Whitehouse Common Primary -

Letter to Parents - 27/04/2020

Dear Parents,

I do hope you and your families are well and that lockdown is proving to be as positive experience as possible for you all. Please may I take this opportunity to remind you that there are many support mechanisms in place for both children and adults; a range of information can be found on our website. There is no doubt that I speak for all the school staff when I say we are really missing you and the children and look forward very much to when we can see you all again.

As you are aware, since 23^rd March, we have been providing our key worker child care provision, run by our own staff in a self contained part of the building, at Hollyfield Primary School. We will continue to provide this while it is required. This child care is for key worker parents only, but most importantly those key workers who have no other alternative child care arrangements.

Please may I take this opportunity to remind you that homework for children is on our school website. Initially, our aim was to ensure that there was a range of work for all year groups that would support home learning until after the Easter holiday. However, we will be updating this for every year group every two weeks. It is absolutely vital that every child can access their homework and carry out key tasks so as to ensure this unavoidable and unprecedented disruption to their education has minimal impact. Teachers are setting carefully chosen activities that support your child’s learning of the National Curriculum, builds on their prior knowledge and deepens their understanding of key concepts. Many children are having virtual music lessons arranged by their peripatetic teachers. Parents who have contacted us about difficulties accessing homework information on line will be contacted individually.

Essential homework that you have been provided with for your child on the website is as follows:

Nursery to yr 2. - Daily phonics on line (youtube link on website)

Yr 1 to Yr 6 - White Rose maths lessons - watch tutorials and complete the corresponding activity (Reception to complete maths tasks provided for them in their homework area on website).

-All children to read daily and ensure guidance from teachers is followed so that they access a range of texts

-History and Geography on the guidance for your child’s class ensures coverage of the national curriculum and progression across school.

-All children to work on their basic skills to include number bonds work for EYFS and KS1 and times tables (TT Rockstars) work for yr 2 upwards.

-Spellings are all on the website under the curriculum tab/Spelling.

- Years 1 to 6 have also now been set an account with either ClassDojo (Y1 & 2) or Showbie (Y3 - 6). This is a great way to keep in touch with your teachers and improve your learning. Please can children update this with photos of their work or information about what they have been doing.

Please access the homework area on the website for all the relevant information for your child’s year group.

As you are aware, staff are making contact with children in their class approximately every 2 weeks to have a general chat and maintain contact. Mrs Horne is calling children who she sees on a regular basis for extra support and Mrs Slassor may call parents of SEND children, too. Please be mindful that these conversations take time and will take place over a number of days. Staff will call from numbers that are withheld, so please be mindful of this and do answer your phone! We will worry if we cannot get in touch with children and families!

We are aware that we want to continue to celebrate and reward the children’s effort, hard work and positive attitudes to their learning, whilst they are working from home. We will, of course, be doing this in our phone calls home and also when children return to school. From today, one child a week in each class, from year 1 upwards will be selected to receive a personalised letter from their teacher as one of the special ways we will be celebrating their achievements. Reception children’s learning will be celebrated in a range of different ways by their teaching team.

Please do use the website to access all key updates from the school. Homework will continue to be provided on a fortnightly basis. Information about school opening and closure, as well as child care provision for key workers will be available on the website. Newsletter updates from the school staff team will be provided and a wealth of information is also available for supporting families and children with special needs or for mental health and well being.

I am aware that some parents have expressed concerns about their year 6 children not returning to Whitehouse Common, if the current situation continues. Obviously, we all hope this is not the case but please be reassured that, if it were so, we would be looking at a range of ways to ensure their achievements are suitably celebrated and their leaving is marked appropriately.

On behalf of all of the staff team here, I would like to wish you and your loved ones good health and happiness in these unprecedented times. We hope you will all join in with the Thursday evening ‘clap for key workers’; we will all be doing this and thinking of you too.

Best wishes

Mrs Debbie Allen

Head Teacher

8 Free Primary Music Resources

Music plays a very important part in bringing people together and during this period of extended school closure the power of music could be transformational.

