Whitehouse Common Primary -

Beanbags for our Reading Areas - thank you PTA :-)

This week we have received 2 new large beanbags to use in our reading corners. This have been purchased by the PTA for each classroom. The children thoroughky enjoy using these during their "readaxation" time.

An author calls

We were extremely lucky to secure a visit from new author Christian O'Connell this week. You may know him better as the presenter of the breakfast radio show on Absolute radio. The year 6 children had the unique opportunity to ask Christian questions about his book and inspiration. They also had the chance to purchase signed copies of his book.

Excellent Work (Week Beginning 23/1/17)

NEWSLETTER 27th JANUARY 2017

Please [click here] to view the newsletter

Happy Hometime Club January 2017 Newsletter

The Happy Hometime Club January Newsletter is now available to open. Please [click here] to view.

Lo que aprendimos en español - T4W en español (Primavera 4)

Over the last three lessons, Year 5 have been exploring a story using a Talk for Writing approach that is used in Literacy lessons. 

The story, El Nabo Enorme, was familiar to them as it's a story they have heard in English (The Enormous Turnip) and, as Señora Stevens began the story, several children recalled that she had told it to them when they were in KS1. The familarity helped them understand but so did the repetitive nature of the the story as el abuelo called la abuela for help, she called Marisol, Marisol called el perro and so on until finally el nabo enorme came out of the ground and they all fell over. And the third 'aid' was that it was told using actions. If you have a child in Y5, ask them to do the actions for the extract in the image! 

As Señora Stevens read, everyone joined in with the actions on the first reading before beginning to join in with the text on the second reading. The third reading was accompanied by acting that would not have been out of place at the RSC by pupils in costumes by IKEA and Señora Stevens' Spanish dressing up box! As you can imagine, it was a lot of fun, especially trying to tira together and of course, falling in a heap!

Having joined in the story several times, we then tried to write our own version of the story. Señora Stevens wrote La fresa enorme about an enormous strawberry, and then the pupils wrote their own versions. Some are below. 

It was obvious that it was a task that they enjoyed as everyone was on task, there was a buzz of work rather than chat, and the results are excellent. In fact, there were complaints that they wanted to write more than the boxes on the sheet allowed!

¡Unos trabajos excelentes! Señora Stevens is looking forward to using T4W with Y3 in the next couple of weeks too!

Lo que aprendimos en español (Primavera 3 2017)

This week in Spanish Year 3 have been answering the question ¿De qué color es Elmer? Being a very colourful elephant, this question can be answered in many ways, and pupils enjoyed being able to reply even if they could only recall one colour in Spanish (unless it was gris or marrón in which case they were out of luck!) We then used a conjunction y (and) to extend our sentences, and discussed how we could use commas in a list instead of y between every adjective.
The extension activity was to write sentences using the same structure about other items. Señora Stevens was particularly impressed by this piece of work as it is beautifully presented, and the learner has remembered to add the accents on limón and lámpara; accents are part of the spelling of the word! Can you work out what these sentences mean?

Year 6 were continuing to work on sports and this week looked at extending their speaking and writing giving details of how often and when they play or do sport. We discussed how the expressions are like bricks whose order can be moved around, but that you can't break a brick in half. For example, all these sentences are correct;

Normalmente los lunes juego al fútbol por la tarde.

Los lunes por la tarde normalmente juego al fútbol.

Juego al fútbol normalmente los lunes por la tarde.

Normalmente los lunes por la tarde juego al fútbol.

but you can't say Juego normalmente al fútbol as it breaks the yellow brick in half and splits the verb jugar a

Having mastered that, some learners began to join sentences using conjunctions such as y and también (also), or pero (but) and sin embargo (however) to contrast ideas. Here are a couple of examples of learners who went beyond what was asked, using their previous learning or looking up new vocabulary to make their work stand out from the rest. ¡Bien hecho las dos!

Lo que aprendimos en español (Primavera 1 y 2 2017)

Over the first two weeks of term, there's been lots going on in Spanish lessons. Let's find out what two year groups have been learning. Year 3 have been practising asking and answering questions in Spanish about their name, age and health. They used prompt cards then tried to adapt the conversations to talk about themselves. Some of them tried to do it without the prompt cards, and there were lost of volunteers to perform their role plays in front of the class.    Year 4 conducted a survey, asking the question ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? (When is your birthday?) to practise the months of the year.  The next lesson they used their collaboration skills to complete a Tarsia activity reviewing the days of the week and months of the year. They enjoyed the competitive element, all trying to be the first to discover the shape of the puzzle as well as completing it.  And then, in preparation for writing the date in Spanish, they played Tesoro o Basura (Trash or Treasure) to sort vocabulary into categories.