Drama for writing
Today, we read a picture book, The Santa Trap, which inspired us to get into role.
It’s about a bad boy, Bradley. He has been behaving badly and should probably be on Santa’s naughty list.
First, we talked about Bradley’s character and made notes from the text.
We decided to act out a short sketch in pairs – Santa and Santa’s elf.
We though about what they would say to each other about the beastly brat, Bradley.
Then, we performed it to our peers.
We loved using drama techniques to bring the character’s to life.
Living and Learning – Identity
As part of our Living and Learning identity topic, the children have really gone to town with creating their own identity boxes.
We’ve loved looking through them and telling stories about what makes us who we are.
We have learned many things about ourselves and our peers that we wouldn’t have known before, such as, where we have travelled, our hobbies, quirks and traits.
All Stars cricket
Foundation and Key Stage 1 enjoyed a lively cricket assembly from Tom Bates (All Stars Cricket) today. The Year 1 and 2 classes then had a try playing some cricket skills games and a match, too!
Living and Learning – My responsibilities
In our Living and Learning lessons, KS1 have been thinking about our responsibilities. What are we responsible for in school and at home? Working in groups, we tried to decide upon the value that we place upon different responsibilities. We used a ‘Diamond 9’ grid as a basis to order our responsibilities. The mutual respect and discussion that was needed to complete this activity was incredible. Each group explained their reasoning behind the most and least important responsibility. How would you order these responsibilities?
Book People Book Fair
This week, we’ve a Book People book fair at school. The Book People are an online book shop, selling books at up to 70% off RRP prices. We’ve a great selection of individual books starting from £4 and a wide range of boxed books, too. Tomorrow is the last day we will be selling the books in school. We will open the book fair at 3.15pm for parents to buy and browse before the end of school. The fair is located in the main reception area.
Thank you to everyone who has already paid us a visit and bought a book.
The school earns money for the sales we make, which helps us replenish the school library, guided reading books and books for the children to enjoy in their classrooms.
Phonics Stay and Play
Thank you to those parents and carers who were able to attend the Phonics Stay and Play session today. The children really enjoyed showing you what they do! We hope you found the information useful and left with some ideas on how to support your child at home.
Home-link: Can your child say a cvc/tricky word in a sentence.
Can they: 
For example, read a cvc word – bag – then, think, say and use fingers to count out the words in the sentence. I can see a bag (5 words). This process is important as it supports the children to understand how many words need to be in their sentence before writing.
Please complete a wow sheet or send an email to share this with us. Your child will earn a challenge cube for completing the challenge.
The next parent session with be the learning journey drop in on Monday 17 December. This is a lovely opportunity for you and your child to look through their profile together.
Living and Learning – I know who I am.
Children in KS1 are incredibly proud of who they are! Why not ask your child, ‘Who are you?’
Eggs-perimenting
We had a smashing time this week! Children designed and made a parachute to guide an egg safely to the ground. After yoking around for a while, the children developed their own hypothesis: The bigger the parachute, the slower the drop.
You might want to design and make you own parachute at home. Just make sure you leave enough eggs for breakfast!
Stick Man
We’re going to read one of our favourite Julia Donaldson books this week, ‘Stick Man’.
If you have a copy, please enjoy reading it together so that your child gets to know the story well. Mrs Long has just visited the theatre in Manchester to see a stage production of ‘Stick Man’ – it was great! It held the attention of a two year old for 55 minutes. If you can’t get hold of a copy from the library, you could always watch the animated version. (Amazon Prime members can access the full version.)
The story provides lots of learning opportunities to help develop early reading skills. We’ll order events in the story and talk about how Stick Man is feeling at different parts. Is he sad, scared, lonely, happy or excited? There are also lots of points in the story where children can join in with the repeated refrains, “I’m Stick Man. I’m Stick Man…”
Have fun doing the Home link activity this week; we look forward to seeing your own Stick Man creations.
Living and Learning – I know who I am
Our Living and Learning statement this week was ‘I know who I am‘. In Year 5 and 6 this week, we’ve discussed the importance of having a sense of our own identity.
Every child could discuss their own beliefs and what makes them who they are. We all found that we have similarities (attending Scholes (Elmet) Primary School, for example) but also have a lot of differences that make us unique.