For teachers, parents and pupils, working from home brings about a new set of challenges but a regular musical interlude could be a welcome addition to your daily routine.

Whilst every country has its own language we can take comfort in knowing that the language of music is universal. Music can do great things for your mood and well-being.

Here are 8 FREE practical resources and activities to get started with:

Click Here

Keeping Safe Online

There are a number of amazing resources online that your teachers have been recommending. Please do make the most of these as many of them are what we use in school and they have been providing free access for parents. 

Whilst you are at home it's very important to make sure you are still keeping safe online! Please talk to your child about staying safe online. The following websites are really useful in exploring how to stay safe online. Take a look!

READING Free e-books to enjoy

Oxford Owl have a number of ebooks that you can access from home. These include some of the RML books, Project X books and some great graphic novels. You will need to register an account (which is free to do).

There are a number of other literacy based activities too. Happy reading!

Take a look: 

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/books/free-ebooks/

There are also some ideas and top tips for creative writing, so have an explore of the website!

Don't forget to try and read authors linked to your Book Award

Spanish at home

¡Hola! 

As promised here are some ideas of how you can carry on your Spanish learning at home. It's lovely to hear that some of you have already been doing some Spanish! ¡Bien hecho Ruby y Sophie!

You can send anything you produce to your class Showbie and your teacher can pass it on to me, or you could ask an adult to tweet it to @whcps, or send it to our school enquiry email address and it'll get to me that way. 

Most of all, stay happy and safe, and keep smiling. I miss you all very much. ¡Hasta pronto!

Sra Stevens xx

1. Explore a map of Spain. Use your knowledge of Spanish to practice saying the names of the cities. Can you find the names of rivers, mountains, seas and other geographical features? I know Y3 are really good at this as they've just been looking at it in their geography lessons! 

Then try and find some maps IN SPANISH, for example, this one. Make a list of country names in Spanish and then add the English word next to it. If you speak another language, you could add the name in that language too. And it's not just country names that are sometimes different. On that map, can you find the name for London in Spanish? What about Moscow and Stockholm, Tokyo and Rome?

2. Where is Spanish spoken? Not just in Spain! Find out where in the world you would find Spanish speakers. Find the countries on a world map. Why do these countries speak Spanish? Can you find out how they got their names? Make a country factfile with details of famous places, people, animals, sports, physical features, important events in history, festivals...

3. Have a go at the British Council Spanish Language Challenge - click here to download. And when you’ve tried the Spanish one, you could try another language - French   Arabic   German   Welsh or Mandarin. And if you speak another language or would like to explore a different one, why not download the blank one and make your own?

There are suggestions of helpful websites under Curriculum - Subjects - Spanish - Parents but here are a few favourites -

For activities, songs and games:

Digital dialects - https://www.digitaldialects.com/Spanish.htm

Rockalingua https://rockalingua.com/ (NB some things are paid but plenty of free songs, games and worksheets!)

Spanish Games https://www.spanish-games.net/spanishtopics

Calico Spanish Kids https://www.youtube.com/user/kidsimmersion

For stories :

Spanish Fairy Tales https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY0TNnnoZMapIQ3cXv1M1rg

BookBoxSpanish https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiqZIGpZl2Oc2kKd0EnK-vA and BookBoxInc https://www.youtube.com/user/bookboxinc if you’d like to explore more languages.

RadioLingua has offered free access to some of its excellent resources for the next 3 months. The HighFiveSpanish would be the place to start but you could also learn some French or even have a go at some other languages with the One Minute..videos. https://radiolingua.com/learnathome/

Babelzone have also offered their resources for free for the next 3 months. If you want to log in, use the school initials (4 letters) and the password is the colour in our name plus the 2 digit number in our postcode! https://www.lcfclubs.com/babelzoneNEW/index.asp You can use the Spanish resources but also the French ones so Y6 could start getting ready for September and their new language adventures! 

