First of all, thank you to all the parents who attended the Induction meeting on Wednesday evening. We hope that you found it informative and was able to answer most of the questions that you may have at the beginning of the academic year. If you were unable to attend or have any further questions, please feel free to speak to any member of the Year 1/2 team, who will be more than happy to help.
This week, we will be starting formal curriculum, after a successful induction period. The children are now fully in the swing of their new routines and are ready and raring to go on their learning journey this year.
Diary
On Friday, we will be having a non-uniform day and we would ask that the children bring in something for the Harvest Festival, which will take place next week. We do ask that children bring in non-perishable items, as they are taken to the St. Joseph’s Family Centre and re-distributed from there. We will also be asking the children to make a ‘Harvest Model’ from root vegetables next week, so keep your eyes ‘peeled’ for any interesting ideas that you might ‘dig-up’ for this activity!
A little bit of advance notice...
In a couple of weeks time, the children will be able to come to school dressed as clowns, so now is the time to start gathering those wigs and baggy trousers. Toys-r-us have some great ones in at the moment! All will be revealed in next week’s blog!
Literacy
We begin the year, with a great topic for the children – Stories with Familiar Settings. This creates lots of speaking and listening activities, as the stories we will be looking at, are all situations that the children will have found themselves in.
We will be reading a lovely story called ‘Peace at last’ with the children and they will be expected to be able to talk about who the main characters are and identify the setting of the story (where it all takes place.) They should be able to use all the strategies they have been taught from previous years, including using the pictures and the actual text to help them.
The children will also become budding actors and actresses, as they will have to act out the story – but with a twist! They will be presented with a problem that Mr Bear will have to solve before he can get a good night’s sleep! By talking through a familiar story and changing one element at a time, the children will get lots of ideas to use in their own stories, when we come to write them next week.
We will be using this week’s literacy to introduce ‘Thinker’s Keys’ to the children. They will be encouraged to look at things from a different point of view. You could try some of these at home...
Read the story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as a bedtime (or bathtime) story. Try asking your child the following questions during the story:
The Prince is crying! Can you think of 5 reasons for that?
You’ve made it to the castle to rescue the princess, but the drawbridge is up! Could you think of 3 ways to get into the castle without being discovered?
Some of the ideas that the children come up with are truly amazing! Go on, give it a go! We’d love to hear some of the things they came up with, so let us know through the diaries.
By the end of week, the children:
MUST be able to identify a character and a familiar setting.
SHOULD be able to do the above plus sequence the main events from the story.
COULD do the above plus use evidence from the text and illustrations to explain their answers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/english/storyplant.shtml grow your very own story from the story plant
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/learn_y4/main.asp?lesson_path=year_4/writing_stories/&lesson_file=lesson.swf&language=eng this will be useful for yourselves as well as some great sequenceing activities for beginnings, middles and ends of stories.
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/cap_letters_stops/eng/Introduction/default.htm how to use capital letters and full stops. This has some lovely activities to help click and drag them to the correct place.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/english/penguinsonice.shtml Can you make the penguins take a bow? Remember to ask your child to choose the right piece of punctuation for the end of the sentence. Can they sing you the penguin song??
The links from last week's blog will be useful for developing high frequency words recognition and spelling.
Numeracy
We begin this week with a recap of the number work from last week. The children were great at one, two and ten more than a given number, but some still need a little practice at counting backwards when doing one, two and ten less. Encourage them to look for the patterns, particularly when adding and subtracting 10.
11, 21, 31, 41, 51 etc . Are they able to spot the number that changes? Can they explain why?
This will lead into the number work we will be covering this week. We will be look at what the actual numbers mean in a two or three digit number.
A good activity to try at home, is to get two dice and roll them separately. The first number represents the number of tens, and the second represents the numbers on 1’s. So, if you roll a 3 and a 4, encourage your child to tell you:
“ That’s 3 tens and 4 ones (units), so the number is 34. Try getting them to write the number down on paper too.
You could extend this, by asking them if they can tell you what 10 more/less is.
The second half of the week, we will be looking at 2D and 3D shapes. The children will be describing the number of faces and edges in the shapes and should be able to sort them according to their properties.
Try to encourage your child to look for examples of the shapes in the house and when you are out and about. When the identify shapes such as cubes, cuboids, spheres and pyramids, extend the questioning and ask them how many sides the shape has; how many edges it has.
