Friday, 30 April 2021

Amethyst, Diamond & Emerald Blog - Friday 30th April 2021

 Happy Friday everybody and I trust you have had a good week! We have all been very busy in KS1 putting the final touches to our garden birds non-chronological reports and practising counting in 2's, 5's and 10's in maths. This week in our blog we wanted to spend some time outlining our expectations of homework for the rest of this year.

Homework

Homework in Key Stage 1 is important in ensuring your child's progress in their core learning skills progresses as smoothly as possible. We have arranged the homework into 2 sections - Must Do and Can Do. As a minimum, we expect all children to do the tasks listed in Must Do and if you want to tackle some extra work, then feel free to dip into the Can Do tasks. As usual, we love to see work that the children have done if you would like to share it in an email but there is no compulsion to do this.

Must Do

  • Reading - please ensure that you read for 5-10 minutes everyday with your child. It is also important to discuss the text afterwards, asking for opinions, favourite part or questioning what happened so as to ensure that your child is understanding the text as well as reading it. Remember you can use the Big Cat books to support this using the link below and please let us know if there is any aspect of your child's book shelf that needs amending.
  • Maths Homework Book - please complete one page from this homework book each week. This page is a starting point for other tasks you could complete related to the theme of the week. For example, last week's Year 2 page was about length. After completing the page, you could then use a ruler to measure different toys or items around the house. Which is the longest/shortest?  How much longer is one item than the other?
This week we would like you to complete page 47.
For Year 1, the page is about mass and Year 2 about other ways of measuring. Look to find out what you can measure at home. Use scales if you have some or, Year 2's, look at the temperature everyday. There is a huge amount of practical measuring skill to be derived from baking as well!

  • Spelling and Reading Common Words - please spend some time becoming familiar with these most commonly occurring words. Knowing these words on sight will improve your child's fluency in both reading and writing. The lists can be accessed from our Key Stage web page "Useful Information" tab - use the link below and scroll down to see the menu of word lists. Start with the Yr 1 High Frequency Word List 1 & 2 and then move on to the Yr 2 Next 200 Common Words A & B. If your child can read these words, begin practising how to spell them by looking at 5-10 words at a time.
  • Phonics - please visit the Phonics Play website to practise key phonics skills if your child needs support in this area. Playing the different games often will help your child's blending and decoding skills.

  • Reading Extension Tasks - in the back of the Big Cat ebooks is a detailed break down of other tasks that can be completed using the book just read. These include vocabulary activities, comprehension questions and creative writing responses. If your child has particularly enjoyed a book, these tasks can be a good vehicle for further developing key skills. Below is an example of the back pages from a Blue Level book "From Cow To Carton:"


  • Comprehension Tasks - if your child has developed greater confidence in their reading they may wish to try some comprehension tasks where they read a passage of text and then answer questions about it. Each week, we will place 3 levels of comprehension tasks in our Home Learning Folder. These will be labelled as A, B and C. Use the colour level books your child is reading as a guide to which one to attempt:
  • PINK, RED, YELLOW books - try Task A;
  • BLUE, GREEN, ORANGE books - try Task B;
  • TURQUOISE, PURPLE, GOLD or higher - try Task C.
Here is a link to our Home Learning Folder:

  • Project Task - each week we will put a task that relates to another aspect of the curriculum we have been covering. As mentioned earlier, over the last 2 weeks, we have been thinking about garden birds. Use books or the internet to find out about the different garden birds that visit your garden at home. Choose one bird and present what you have found out about them as a poster or a report.

We hope this helps you further support your child at home. Please do not be daunted about the amount of work here as you only need to start with the Must Do's first (many of which you probably have already been doing) and you can access the Can Do's as and when you feel your child will be engaged by this.

Don't forget, we are always always available on our Key Stage 1 email. If you have any questions or concerns about homework or indeed about anything, please just ask and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

ks1@downhallprimary.com

Wishing you a fabulous weekend.

Best wishes

Mr Jude, Mrs Yuille & Mrs O'Connor

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