Let's Go Cultural at home!

Hello! Hallo!  ¡Hola! Yia sou and Merhaba

I hope that you're all safe. well and happy at home, exercising with Joe Wicks, dancing with Oti, enjoying story time with David Walliams and of course keeping up with your activities sent by your class teachers.

I thought you might like some ideas of how we can carry on with our Let's Go Cultural! project whilst we're not physically at school, so here are some suggestions. You can send anything you produce to your class Showbie and your teacher can pass it on to me, or tweet it, or send it to our school enquiry email address and it'll get to me that way. 

Most of all, stay happy and safe, and keep smiling. 

Sra Stevens xx

PS Spanish will follow tomorrow! And watch out for photos and videos of our exciting project week in school!

1. Did you enjoy our Erasmus+ visitors being here? What did you do and learn while our visitors were here? What was your favourite memory? You could write a thank you letter or a recount, or record yourself dancing or talking about your experiences.

2. Find out about famous monuments in Austria, Spain, Greece and Turkey, and in particular in Styria, Cartagena, Elefsina and Istanbul.

3. Festivals and celebrations – explore festivals that are celebrated in our partner countries throughout the year. Do we celebrate them too? Are they similar to a festival we celebrate? How are they celebrated? Food? Dance? Music? What about festivals we celebrate?

4. The next phase of our project looks at traditional games and pastimes. Why not find out about traditional games played in England/the United Kingdom.

Talk to your older relatives (or write them a letter!) – what did they play as children? What toys did they have?

What games were played at breaktime in the past?

What equipment did they need?

You could make some posters or even a video to explain what you discover!

5. Traditional tales and stories from England as well as our partner countries are also something we’ll be looking at. Have a look for some stories that originate from Spain, Austria, Greece and Turkey. You could retell them using a storyboard, or even act them out!

6. Check out the project blog to see what our partner schools have been learning about too!  

https://erasmusplusletsgocultural.blogspot.com/

There are suggestions above but there are lots of other things you could explore about our partner countries. Geography, history, art, famous people and much more!

Have fun! 

Guidance for activities in line with Early Learning Goals

Dear parents / carers,

Firstly I would like to thank you for all your efforts in supporting your children with their learning during this challenging time.

I hope that you are finding the suggested activities and resources useful in supporting the work that you are doing each day.

Please also be reminded of the importance of spending time together during this period and of the impact of talk, imaginative play and social time (playing board games, spending time in the garden, bike riding and walking etc.) on your child’s development and learning.

Make the learning fun and use the opportunity for additional time at home together to put learning into meaningful and ‘real-life’ contexts.

With uncertainty around current plans, I have put together some additional activity ideas relating directly to the Early Learning Goals.

The intention is that, by the end of the academic year, most children will be achieving most of the Early Learning Goals. They need to be achieving all elements of the goal independently in order for this to be considered as ‘achieved’.

Although we are aware that time away from school will reduce the amount of input we can give directly to this, I have listed each Early Learning Goal with some key suggested activities which will support your child in making further progress towards them.

Please continue to support your child in all aspects of their learning and continue to spend a little time (10-15 min) each day to practice phonics, read together and practice letter formation and name writing. It would also be beneficial to keep revisiting basic maths skills each day (10-15 min) such as counting to 20 and beyond, touch counting objects accurately to 20, knowing number pairs to 10 (number bonds) and within 10 e.g. 1 + 4, 2 + 3 and 5 + 0 all total 5 etc.

Keep enjoying quality time together, keep having fun, keep smiling and laughing together and take care of each other.

With warmest wishes

Mrs Slassor

Emergency Childcare - Easter Period

If you are a Key Worker and need Emergency Childcare over the Easter Period please complete the booking form here so that we can ensure staffing numbers are correct.

PLEASE NOTE: Childcare provision for Whitehouse Common children will continue to take place at Hollyfield Primary School and as you will already be aware, we are no longer able to offer before or after school care.

Booking Form