This week, we have started reading 'Meerkat Mail' and have been making predictions relating to what we think this book might be about. We used evidence from the front cover, including the title and pictures, to help us with our predictions. Then, we have followed the VIPERS scheme to think about some of the vocabulary that has been used in the first few pages, alongside making inferences and retrieving information from the text. 

We have continued to follow Sunny the meerkat around the world to lots of different locations where he is trying to find somewhere to stay. We have learnt about some of his relatives and talked about whether they are responsible or not. We are becoming more confident making inferences and explaining why we have made these, developing our understanding of the layout of the text and how colour impacts the reader. 

We have now finished reading 'Meerkat Mail' and have worked hard to summarise the text in less than 30 words. This shows a great understanding of the story and how to be succinct when discussing a text. Super work! 

This week, we have started a new text - 'Sleep Well, Siba and Saba' and have been making predictions about the text. We have discussed how the sisters in the story keep losing things! We have inferred that they hadn't realised they lost their silver sandals as they were too busy on the boat and have discussed the colour changes on each page, thinking about how this represents the change in mood and the change in location. 

We have continued to learn more about Siba and Saba and have learnt some Swahili along the way! Remember to tell your grown ups what 'sula bulungi' means  we have come to the end of this story and have enjoyed learning about the sisters and how they began to dream about things that then happened in the future. We summarised this story and are getting better at ordering and sequencing events based on what we have learnt. 

This week, our focus text is 'The Blanket Bears' and, as always, we started off by predicting what the book might be about using evidence from the front cover to support our ideas. We read a few pages at a time, focusing on adjectives used within the text. We then learnt more about the characters Bailey and Niko and made inferences about what these characters were like. We thought about our own families and the type of family we thought the bears should find, discussing what we think a family looks like. Finally, we used a storyboard to sequence the events of the story. 

This week, we are reading the book 'A Squash and a Squeeze' by Julia Donaldson. Some of us are familiar with this text already but we have still been able to discuss the rhyming pattern in detail and identify the rhyming words within the text. We have learnt more about what some words mean, for example 'wise' and 'grouse' and have discussed how the old lady might feel during different parts of the story. We will be summarising this text once we have completed it and will be ordering the events of the story.