We are sticking with the theme of traditional tales in our literacy but our phonics will take on more of a mini beast theme for the next coming weeks!
Have a look at this insect themed alphabet video.
Teach your child the new tricky word there. Write it down and show them, then cover it and ask them to write it down. Use it in a sentence and then ask your child to do the same.
Now take a look at the following sentences, have a go at reading what they say using the new tricky word you’ve just learnt. Can you spot any mistakes?
Literacy
We are going to continue thinking about traditional tales in our literacy this week. You may remember story mapping from when we looked at ‘The Little Red Hen’ and this week we will be using story mapping to help us remember the key points in the traditional tales that you have heard.
We use story maps in school frequently to retell a story or to make up one of our own, they are great to help with learning to sequence and helpful when retelling a story in your own words. If your adult would like to find out about story maps take a look at the links below!
Start with picking your favourite traditional tale that you have heard and write the title at the top of your paper. Draw a large wiggle shape down your page, this will be the path on which the journey of your chosen story will take.
Retell the story picking out the key parts, these key parts you can draw on your map, you can use the odd word too if you wish.
Your pictures can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish, the important thing is that you are able to retell the story in the right order using only the map to help you! Your grown up can help you with the pictures or you could find some on the internet that you can cut and stick. Your map might have many pictures or just a few but try to keep it simple and just to the key parts.
Use the story map to retell the story in your own words. Try to remember to start your story as most traditional tales start with ‘once upon a time’ or ‘one sunny day’ and as you retell your story try to add in some detail using adjectives!
I hope that you’ve all had a lovely weekend and are ready for another week of learning either in family homes or, for some, back in school.
Following the wonderful growing transformations that you shared with me last week, I thought we’d start with another moment of awe and wonder. I hope that you can sit back and relax as we watch Mother Nature proudly share other breathtaking transformations that happen all around us every day.
We’re going to continue with our theme of ‘Changing Me’ this week, focusing on our very own life cycles. I know that our Year 4s are currently looking for photographs of how they looked on their first day at school compared with now, so I thought we could all join them this week and take a moment to think about how we change over time.
You may have some photographs that you could look at at home. I wonder if you can spot all the ways that you have changed physically over time?
I’ve included a few below of a little girl aged 2, 4 and 7 years old. (She was very relieved to find that at least one was in colour!) I wonder what she looks like now … ?
As we grow, we experience physical changes but we also start to think differently too. I wonder when you have a look at your photographs whether you can identify what was important to you when you were a baby and whether this is the same as what is important to you now? Has anything changed?
As babies we tend to think about ourselves a lot and what we need to stay happy – food, warmth, milk, clean nappies and so on, and if those things don’t happen quickly we might let out a bit of a squeak! But as we get older we start to think about others and the world around us more and that’s the aspect of change that we’re going to focus on this week.
In Damers we often refer to ourselves as ‘Agents of Change’ and one of the ways that we show that the children in our school are powerful agents of change is through our termly class ‘Roots and Shoots’ pledges.
I’ve included a few of my highlights from the last couple of years below, where children in our school have focused on making a positive change which affects animals, the environment or their community.
Children have planted garden areas that attract butterflies, have played an active role in supporting a local foodbank and have raised money to help animals that have been affected by forest fires.
Children have encouraged Poundbury residents to feed the birds and other local wildlife.
Children have shared their love of reading with the local community, traced the journey of their food to protect the environment and built bug hotels to provide shelter for our minibeasts.
There are many more examples of pledges from each class and so many children have contributed to the fantastic positive changes that have happened as a result of these pledges.
At the end of each school year we celebrate some of the children that have made a significant difference to their community, animals or the environment in each class through our ‘DASP Citizen’ awards.
DASP Citizens are celebrated in all of our local partnership schools and are usually voted for in each class in each DASP school. This year will be a little different, so this is where we need everyone’s help, whether at home or in school.
Between us over the next few weeks we are going to nominate our DASP Citizens. This year’s nominations are going to come from you and I would like you to share your nomination for someone in your class that you feel deserves the DASP Citizen award.
In addition this year I am going to invite your grown ups to join in too as they may wish to nominate you!
Remember what we are looking for – someone who has made a positive difference to their community (this includes their friends and their class), to animals or to the environment.
So – your task this week (children and grown ups) is to send me your nomination including;
The name and a drawing / picture of the child that you are nominating, as well as …
The reason why you think that they deserve the award and the difference that you think that they have made to their community, animals or the environment.
I am going to plan a slightly longer gap for this one to allow everyone time to get their nominations in, so our next Celebration Assembly will take place on Friday 3 July. Award winners will be announced following this assembly.
Have a lovely week everyone and remember the beautiful quote that we so often use in our assemblies in school when we are thinking about change and our role within it.
Thank you for the wonderful insight into your growing projects this week. You have all clearly been nurturing your pots, gardens and allotments well throughout lockdown and are now starting to enjoy the fruits of your labours. So many signs of new life, some edible, some helping our bees and other pollinators and some just breathtakingly beautiful.
