20th January 2014

Welcome to the start of the second week back after Christmas. Doesn't it feel as if that all happened a VERY long time ago? We have even more to fit in this week, so here goes...

Literacy

The children will be continuing with character description this week. We have started to send Speaking and Listening homework related to our literacy topic every week. The children need to be given opportunities to talk about their character and discuss the points below:

 

• What do they look like?
• How do they act?
• Are they good character or a bad character?
• Do they change throughout the story?
• Where do they live?

 

We are continuing to investigating the characters, we will asking the children to do something called ‘HOT SEATING’. This means that the children will have to pretend to be a character from a story and the rest of the group will pose questions to them. Their answers will have to be from the point of view AS IF THEY WERE THE CHARACTER. So...

Mr. Wolf, why did you choose to eat Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma?

(Wicked Stepmother) What jobs did you get Cinderella to do? How did you try to prevent her from getting to the ball? Why were you so mean to Cinderella?

Mr Troll, why wouldn’t you let the 3 Billy Goats across your bridge?

 

Here are some websites that will help your child to develop their story skills about tradition tales:

 

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

The first ten minutes of each numeracy lesson, is dedicated to practising mental strategies, which will enable the children to rapidly recall key number facts. This week, we will be focussing on:

• recognising the value of the digits in two digit numbers - this is important, particularly as the children need to understand which number represents the 'tens' when finding ten more and ten less.
• recalling one more and one less than a two digit number - the children were fantastic at finding one more than number, but found it difficult to calculate one less.
• doubling multiples of 5 and 10 up to 50 - ask the children if they can remember to double the tens and double the units?
• be able to write the numbers to 100
• recognise the names of 2D shapes

During the main part of the lesson, we will be looking at ordinal numbers. Although this sounds very grand, it is being able to say which is first, second, third...and so on. Why not try having a race and awarding badges or medals to the people who came 1st, 2nd etc.

The children will also learn about numbers which are greater than and less than. Do they know that the crocodile really doesn't like BIG NUMBERS and so he EATS them!!

45 < 54

Imagine teeth drawn on the <>

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ordinal_numbers/eng/Introduct/default.htm ordinal numbers

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/ChineseNewYear/ZodiacStory.aspx this is the story of how the Chinese Zodiac was created It will also be a fun way for the children to learn about ordinal numbers.

http://www.ictgames.com/rabbit2.html why not write some of these numbers on paper and ask your child to draw the 'crocodile'.

http://www.mathsonline.co.uk/nonmembers/gamesroom/awards/awardc.html there are some difficult numbers on this, including decimals, but the children will be able to access the DIVING AWARDS MEDALS - which country wins the GOLD?

http://www.ictgames.com/dragonmap.html odd and even revision from last week

http://www.ictgames.com/fairy_fog_odd.html

http://www.mathsonline.co.uk/nonmembers/gamesroom/stick/stick.html virtual counting stick

http://www.ictgames.com/newduckshoot10s.html counting in tens - shoot the duck on the target number

http://www.ictgames.com/spitfireufo.html although this is aimed from year 2, the children in Year 1 could also access it by counting on in steps of that number.

http://www.mathsonline.co.uk/nonmembers/gamesroom/bugs/bugrace3.html a great game for two players. Choose 0 as the lowest number and 9 as the highest, it will create a game to practice and reinforce those number bonds.

Science

The children will continue to 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.

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’??

Topic

The children have started their topic and Healthy Humans. We talked about the importance of going to the doctors this week. We will be discussing the question:

“Why do we take medicines?”  

To support this leaning at home you could take to your child about the importance of medicines and why we need them.

Come and See

The children will be exploring the theme of books and will be focusing on the following questions:

• What is the Bible?
• Why is it so important?
• How do you think we can show reverence for the Bible?
• What does the first part of the Bible tell us?
• What is the second part of the Bible about?
   
  Can the children choose a favourite story from the Bible and retell the story to someone in your family?
  Homework
  This week the Year1 will have been given 2 pieces of homework, a speaking and listening and a topic based homework.
  Year2’s will have been given 3 pieces of homework, a speaking and listening and a topic based homework and a reading comprehension.
  The speaking and listening homework will be given out every week to both Year1 and Year 2 and is related to our weekly literacy learning.
  The topic based homework will be given out monthly. The dates are on the sheet. Projects need to be in school by the 24^th February 2014.
  The reading comprehensions are given out weekly and are only given to Year 2 children.
  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to come in and see one of the one and two team.
  Thank you for your support.
   
  Thank you
  Year 1/2 Team.