Weekly update

Week beginning 15th May 2006

First of all thank you to all the children last week who were tremendously helpful in preparing for our new intake induction evening. I was so proud of them and our parents for next year were very impressed with the work they saw in the classroom, especially the models they created in teams.

This week we will be looking at minibeasts - ladybirds, beetles, spiders!!! etc. We will be using an electronic big book I have created which will review the work we have already done on non-fiction texts. The children will be reminded of the following features of a non-fiction texts:
They give us information and do not have be read from start to finish - you just 'dip' into them;
They have photographs rather than illustrations;
They have a contents page which guides you to the page you will find the information on;
Pages have a heading, photograph and a caption which explains the photograph;
You have to ask yourself a question to be able to find the answer.
It would be really useful to make a trip to your local library and select non-fiction texts to share with your child to support the work we are doing in class.

The children will go onto writing their own captions to create a class big book of our very own. To extend this even further, in Creative Development, the children will be doing some papier mache balloons in order to use later to create a minibeast of their choice. A very messy week!! We would appreciate any old newspapers for our papier mache.

To further enhance this experience they will be investigating which musical instruments reflect the minibeasts hey have been studying.

There are a few great websites you can visit to support this fantastic topic. Some do require and adult to help them but they would enjoy them.
www.sycd.co.uk
www.ers.north-ayrshire.gov.uk/minibeasts.html
www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/wwww/living/kids.shtml - on this site there are a range of different activities for the children to do.
www.highlandschools-virtualib.org.uk/primary_curriculum/minibeasts.htm

For the rest of this half term we are going to be having an enormous push on high frequency words. Please can I draw your attention to the following websites which you can use to help your child.
www.ictgames.com/plankgameR.html - this is a game which looks at the Reception words only;
www.ictgames.com/plankgame.html - this is the same game but with the Year1 and 2 words;
www.ictgames.com/wordreader.html - this is a lovely website but beware as the words range from Reception to Year 2 words;
www.ictgames.com/lcwc.html - this is a look, cover, write, check approach to spelling high frequency words. You can type in your own words to play with.
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/hfwords/index.shtml - this site has other links to phonic activities.

In Mathematical Development the children will be continuing to look at doubling and consolidating their understanding of addition. The websites I gave you last week for these concepts will be just fine. The more they play on them the quicker their mental recall will be.

In Knowledge and Understanding of the World, the children will be continuing to record the growth of their 'Smartie' tree. Will they ever grow Smarties on them???? Wait and see! The children will also be reviewing some of their previous learning since September.

This looks like another exciting and busy week!

Please could I also remind you to send a sun hat and sun cream if we are blessed with sunshine. Please remember to label them also.

Many thanks

Jayne Narraway x