Another great activity to try, is to cut up lots of different shapes from coloured paper, and ask your child to make pictures, just by using these shapes. Maybe you could draw the shapes onto paper yourself and ask them to cut out the shapes, developing their scissor skills.
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=washindex For those children working or ordering numbers to 20
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/ngfl-flash/place_value/place_value.html a great way of explaining place value. Select Level 1 for Year 1 children and for a challenge, why not have a go at level 2? Even more of a challenge is Level 3, when it asks you to order 1000's!
http://www.ictgames.com/dinoplacevalue.html can you 'partition' the numbers into tens and units?
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/bgfn/number.cfm Choose how many tens and how many units make up the target number. If you click on 'check' it will even mark it for you!
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=Toolkit index2a The children are used to using a 100 square in school, so this will be a big help at home, particularly when doing numeracy homework.
http://www.ictgames.com/football2.html kick the ball that shows 10 less than a given number
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/maths/maerdy_2d/e_index.html guess the name of the 2D shape by listening to the properties
http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/build_it/eng/Introduction/default.htm what can you build using these shapes and blocks? Encourge the children to describe the properties of the 3D shapes too!
http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/maths/mathsE3.htm you will need to be selective from these ideas, but there are lots of sheets, activities and powerpoints for you to use at home to support your child with both 2D and 3D shapes. Be aware, that some of them are for Key Stage 2, but give them a go if you fancy a challenge!
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=MatchingPairs3Dshape why not try a memory game with 3D shapes. Some of these shapes are quite difficult to name, but you could ask your child to describe the properties them - how many faces/edges do they each have? Remember to click on start a new game to begin the activity.
Topic
We begin our topic of SCHOOL this week. We will be looking at ideas of what makes a good school, what materials is it made from and looking at the jobs that people do in our school. This will lead on to when we begin to compare our school, with that of a Victorian classroom. We hope to take the children on a visit to Wigan Pier at the end of the term, so they are able to experience the Victorian classroom experience for themselves!
Also, we are going to pose a problem for the children to solve – they will think it is real, but of course we know different! Please do play along at home, as it will really help the children to be able to talk about the problem with you at home! They will receive a letter from one of the parents who is very angry about the quality of our school uniform! They are fed-up of their child coming home every week with a torn pairs of trousers or jumper AND it is always soaking wet with mud and water from the field.
The children will have to come up with a new uniform design, but will have to test a number of materials to see which is the most appropriate one to make a new uniform from. Will it be waterproof? Tear-proof? Will paper be the best material? I can’t wait to see some of the ideas they come up with!
Homework
On Tuesday, your child will bring home the very first set of homework for the year. They will receive a pack of spellings (either with a red or yellow cover) and a piece of maths homework. We would ask that these are returned next MONDAY morning, in the folder that they came home in. I know some of you may be keen to complete all the homework in one go and return it as soon as possible, but it would be helpful for all staff it was brought in all together on Monday, to help with storage. As discussed at the induction meeting, we will test whether or not your child has understood the spelling pattern by choosing three or four of the words and asking them to write them in a sentence, which will be dictated to them. If you have any questions regarding homework, please do see any of the 1/2 team.
Parent helpers
At the induction meeting, we asked if anyone was able to offer any help in school. There will a letter going home this week for you to complete, with the kinds of activities you are able to offer and the times which you would be willing to come in. Even half an hour would be really welcome!
Diaries
Your child’s high frequency words will be stuck into the diaries this week, so you are able to support their learning at home. It is important that these diaries do come into school every day, as we have messages, information and targets that we need to pass onto you. The children all know where they need to put their diaries each morning when they come into school, but just a little reminder from yourselves, would really encourage that independence even more. Also, we do love to read your comments, so please do write in the diary when you have read with your child every week. We are aiming for a 100% response rate this year, so your efforts to help us achieve this targets are appreciated. From many years experience, children who are heard to read regularly at home, make rapid progress.
School council
We held our school council elections last week and each class now has two representatives who were elected by their classmates. This is very responsible role and one which the children really seem to have taken to already. They have some fantastic ideas, which they are eager to present at their first council meeting. Well done to all children concerned – you will be fantastic!
I think that is all for this week’s SHORT blog!
Have a good week!
Year 1/2 team.
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