Amethyst, Diamond & Emerald Class Blog - 27th November 2020

 Happy Friday, everybody! This week we have been exploring the role of a police officer and thinking carefully about the jobs they do. We have been writing questions and we were lucky to be able to question Mr Patterson about this as he used to be a real police officer! Here are Diamond Class in training:

Christmas Party Bag Lunch - Friday 11th December

If you wish for your child to have this lunch option, please text the office on 01268 833047 (special texts only number) indicating if you wish for the Roast Turkey Sandwich or Cheese Roll option. Monday is the last day for orders and be assure that, although you will not get a reply, your order will be logged. 

Aside from special dietary options, this is the only lunch available from the kitchen for this day. 

Maths Homework

We hope that the new homework books have been helpful to you all and will help give you a structure for weekly maths work.

This week, we would like you to complete pages 11 and 13.

We are doing 2 pages a week at the moment to catch up to where we would normally be at Christmas but usually we only do 1. If your child is eager to do more maths, rather than do more pages, reinforce the skill being practiced on the pages being covered.

For example, page 11 in the Year 2 book focuses on counting on in different steps with some numbers missing. You can easily recreate some more of these by changing the start/end point and missing out different numbers. Don't forget the Top Marks website (https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting). There are many games on this site that can help reinforce the concepts being covered. Maths is all about repeated practice of skills until they become habit.

You do not have to send any photos of the pages that the children complete - we trust you! Also if we receive 80 emails of photos every week, we may miss other messages.

Whilst on the subject of maths, a message from Mrs Hurley:

"WHOLE SCHOOL SUMDOG COMPETITON

Calling all you amazing mathematicians!

You have been entered into the Down Hall Primary School Sumdog Competition. It starts on November 27th at 3:30pm and finished at 3:30pm on December 3rd.

Why not have a go and get your class on the school leaderboard?

I will be monitoring how well each class is doing. The winning class will get an extra playtime!

Let's show our school what great mathematicians we are!

Good luck,

Mrs Hurley"

If you have not logged in to Sumdog before go to:

https://pages.sumdog.com/

We have sent home a little card today reminding/giving you your log in details. Any problems, drop us an email.

Big Cat Reading

We have been very pleased just how many of you have been reading books from our new ebook library (yes we can check and see!!) Please keep this up - little and often. You do not have to read a whole book in one go and it is not a competition to see who can read the most. Spending 5-10 minutes a day on sharing a book with your child can make a huge difference to the progress they make in school. Don't forget to use the before and after reading pages - particularly the comprehension questions, Year 2's!

And there we go. If you can keep up the reading and the pages in the maths book we will be eternally grateful. These tasks represent the most important things you can do with your child educationally outside of school. We hope you have a super weekend!

Your KS1 Team:)

Amethyst, Diamond & Emerald Blog - 20th November 2020

 Happy Friday everybody and welcome to this week's blog. We are trying to share some things each class have been doing each week. This week: Emerald Class have been looking at the Hindu celebration of Diwali and made diva lamps.

Big Cat ebook Library

We are very excited to share with you your child's log in for the Big Cat library that we are now a part of. Your child will come home with a card detailing how they can log into their account for this library. Before you begin, however, it is worth having a quick look at the parent's guide in the link below:

Parent Guide

Once you are ready to begin, go to the website on the front of the card or use the link here:

Big Cat Login

Then enter your child's username and password, again detailed on the front of the card. This will take you to your child's bookshelf.

It is worth noting that every child's bookshelf will look different as they have been assigned specific books by their teacher. We wanted to ensure that every book was accessible and also didn't want 100's of different books making it difficult to navigate. We are able to add more books and remove books as time passes keeping your library at a manageable level.

Clicking on the read button below the book will take you to this screen:

On your first go, it will ask if you want a tour. Click Yes and it will explain the function of the different buttons on the main reading screen.

Supporting Your Child's Reading

Hearing your child read little and often is crucial to their progress but there are other things you can do to support reading development. In the top right hand corner of the front cover of each book is a small blue screen button:

This shows you a short video about helping your child read at the colour level that they are on. This will give you a good overview about the key features of text and reading skills at that level. 

Every book also has a "Before Reading" page at the beginning:

And "After Reading" pages at the end. They are pretty self explanatory but will go a long way to making your reading time together more impactful, particularly the comprehension aspects.

We hope you find these Big Cat books a great help in finding books that are engaging and accessible for your child. If you have any questions or feedback please send us an email. Happy reading!

Maths

As mentioned last week, your child now has a maths homework book (also coming home today) that they can keep at home to work through. We will put the pages we suggest you do each week in the weekly blog.

There is a 4 page mini test at the beginning - this is optional, do this if you wish.

From page 6, the book has an explanatory page on the left which will explain key vocabulary, strategies and explanations of the mathematical concept being covered and a page on the right for your child to do. 

This week we are asking your child to complete page 7 and page 9.

