Happy New Year !

Happy 2008! I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year and that Santa brought you everything you wished for! Thank you to you all too, for the very generous gifts that you gave all the staff - they were all very much appreciated.


Having recharged our batteries, it is time to start the SPRING term with gusto. We will be stepping up the pace from now, as this is a very short term. We have a great deal to fit in, so here goes with what we have in store for the start to the new term...

Literacy

For the next few weeks, we will be focussing out work on Traditional Tales. I love this, as the children are so familiar with them, as many of them have heard them as bedtime stories. As 2008 is National Year of Reading, why not use this as an opportunity to really push a love of reading at home. Why not buy a Sunday newspaper and let your child SEE YOU reading...or make time to read that novel or autobiography that was bought as a Christmas gift?

We will be looking at the story of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The children will be expected to be able to name the main characters and events of the stories, as well as being able to sequence the events in chronological order. Why not make a story board, or film strip of the story – then cut it up. See if your child can put the events back in the correct order, whilst retelling the story.

The children will also be trying to earn their equity cards this week, by exploring how the use of their voice can make a story sound more interesting. Try raising your voice at the end of a sentence and see if they can predict what will happen next...”What big EYES you have grandma!...All the better to SEE YOU WITH!”

If you do read a traditional story with your child this week, please do let us know in the diaries, as the children will be creating a bar chart showing all the favourite stories in their ICT sessions.

By the end of this week, the children:

Must be able to identify the main characters and events in a traditional tale
Should be able to sequence the main events in chronological order
Could retell a traditional tale in chronological order using story language

http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacy/lit_site/html/fiction/fairytale2/fairytale.htm this has lots of examples of Traditional Tales, with activities to support ideas reading and writing. It does takes a while to download, but the activities and ideas are well worth it.

http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-red-riding-hood.htm some great activities to print and make to do with Little Red Riding Hood. If you have the time to navigate through some of the other tales on this site, they are well worth a look. We will be revisiting this site over the course of this topic.

http://www.penguinreaders.com/pyr/resources/index.html This may seem quite a daunting site when you first look at it. It isn’t a game that your child can play on, more of activities that can be carried out with you. Although it is based on a particular publisher’s books, it can be used with any version. The PDF files (that open in Acrobat Reader) have a brief overview of the story, it origins and some ideas of activities that you can do at home. The chants are a great way of helping children to remember the order of events in the stories, with having to read the whole story. This will be a great hook for them when they come to write their own versions in a couple of weeks time.

http://www-math.uni-paderborn.de/~odenbach/pigs/pigs.html Wow! This brought back many memories of childhood!

Numeracy

We will be starting the week with a review of place value and partitioning. We will also be reviewing the numeracy assessments which the children did just before Christmas, in order to clarify any misunderstanding that occurred.

One way you could help at home, is with missing number activities. Many of the children found it challenging when we turned around some of the number sentences:

2 + 3 = ? was easy to calculate, but they found it hard to grasp 5 = 3 + ?

Try doing this type of activity at home with number cards are symbol cards and see how many correct number sentences your child can make.

This type of question comes up every year on every assessment all the way up to year 6, so if they are able to grasp the concept now , it will become easier when they use bigger numbers.

http://www.wmnet.org.uk/wmnet/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/853/Postsortingv3.swf click on the tens and units postbox to post the letters. Be careful, as you cannot post all the letters!

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=Toolkit%20index2a this will open up lots of things that we use in class, but for this week, you will need to click on the place value calculator. Although it says it is aimed at Key Stage 2, many of the children will be able to use the knowledge they have to calculate the answers.

http://www.wmnet.org.uk/wmnet/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/853/PlaceValueChartv4.swf having used this before the holidays, we know how much the children enjoyed it!

Science

This half term, we are investigating the theme of Keeping Healthy...and it is not just because that is my New Year’s resolution!

The children will learn that humans need food and water to stay alive; that children need to eat and drink a variety of food to enable them to grow and to recognise and sort a collection of basic food types.

By the end of this week, the children:

MUST be able to state that they need to eat and drink to stay alive;
SHOULD: be able to name a variety of basic food groups;
COULD: be able to sort some different types of food into existing groups.

Maybe you could get them to sort out the weekly shopping in the food groups, or plan a meal, to make sure it includes all the elements – then they can see it isn’t always as easy as it looks!

The following sites will show the type of vocabulary the children will be expected to know by the end of the topic.

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/healthy_eating/eng/Introduction/default.htm we will be using this website in class to introduce the topic this week

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=platehtml The balanced plate – sort the foods into the correct category as they come along the conveyor belt.

http://www.welltown.gov.uk/school/dining_game.html sort the food from the plate into the correct category

http://www.foodafactoflife.org.uk/Activity.aspx?siteId=3&sectionId=37&contentId=55 make your own balanced plate of food

http://www.greatgrubclub.com/?location_id=71 a great site, with lots of fun activities to share. It does involve cooking, which is great activity and covers so many areas of the curriculum. Why not have a go at making the ‘eye-ball eggs’??

Here I Am

You will receive this term’s information leaflet for our RE topics this week. Please do let us know if you do not receive a copy.

Our new topic is Celebrations. The children will:

RECOGNISE a way of celebrating
REFLECT on the different ways they have celebrated different occasions
RESPECT that there are many different ways of celebrating

In preparation for this, we would ask that that you chat with your child about what their favourite celebration has been, as all children will be expected to say at least one thing. It may be a wedding, a christening or Christmas. If they do have a photograph or a ‘prop’ to bring in, it will help them when they say something to the rest of the class. Being able to verbalise an idea or thought, is the first important step in the writing process, so it will really give them a head start when they come to write about Celebrations.

This week will be a tiring first week back after the holidays, as many of the children (and adults) have been used to the luxury of the late nights and lie-ins! Because of this, homework will recommence NEXT week, but reading should still happen every day.

The children worked extremely hard last term, so here’s to a happy, but hard-working Spring term!

Year 1/2 team

Please remember that this Sunday is the Feast of the Epiphany. As the feast day falls on Sunday this year, there will be no mass on school. Also, just to bring Easter ever closer, Ash Wednesday is on 6th February – only 4 weeks away!