Whitehouse Common Primary -

Reading for Pleasure

At Whitehouse Common Primary School, we firmly believe in the power of reading and how much joy getting stuck in to a good book can bring.

We promote reading for pleasure in a number of ways: through our Book Award Challenge; accessing our well-resourced library each week; time in the day to hear stories read by the staff; sharing the wonderful story sacks the PTA team have created and through the reading corner areas in class, which children can access to enjoy reading in. 

Here are some of our wonderful book corners:

Singing and Sports in Y6

The children have been raising the roof with some fabulous singing this week; we've been learning some songs from Matilda the Musical. The children have learned the words from a musical libretto and been learning to recognise musical notation as well as singing in a three-part arrangement.

We wlecomed some specialist coaching this week from Sutton Town Netball Club. They will continue to support with some netball coaching for the girls over the next 6 weeks. We are really lucky to receive this opportunity, and we've been really pleased to hear that the girls have enjoyed it so far!

Excellent Work (Week Beginning 13/1/20)

Excellent Work (Week Beginning 6/1/20)

Newsletter 17th January 2020

Please [click here] to read the newsletter

Please [click here] to read Parents Snap Chat Guide 

Reception Reading

All children are now bringing home 'Ditty' books or sheets as their home readers. Please try to read a few pages of these books with your child everyday. Whenever you read, practise the 'speed sounds' from the chart, at the front of the book. Touch each letter and quickly say the sounds. It’s important that we use 'pure talk' to say the sounds, adding 'uh' to the end confuses children.

Green Words These can be spoken in “pure talk” because they sound like they are spelt.

Red Words These are our 45 Reception keywords that cannot be sounded out. The children have to learn them by sight.

Encourage your child to read the text themselves. Children should touch the letters and say the sounds and then blend them together to read the words. Practise reading daily to give children more confidence. Ask your child questions about what they have read to ensure they understand the text.

Please [click here] to view the Parent Ditty Reading Booklet.

Let's go cultural - Finding out about Christmas in our partner countries.

In the pre-Christmas hullabaloo, 4MG wondered how Christmas was celebrated by their friends in our partner schools. So, armed with an iPad between two, they began a websearch.

Firstly they discovered that Christmas is not an official holiday in Turkey - we talked about why this was and decided that we would find out about a festival they do celebrate in Turkey later in the year. We found some photos of the Spring Festival and messages on trees that looked intriguing!

That left Austria, Greece and Spain. The children chose one of these and completed a fact file about celebrations in that country using https://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/
We tweeted some of our work, and then made a video of it all that you can see below.
We wish you and all our friends in Spain, Turkey, Greece and Austria, a very Happy New Year!

4MG and Señora Stevens, WCPS, UK

Our travel guides!

In preparation for the meeting in Spain, children in Y5 and Y6 worked together to create some handwritten and illustrated travel guides to sites of interest in our town - Sutton Coldfield; our city - Birmingham; our capital city - London; and also in the rest of our country - England.

The actual guides will be added to our Erasmus+ display but we're taken photos of them all so that we can share them with you, and made them into two videos, one local and one national.

Enjoy!