The Plan When Learning Has To Be At Home

As mentioned in both the news letter and a previous blog, this is the plan if (for whatever reason) your child has to stay at home:

As a school we will be using the DfE approved programme, The National Academy (https://www.thenational.academy/). Here there are daily lessons for each Year Group which cover a range of subjects. There are a number of other online sources that you can use to complement this site:

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/primary

https://www.tate.org.uk/kids

https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/

Use these websites as a means for providing home learning for your child. If a whole class has to stay at home, this plan still applies. Your child's teacher will blog a reminder of this on the first day of the whole bubble being off and will make email contact with you all on a weekly basis.

Fingers crossed we can all stay safe in school!

Take care and have a lovely weekend;)

Your KS1 Team

Amethyst, Diamond & Emerald Blog - 13th November 2020

 Happy Friday everybody - we hope you and all your family are settling into the routines of the new classes now and everything is starting to feel more familiar!

This week, all 3 classes have been thinking about Remembrance and Armistice Day. Although we have not been able to have Year 6 children come around selling poppies, all the children made their own poppy to wear on Wednesday as we all observed the 2 minute silence in class.

Here are this week's announcements!

Baby Photos

Huge thank you to all the people who have emailed in a baby photo for our science work in life cycles. We will be using these in class over the next 2 weeks so there is still time to send these in if you have not already done so. It means so much more to the children if they have a photo of themselves rather than a generic image. Send your pictures in to our usual email address:

ks1@downhallprimary.com

Maths: Homework Books

We have been looking at a way of giving you a more consistent and structured approach to homework, particularly in maths, so we will be re-issuing the maths homework books we have used in past years:

The only difference here from previous years is that once we send the books home you do not need to bring the books back - keep them at home. We will let you know which pages we advise you to work upon with your child each week via our blog.

These books have been ordered and we will be hoping to send these home with your child next Friday.

Maths: Place Value

This week we have been looking at the idea of place value and how numbers can be split into tens and ones. One of the games the children enjoy using to explore these ideas is Place Value Basketball:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/place-value-basketball

From the main menu, choose the number range your child will feel comfortable in. We advise Year 1's to start with Numbers up to 19 and Year 2's Numbers to 49. Move to the next step up if they are doing well.

From here we count the tens and ones to give us the total. 

This is good practice for switching between counting on in steps of 10 and then 1's. You could also record this as 20 + 7 = 27. For an extra challenge, Year 2's, think about how you could partition the number in different ways e.g. 10 + 17 = 27 or 11 + 16 = 27.

Big Cat Ebook Library Update

As mentioned last week, we have purchased access to this reading scheme for use for you all at home. Our school subscription has been set up now and next week we will be assigning all the children their own log in details and ensuring they have access to books best suited to them. All these log in details will (all being well) sent home with your child next Friday.

So we wish you all a fabulous weekend and - fingers crossed - next Friday lots of extra bits and bobs to use at home!

Much love

KS1 Team;)

Amethyst, Diamond & Emerald Class Blog - 6th November 2020

Happy Friday everybody! It has been lovely to welcome all the children back to their new classes and we have been extremely impressed with how well everyone has settled in this week! Please remember that if you need to get in contact with any of us about anything please use our Key Stage 1 email address:

ks1@downhallprimary.com

As we have been so impressed with how hard the children have worked during their first week, there is no specific homework task this week, however we wanted to give you an update on some of the things that will be occurring during our first half term.

Baby Photos

As part of our science work this half term, we are learning about life cycles and living things. We will be looking at growth and how we have changed since birth. If you are able to email a photograph of your child as a baby for use in these lessons, it would be greatly appreciated and makes the learning much more personal to them not having to use a generic Google image! Please be assured that only KS1 teachers receive these emails and we will delete these particular emails once we have printed the photos off for the children to use.

It would also help the children if you have a chat about the photo with them. Explain what they could do and couldn't do when they were very young. Explain any key milestones in their development - when they started to walk, talk, their first words etc.

Reading

Since returning to school in September, we have been trying to find a way to support the children with their reading that works both in school and at home. We appreciate that, with our younger children, MyOn is more difficult as the texts do not match our colour bands and do not always support the children with their phonics. 

As a result of this and having listened to concerns some of you have raised, we have this week been able to purchase the Collins Big Cat ebook Library for use in school and at home.

This ebook library contains the same books as the children have been reading prior to lockdown and is arranged in the colour bands. We feel in Key Stage 1 that these ebooks will work better for your children's needs because:

• Your children will only see books that are matched to their reading level or colour reading band that they are familiar with.
• These books reinforce the work that the children do in Phonics lessons as all the words will be fully decodable.

We are awaiting our school login information and will share this with you as soon as it is available. Further information regarding how the ebook library works will be explained in the blog once it is fully set up.

Autumn Term Project - "999! What's Your Emergency?"

Here is a curriculum overview sheet of the work that we will be undertaking between now and Christmas. Some aspects might be given a light touch due to the fact that this term has been condensed into 7 weeks but as all learning objectives are reinforced over the 2 years that the children are in Key Stage 1, the curriculum is always fully covered.

Thank you all so much for your support in all aspects of your children's learning and development - it means so much and makes a huge difference to progress!

Have a great weekend:)

KS1 Team