently focussing on non-fiction texts which have been allocated to your child through Active Learn Literacy Bug Club.  We would encourage you to read it along with your child.

The following items are included in your pack: SPaG worksheets, Focus on Literacy Pupil Book or Junior English Textbook and home reading books.

Please use the SPaG worksheets as a guide for revision and practice over the coming weeks. Please see the Junior English Textbook or Focus on Literacy Pupil Book. Within these textbooks there are several other targeted areas to focus on SPaG and comprehension. Feel free to work your way through these sections as well. There is also work assigned online through Education City.

Also included are your child’s home reading books. We have included the next four books of that reading stage. Please continue to ask questions on different aspects of the book as part of our guided read learning. Examples of questions you can ask can be based around: setting, character emotion, character’s actions, prediction, connections to other stories, etc. We have also allocated books online through our ‘Bug Club’. These also have interactive questions (Bugs) throughout.

Additionally, all children should continue to work on improving their handwriting.

Numeracy:

We have currently been working through the topic of money and addition and subtraction. We are due to move on to and focus on multiplication and capacity. Within your pack we have included the New Heinemann Text Books and Worksheets. As per our timetable, please also see Mental Arithmetic booklets provided. These will cover mostly target number work and word problems.

We have also covered addition, subtraction, multiplication, place value and time. You can work through Education City and see useful websites to revise these topics and to support the learning.

World Around Us

We are still currently working our way through the topic of ‘Water’. Our next area of focus will be about the ‘Oceans of the World’. Children are to complete a weekly project related to our topic. Further details are on the weekly time table.

Week 1: Oceans

Week 2: Marine Life

Week 3: Animal Groups

Week 4: Under the Sea Art and Scientific enquiry

Home STEM Project Ideas and experiments:

These are a few simple ideas to do while at home during this time.

• Design and build your own fish tank using old shoe boxes.
• Make and paint a paper plate fish.
• Create your own jelly fish using household items.

Google ‘Home STEM Ideas’ or Pinterest ‘Water related experiments’ and there are plenty of ideas that you can use to make learning more accessible, creative and enjoyable. It could also be a time to start learning a new skill or hobby such as baking, cooking, arts and crafts, as well as learning the guitar for those undertaking lessons.

PE – Keeping Active:

I would encourage you to try and keep active as possible during this time. You can do this in several ways such as, creating your own obstacle course in the back garden, challenging yourself by improving your football and soccer skills, creating your own dance or by doing your own exercises. It’ll be vitally important to try and keep on top of exercise and children should be doing 60 mins of moderate exercise per day. It could be a great chance to explore the beautiful scenery around the surrounding area in which we live.

There a couple of channels on YouTube that children enjoy doing, these include:

• Cosmic Kids Yoga
• Go Noodle
• Fabio’s Meatball Run
• The Body Coach TV

Religion:

All children should continue to work through their Grow in Love booklet, particularly with Easter in the coming weeks. Children in P.4 should also complete their First Holy Communion booklet. I would also encourage children to continue with their daily prayers, keeping in mind all of their family and friends during these challenging times.

Celebrations:

Despite the difficult circumstances we currently find ourselves in, there are a couple of important events occurring in our calendar which should still be marked. I would like to encourage families to celebrate Mother’s Day (22^nd March) and children can still make their mum/grandparent a card during this time. Also, as previously mentioned, Easter is fast approaching and again this is a time to show gratitude for what we have and for our family.

I would just like to wish all the children and their families continued good health and looking forward to the school re-opening soon.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Doyle and P.3/4 Teaching staff