Well, the Christmas play rehearsals are well underway and all the children in Year 2 have been allocated their speaking parts. In Year One and Foundation Stage, we are the essential dancers...spiders, bookworms and other exotic things! I can’t wait to see it all put together and am sure it will be fantastic.
You should have received your letter containing details of your child’s costume and tickets. If you have any questions regarding costumes, please do feel free to call in and see any member of staff, who will be able to help.
The ticketing system is exactly the same as in previous years. We have three performances and each family is allocated ONE ticket per performance. This is to ensure that we adhere to Health and Safety rules and regulations and also ensure that our precious little ones are not over-whelmed – a sea of adult faces can be quite daunting for a five year old! I am sure that you will support us in this. Many thanks.
While rehearsals continue, your child may be a little unsettled (or is that excited?) so please try to encourage a little extra sleep. This is a very hectic term and a long one, so let’s pace ourselves!
Competition
Gulliver's World are running their own design a Christmas Card competition this year, and if you go to http://www.gulliversfun.co.uk/gullivers.php?parkname=Warrington you can download the application form. Entries need to be handed into school and submitted to them by 28th November. Winners could win a computer and printer for our school!
Literacy
This week’s question - HOW DOES THIS WORK?
We will be starting a new topic this week of Instructions. Sounds uninspiring? Not at all! This is a great topic to get the children’s creative juices really flowing. We will start by playing some games, which the children will have to follow the instructions to. Then, make sure they remember to bring their dancing shoes, as they will have to follow the instructions to a new dance (mmm...might bring in my High School Musical CD for this one!)
We will also have lots of fun, by asking the children to make something – but they will told the instructions in the wrong order. When we have done this in the past, it has made us giggle, but the children learn how important it is to read and write instructions in the correct sequence.
The children will learn all about bossy verbs – push, turn, press, grate etc. How many can you find over the weekend in recipe books or DIY books? Maybe you could bring them in to show us. Cake mixes are always examples!
By the end of the week, the children:
MUST be able to follow a simple set of oral instructions
SHOULD be able to give oral instructions in the correct sequence
COULD be able to write labels on equipment to instruct someone how to use it
This will definitely be a Green Hat week!
How can you help at home?
Could your child programme the DVD player to record your favourite programme before you? If that sounds familiar, then you are not alone! Children are fantastic at working things out, but they learn through experience...pressing the buttons to see which one works! See if they can explain to you how to program the recorder, by giving you step by step instructions. Then, say them back to your child in the WRONG order. See if they notice the mistake!
Another really good way to help children understand instructions, is to bake with them. You could make cakes from scratch, (which would also help to develop the children’s measuring skills), or you could buy one of the cake mix packets when you do your weekend shop. Green’s cake mixes have some really clear instructions on the back, that are presented with diagrams and simple sentences, plus the cartoon characters help to make it memorable!
http://www.popandco.com/archive/moab/ this is strangely fascinating! It shows how a Lego brick is made, giving step by step instructions from granules to the bricks we know and love (and end up under the sofa!) If you have Lego bricks at home, maybe you could get your child to write the instructions to build a scene from a Fairy Tale.
http://www.foodafactoflife.org.uk/Sheet.aspx?siteId=12§ionId=47&contentId=122 these are some great recipe sheets for you to download, which are great for showing how useful instructions are
http://www.hitentertainment.com/artattack/artattacks.html ooh I can just see the glitter and pom-poms! The children will have seen the programme Art Attack and this site has the instruction sheets for all the activities that have been broadcast from this series.
http://www.makersgallery.com/joanirvine/howto.html very simple instructions on how to make a pop-up book. This is also a great idea if you feel like making some of your Christmas cards this year.
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=teaseq can you make Gran the perfect cup of tea?
Numeracy
This week, we will be focussing on Place Value. The children will be able to answer questions such as ‘How many tens are there in 42?’
The key question for this week will be ‘How can we PARTITION this number?’Partition is a key piece of vocabulary, which the children will encounter over and over again. It means splitting a number up into how many tens and units it is made from.
The children will also be investigating finding the missing number. This is a recurring problem, which comes up every year until year 6.
2 + ? = 10
?+8=10
And one which ALWAYS trips them up, is when we put the answer first...
10= 5+?
If the children make the link to their number bonds to 10, then once they see the pattern, it becomes easy!
http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/activity.jsp?sid=nlvm&cid=1_1&lid=154 this does take a little while to download, but is well worth it. The children need to solve the problem using the Base 10 apparatus that we use in school. The instructions on the right hand side are really easy to follow.
http://www.innovationslearning.co.uk/subjects/maths/activities/year3/dienes_addition/question.asp again this uses the same equipment, but the numbers involved are a little more challenging, as they include hundreds.
http://www.ictgames.com/woodseasy.html click once to partition the number and then choose the correct number to double it. Remember the rhyme...Double the tens and double the units.
http://www.ictgames.com/woodcards.html again, the same activity, but a bit more challenging as the numbers involve bridging through 10 and 100.
http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/numbersense/index.html this game does take a while to get the hang of, but once you figure out you have to generate a larger number than the machine, you’ll fly ahead.
http://www.ictgames.com/sharknumbers.html be careful you don’t get eaten by the shark! Look at the green number blocks on the surf board and then choose the correct number in the bubbles. Get one wrong, and the shark takes a bite of the board!
http://home.freeuk.com/elloughton13/math81.htm we will be using this in class to show the children how numbers are made up of hundreds, tens and units.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/maths/placethepenguin.shtml very appropriate for the chilly weather! Place the penguin on the right space to partition the numbers.
http://www.wmnet.org.uk/wmnet/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/853/PlaceValueChartv4.swf another one we will be using in school to help the children with their understanding of place value. The children will be given a target number and they will have to make it using the correct number of hundreds, tens and units.
Topic
The children will apply their labelling and captioning skills from last week, when they have to label the parts of the ear. Will they believe me when I tell them that there are bones in their ear??
We are also going to do one my favourite activities – the musical instruments!! The children will have to sort them according to how they are played. Who will be the drummer and lead guitarist I wonder?
By the end of the week, the children:
MUST be able to say when they can hear a sound
SHOULD be able to identify the different ways a sound can be made
COULD organise their own way of sorting the group of sounds and choose a way of recording the information
http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/ears.html quite a complicated site, but if you sit with your child, they will find this really interesting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/5_6/sound_hearing.shtml good old science clips! Why not try doing some of these with real instruments. Have a go at making your own shakers, using a Pringles tin and rice?
http://www.topicbox.org.uk/browse.php?subject=Science&topic=Physics%20-%20Sound lots of interesting links for our sound topic, including some animations of the ear.
The children will also be finishing their captions to go with their Florence Nightingale portraits. Once these are mounted and on display, I will take a photo and upload it onto this site for you to see. They are truly amazing!
And finally...
We have had a number of visitors in our class this week and we have had some lovely compliments about the children’s behaviour, attitude to one another and academic ability. It is great to hear these things as a teacher, but my thanks must be conveyed to you, for all the support you give to your children.
On that note...have a great week!
Year 1 team xxx
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