Whitehouse Common Primary -

Whole School Attendance Newsletter

This is an important update about school attendance for the 2021/22 academic year.

Click here to read the newsletter.

Lara's Language Journey Day1-5 Competition

Every day this week we have followed Lara as she has visited the countries of our Erasmus+ project, and learned a little bit of the languages that are spoken.

At the end of the week, here's a little competition to see what you've learned. Can you answer these questions? If you can tell Señora Stevens the answers, you will be rewarded with house points, a certificate and quite possibly a little prize! 

1. Which 5 languages are spoken by the partners in our project?

2. How do you say hello in those languages? (If you know the words to our Erasmus+ song, you know this already!)

3. Which language has one word for he she and it?

4. Which language has a habit of combining lots of words to make one long word?

5. Which of the five languages is spoken by the most people? (According to the statistics given on the posters!)

If you can tell Señora Stevens the answers, you will be rewarded with house points, a certificate and quite possibly a little prize! You can write them down, tweet them or tell her in person next time you see her!

Good luck!     καλή τύχη   Viel Glück     iyi şanslar   ¡Suerte!      

European Day of Languages 2021 at Whitehouse Common

Every year on 26th September people across Europe celebrate languages and cutlure on European Day of Languages. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the day.

At Whitehouse Common we are going to mark the event in a variety of ways.

Each day for the next week Señora Stevens is going to post a page from "Lara's Language Journey across Europe." Watch out for which country and language she is focusing on each day. There will be a quiz! After this week, there will be a post at least once a week with a new language.

In addition, this week in class assembly children will find out about Amal and The Walk, and consider how language - both spoken and non verbal - can be used to welcome. They are being set a challenge to consider how they would offer a welcome to their home, school, community and country. More details will follow later in the week.

Later on in the year we will return to the idea of language when we celebrate International Mother Language Day on 21st February. 

Newsletter 10th September 2021

Please [click here]

Elder are House Champions !

Congratulations to Elder House for winning the House Points and Sports Day this year !!!! Hawthorn were 2nd, Rowan 3rd and Acer 4th. I will upload the Sports Day highlights video to Teams by the end of the day tomorrow for all classes. Reception and Year 1 - a copy of the assembly (and the highlights video) will be shared on Dojo today. Well done to everyone for contributing to House Point totals, and participating so well in Sports Day. Your teachers are extremely proud of you. 

Looking forward to a fantastic year of sport and activity from September!    

Newsletter Friday 2nd July

Please [click here] for the newsletter

WCPS pupils in Primary languages writing showcase.

Pupils in Years 3 and 5 have recently had some of their Spanish work published in an online compilation called Write Away. This termly e-zine contains writing done by pupils at UK schools in languages other than English. Each edition has a guest language - in this edition, Romanian - and features only the best work that exemplifies good primary language learning. 

Competition to be included is fierce and submitting work is no guarantee that your work will be published. We are very proud to say that work by Dihen, Martha and Phoebe in Y3  about Mi familia imaginaria and Harris, Thomas and Maisie in Y5 about Un animal extraño/Mi monstruo was picked for inclusion. You can see an online interactive version of the magazine here or download a PDF to download and read (or keep for posterity!) 

Well done too to Zack, Elliott, Aarav and Jessica in Y3 and Marcus in Y5 who also had work submitted but missed out this time.

The next issue will be published just before the end of term so we have a month to produce some more excellent work to submit and who knows? 

#30DaysWildMultilingual - linking the outdoors with language learning

When Señora Stevens asked children recently what they enjoyed about language learning and what they'd like to do more of, two answers that came back were challenges, and learning more languages. So here's a challenge that can be done in any language or languages! What's more, it's a quick and easy challenge that gets you outdoors appreciating the beauty of our world so perfect for a sunny half term and going forward into early summer!

Every year in June, The Wildlife Trusts run the 30 Days Wild challenge – a challenge to do an activity linked to nature, every day, for the whole month, and Multilingualism in Schools decided, in conjunction with their local Wildlife Trust in Sheffield, that they would like to create a language based challenge aimed both at those learning a language at school and those who are growing up multilingual. Each day of June there is a simple challenge linking languages and the natural world that can be completed by children (and adults!) of all ages. They include finding the names for flowers in other languages, counting hops, litter picking and eating outside. Some can even be linked to our topics (likes and dislikes, weather and colours) You choose the language that you want to explore. It could be Spanish, it could be a language you speak at home, it could be a language you've always wanted to learn, or a different language each day. 

Señora Stevens is really excited by this and will be sharing the challenges each day via our Twitter account @whcps. You can also find them by following the Multilingualism in Schools Twitter account @LostWor_l_ds or the hashtag #30DaysWild and #30DaysWildMultilingual However, if you want to pick and choose the order in which you do them, or want to do several at once, you can download all 30 challenges from their website and complete as many as you want, whenever you want!

We'd love to see your challenge posts on Twitter, or on the #30DaysWildMultilingual at Whitehouse Common Padlet. No need for a log in - just click on the page and post your pictures and comments. Posts will be moderated so may not appear immediately. 

Once we're back to school, Señora Stevens will explain more and launch it properly but why miss out on the fun this week?

The first challenge is to do with clouds! Which might be a problem as there are currently no clouds...