I have loved hearing your stories once again this week and so many of you were able to share your own first hand experiences of nature’s cycles as well as representing them so creatively. I particularly loved the duckling tales and the many celebrations of the Damers favourite – the journey of the caterpillar.
I was also delighted to hear about all the seeds and seedlings that you were able to take from our garden bank, or that went home in your first learning packs. Thanks to your tender loving care they are now growing well and are brightening window sills, pots and gardens. Some of you have experienced cooking with your own home grown vegetables for the first time and have told me how delicious they taste too! I know that some of the children in school this week have enjoyed harvesting rhubarb and strawberries and have been creating wonderful dishes with these at home too.
Joe in Year 3 shared his thoughts about growing:
“It’s great seeing the plants go through their stages of life and seeing the leaves come out. I’m really looking forward to the sunflowers coming out and brightening up our garden. When we don’t water them they go floppy but the instant you give them water they spring back into action. We also have a cherry tree and tomatoes. The cherries are turning red and the tomatoes are getting bigger. I noticed how the fruit pushes away the flower and grows bigger and bigger. I just like growing things really!”
Many of you have been able to share observations of interdependence in your growing spaces and the wonderful teamwork that has been happening within your own transformation. I wonder if you can spot the ‘transformers’ that have been enjoying Mrs Smith’s vegetable plot over the last few weeks in today’s celebration …?
https://youtu.be/9eRt6O6Oxyo
Thank you once again for all of your contributions to our celebrations, they always brighten my week and the films always make me cry when I see what we have achieved together. Our thanks as always to Miss Barnes for pulling these all together so creatively.
Today’s story is a perfect celebration of the transformations that can be achieved when everyone works together and this story was recommended to me by the lovely Ruth in Year 1. Ruth very kindly brought her book into school this week so that I could share this beautiful story with you too.
Have a great weekend everyone, I think that vital ingredient for all of our growing (sunshine) is about to return.
It’s Friday! Yay! Lets have some fun with a tricky bug hunt! Get your grown ups to hide your tricky word cards around your house and garden and see how many you can find, when you have found one you could read your tricky word to your adult or for an extra challenge write it down!
Creative
Before we broke up for half term we asked you to begin looking at the work of Matisse. We mainly focussed on spirals and making spirals in the natural environment and we saw some of your own beautiful works imitating this on EExAT. For this week’s creative project we would like you to once again think about the artist Matisse but this time we will be looking at his collage based art work.
Have a look at the following pieces of art and discuss with your grown up the patterns, shapes and colours you can see. What do the shapes represent? What does the picture make you think about?
This week we would love you to have a go at your own ‘Matisse’ inspired collage. You can collage a location (beach, forest, underwater, favourite room of your house) or an object (tree, fish tank, flower). Use some brightly coloured card or paper, draw and cut shapes to represent different parts of your collage, layer them on a sheet of paper and stick! Have fun and get creative!
Phonics Start with this Epic Phonics songhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmB3SIjNdQ Today for our phonics session take a look at the pictures below. Can you tell which traditional tale they are from? (The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Hansel and Gretel and Goldilocks and The Three Bears). After looking at the pictures, write a short caption to go with each one. Here are some suggested short sentences or you can think of your own. The goats like to munch on the grass.They are lost in the woods.She was asleep in the bed. These sentences focus on words that the children should be able to sound out independently to write and they have some tricky words in too (the, like, to, are, she) remember that these cannot be sounded out. Maths Challenge Time! Here we go.Today’s activity is similar to yesterdays except it’s more of a challenge. What we’d like you to do today is partition each number into its group of tens and ones. For example 21 would be 20 and 1 and 34 would be 30 and 4. Then use the red lines to add together the tens numbers 20 and 30 to make 50, then add the blue lines to add together the ones, 1 and 4 to make 5. Add 50 and 5 to get the answer 55. Repeat for the second set of numbers. Depending on how your child gets on you may want to draw some more of your own for your child or you may want to stick to yesterday’s task, it’s up to you.
Listen to one of our favourite phonics songs to get started
Teach your child the tricky word were. Practise it by writing it down for them, letting them write it and then challenge them by covering it and asking them to write it again. Continue to practise this new tricky word over the week.
Now we’re going to play a game of Full Circle. In this game you’re going to write one word and then change it to a new word by only changing one sound! Rewrite the new word next to the last one so that you can easily see which sound is changed each time. You’ll end up writing the same first and final word which is why this game is called full circle. Adults don’t show the children the words, instead say them outloud and then chop up the words so that your child can hear each sound clearly. Some of the words are real and some are nonsense.
crab, grab, gran, bran, brat, grat, crat, crab
Here is an example of how the children can write their words or a list format is fine too.
Maths
Remember our work on place value? We are continuing with some more fun number games this week using what we know about place value to partition numbers (sort them into tens and ones).
