Rabbits' blog 6
Date: 17th Nov 2024 @ 11:12am
Friday 15th November/blog 6
Nativity practices are underway, full timetable continues, Coughing Central is our new classroom name and we are loving life!
I shouted out at the end of Friday, 'If they don't come home wanting to dance, make them!' Did they tell you why? Because we are all learning our grande finale nativity dance and we have grasped the first minute's choreography. I love how quickly there are learning to pick up all new things; it's as if they are ready to be open to all that year 1 life and learning now involves. I will be working hard to maintain and maximise this motivation!
Our text is The Owl Who Is Afraid of the Dark and we have read the first few pages (the slow reveal is crucial so please don't read ahead!) and we are rapidly becoming owl experts. This will continue over the next couple of weeks as we head towards our 'writeaway'. This is the piece of writing that is independent and will form our next piece for our Let Your Writing Shine board. We will be writing a non-chronological report about owl facts based on their appearance, food and habits. The whole month's English learning is geared up to this series of lessons and I will be looking for the following criteria to see how much progress has been made:
finger spaces- are letters snuggled but not touching? Are the finger spaces clear so that the reader can easily read your work?
making sense- do your sentences make sense to the reader or have you missed out a word?
capital letters at the start of sentences
full stop at the end of each idea
presentation- have you started at the edge of your page (for each line)? Have you written kinetic 'right'? Are your lower case letters smaller than your capitals?
spelling- have you copied the work bank words accurately?
There's a lot right? But this is the most of the Y1 English curriculum in a nutshell and each half term will get better and better. What can you do at home to help?
- copy writing is really beneficial at the moment. Their Little Wandle book is perfect for this. Focus on presentation and the right size lined paper (not too big). Our current presentation goals as a class are: 'proper' finger spaces (ie not having finger spaces within words, or finger spaces that are smaller than the spaces within letter in words), lower case letters being a uniform size that is clearly different to capital kinetic. Feel free to let them bring it in to show me.
- write them little notes - but make a couple of presentation errors so that is harder for them to read and they can tell you that!
- could they make their own fact file about an interest? (defo golden book and red sticker opps here!)
- provide 'real' writing experiences - they write out the shopping list; they sign and write Christmas cards (our tricky words last week were: Mr & Mrs so I'll be giving housepoints to those who spell my name correctly :) Missis
- Use their reading books to count the ideas (be selective as story books will have several within a sentence if they have used a conjunction!) and then count the corresonding full stops.
I could go on about split vowel digraphs, number bonds to 10, maps, Shabbat, animal babies, Purple Mash, No Outsiders (anti-bullying week)...but let's leave that for another blog. Until then keeeeeeeeeeeeep them reading like a writer and writing like a reader. And singing and dancing of course!
Mrs H
p.s. Here is a trailer of what looks like a great family (owl!) film to watch on these drizzly afternoons... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8RKCmkOyB4
