A Home Learning challenge from Mrs D!

Parents, I totally understand how busy everyone's lives are and I am constantly trying to find new and inventive ways to squeeze in home learning and reading with two children in different Key Stages. However home learning and reading are vital to your child's success and I really can see the difference between children who spend time at home learning and reading reguarly and those that don't.

Research shows that children who read well and have a love of books will gain more GCSEs and those gained will be of a higher grade than those children without a love of books. This reading/love of books out weighed any other factor. So I can not stress how important reading is, your child reading to you and you reading to them on a daily or very regular basis.

Mrs BQ and Cygnus parents have had brilliant results from taking on this approach, spending time (a minute for every year old they are) learning with your child everyday.
I would suggest: handwriting practise, letter formation
                            number practise, writing numbers correctly, recognising numbers from 1-20 or
                            higher!
                            Phonics, recognising, writing and saying phonemes (sounds)
                            Keyword practise

This approach is on top of daily reading but I do feel that both together should take you no longer than 15 minutes at the most.

Here are some websites that might help:  http://www.teachhandwriting.co.uk/index.html
Please choose carefully as there are lots of different cursive styles, you can use the laminated sheets I sent home as reference.

                                                                  http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
This site has a small charge (£12 per year) to access all the games however the free ones are brilliant and we use them in class.

                                                                   http://mrthorne.com/
A range of brilliant resources developed and used in his own classroom by a KS1 teacher, Mr Thorne.

I will also send home a leaflet explaining what Y1 children are expected to learn under the new Curriculum to help.

Any questions, queries, concerns or comments please do pop in and speak to me. Happy learning!

                                                               
                                                                 

Classroom PE

Every Wednesday morning this term we have been doing PE with Mr Kingwell, this Wednesday the hall was being used for a special assembly and it was too wet and cold to go outside. So we did PE in the classroom! We used an app called Dungeon Runner to improve our fitness, the class was spilt in to two teams and we worked through the levels to see who could complete them the fastest and who worked the hardest. We used squats, jumps, side-stepping and arm movements to move obstacles and get past challenges, everyone worked hard and had lots of fun!

Christmas Cake Wishes

On Wednesday we stirred the Christmas cake mixture and made a wish, sadly we missed the assembly as we were having PE with Mr Kingwell (see other post) so the cake came to us. It was also my day for break time duty too, so unfortunately I only managed to take a few photos before I dashed off!

Dinosaurs extinct? Not in Great Bear Class!

Here is a quick post of some more lovely homework dinosaurs, they just keep coming, brilliant! I hope our Heroes topic is as exciting for us all.

After Christmas we will be starting a new whole KS1 topic, I am very excited about it, more details will follow.

Christmas Production

I have asked all those children with lines for the play to practise them, they will not be using their scripts next week. Please can they practise them daily instead of any home learning or reading, they need to know them off by heart as soon as possible!

Thank you.

Special Gifts

In RE we have started to think about the Christmas Story and how Christians believe that Jesus is a gift from God. Some children brought in a gift that was special to them, we talked about why their gift was special and decided that it was because of the person who gave it to us or it was a present from a special occasion or both!

Patterns!

Great Bear Class have also been looking at pattern this week in Numeracy, we have started looking at shape and colour but we will be moving on to look at patterns made by numbers later on in our learning. Part of our extension work was creating peg board patterns by following a pattern card, however the card only showed a small part of the pattern, the children had to work out how to complete the pattern. Some of Great Bear Class then decided to create more patterns during our afternoon session where they can choose their own learning. Brilliant!

Investigating Shape

This week our Numeracy has taken more on an investigative approach, we have been investigating shape and if towers built of certain 3d shapes would stand up. The children predicted which towers would stand and then tested each tower by building it. Everyone worked really well with their Learning Partners and made great predictions.

More Dinosaur Homework

Our dinosaur learning seems to know no end! Here are some more wonderful dinosaur creations from home, that include a range of Lego dinosaurs and some clay fossils. New homework and planning will be coming out next week as we start our mini topic of  Heroes as chosen by Great Bear class. We just have one last piece of dinosaur work to do this week, a dinosaur movie and then we will be moving on to Heroes!

Learning Partners

Learning Partners are a very important part of Rowde's learning. The idea of changing partners, groups and tables can be quite daunting at first for everyone, including staff but it is an excellent addition to our learning. It means children learn to socialise, work and share with lots of different children rather that sit on the same table or work with the same group for all their learning. I think it is a super model for learning!

Part of working together is saying thank you to your learning partner at the end of the week, this is something we have only just started as we needed to build up to recording our thank yous and take time to discuss what it means.

Here are our photos of Great Bear saying thank you, the photos are then stuck in the back of our curriculum books as our record.