Take a look at the circles and lines below. You may recognise these from our part part whole work from a while ago. The whole number features in the large circle at the top and we use the two smaller circles to look at ways of making that number. In this case we’re going to be splitting the big number into groups of tens and ones. For example, 14 has one group of 10 and 4 ones so in the two circles below 14 is represented by a 10 and a 4. Work with your child to partition the other teen numbers. If they are feeling confident why not give the bottom line a go. Talk about twenties and that a number in the twenties has two groups of 10. 21 would be represented by a 20 and a 1, but make sure your child understands that 20 is two groups of 10. If they’re doing well with these numbers draw some of your own circles and practise with higher numbers up to 99!
Today we are going to think about what helps to make a good sentence. You need a capital letter at the start, full stop at the end and some interesting vocabulary like adjectives and verbs.
Have a look at the sentence below written by Goldilocks. Read it and then see if you can spot all the great things she has remembered to make it a good sentence.
Now have a look at Baby Bear’s sentence. I think he needs some help! What punctuation is missing? Could you add another adjective to make it even better?
Literacy
To continue with our learning about settings, let’s have a look at these different settings from traditional tales. Can you tell which story they are from?
Choose which one you like the best and discuss what you can see in the setting.
Have a go at writing down some labels to describe what you can see. In the setting for Jack and the Beanstalk I can see fluffy clouds, a strong tall beanstalk, a magnificent old castle.
Afterwards, have a look outside your window and see if you can describe the setting that you live in. What is your favourite part about your garden or the view from your window?
PE
Choose one or all of these Kidz Bop songs to copy the moves and dance along to…
This week, as part of our focus on ‘Changing Me’, we will be looking at how we express how we feel when change happens. One of the best ways that we can do this is to immerse ourselves firstly in our growing understanding of all the cycles that happen in nature and all around us, all of the time.
I thought that we would start with a mindful moment. For those in school at the moment, you may want to use your time by our school pond to think about cycles in nature. Those at home may also have a garden or a pond space where you could enjoy a moment of awe and wonder or alternatively you might want to join the BBC Springwatch team for some beautiful ‘Pond Perfection’.
Cycles in nature can teach us so much. Within these cycles there are times of new life, growth, beauty and abundance, and also times of die-back and decay. Each stage has a critical role to play in maintaining the cycle. Cycles are the beating heart of sustainability.
When we look at nature we are reminded that this time of year is a time of awakening, a time of new life, and the signs of new life around us can give us a strong sense of hope, especially during the trickiest of times.
I wonder how many cycles you can think of in nature which teach us about re-birth, starting all over again and transformation into something breathtakingly beautiful? Have a look at the images below and share what you already know about these cycles. Do these cycles ever end?
I know that many of you are also already experts when it comes to the life cycle of plants. At the beginning of lockdown, many of you planted seeds and looked at transforming a part of your home or garden by growing your own flowers, fruit or vegetables. The keen gardeners amongst you have already told me about the excitement that you have witnessed in your pots and growing spaces.
Harry in Foundation practically burst when he realised that these …
turned into these, due to his nurture and careful watering.
And some of you are also experiencing your first sweet and juicy harvests!
I would love to see what has happened in your pots and gardens over the last few months. I wonder if you have managed to grow something that you’ve been able to include in a meal or whether your efforts to attract bees and other pollinators have been successful?
During lockdown and this current time, we are all experiencing many different emotions. At times we may feel excited about life returning to ‘normal’ again but we may also be feeling anxious about change and whether things will still feel the same.
Cycles remind us that there’s always a second chance and that we have endless opportunities in life to start all over again. As we emerge from lockdown, it’s starting to feel a little like that. In some ways we have a chance to start all over again, returning to some of the really good bits that we genuinely missed but maybe replacing some parts of our life that weren’t missed with something much more enjoyable, healthy and worthwhile.
We’ll finish today’s assembly with a story that involves one of the life cycles that you may have talked about today, and one that we talk about ALL the time in school – the butterfly.
You will know that caterpillars can struggle to emerge from their cocoons. This struggle is what gives them their beautiful colouring and wings that make them strong enough to fly. If we were to poke the cocoon, to let the butterfly inside out, it would simply emerge as a limp and colourless butterfly. If we allow nature to take its course and for changes to work their magic, the beautiful butterfly will have wonderful days ahead, soaring in summer breezes and flitting from one beautifully scented flower to another.
It is the same for us, making a new start is always worth it and like the caterpillar we will change in the process. There is no limit to the new starts we can have or the beauty that can emerge if we allow a struggle to work its magic and change our future.
So – your task this week is to focus on cycles in two places.
I would love you to share an update on your growing projects and it would be wonderful if you could include your ‘before’ alongside your ‘after’ photo
Or;
You may want to share some of your learning around nature’s cycles this week.
Enjoy your week, wherever you may be learning. Here’s to a celebration of cycles in nature at the end of the week and a chance to catch up with your green-fingered transformations.
I look forward to seeing some of you in school and also want those at home to remember that any temporary struggles are sometimes just what we need to make those wings strong and colourful. I can’t wait to see you soaring in Liscombe St again soon!
