Week 2

Thursday 14th January

It's getting exciting now!

Task 1: Remember, your brain warm up every day is to rehearse the Story Map from start to finish. If you are struggling to memorise all of it, begin with Part 1 and add one new sentence at a time. Before you know it, you’ll be there! Scroll down to find the pictures to follow and head over to the video centre to rewatch Miss Francis in action.

Task 2 - for YOU!! Now that we know the story SO well through saying and signing every day, it is time to test our skills reading as a reader and writing as a writer .

Do you remember when we did this during our 'Whatever Next!' unit? We looked at each line of the story map and read the matching sentences. Because we always SPEAK the story in full sentences, it helps us to READ and WRITE the story in full sentences. Miss Francis has started you off with the first page of story, carefully saying her sentences out loud before writing them down. Be brave with spellings and try to sound them out with your phonics skills - remember, I am not looking for all perfect spellings just like your grown-ups at home know, I am looking to see YOUR spelling. Say-the-word-sllooowwwllyy and record the letters you can hear from your mouth (s-a-ng). I have also made you some vocabulary cards for the special verbs we were learning last week (you can 'magpie' steal these!!).

Reception: Can you say and sign the words for each picture strip and write in key words underneath each line to match? Sound out your words carefully to try and include every letter that you can hear (s – a – ng). Picture strips are in a document below for you, hopefully there is enough room for you to squeeze your key words in between them, or you could use post-its/more paper.

Year 1: Can you write the story sentences for the rest of the book? Say and sign the words for each picture strip to help you remember what comes next. You could write on the handwriting paper attached or an exercise book. I have attached a sheet with the picture strips that carry on from Miss Francis' example. Maybe cut them up and stick them onto handwriting paper or your exercise book and then write the sentence/s underneath. I wonder how many you will write today? Could you complete the WHOLE STORY??

Wednesday 13th January

One foot in front of the other, we've got this!

Task 1: Remember, your brain warm up every day is to rehearse the Story Map from start to finish. If you are struggling to memorise all of it, begin with Part 1 and add one new sentence at a time. Before you know it, you’ll be there! Scroll down to find the pictures to follow and head over to the video centre to rewatch Miss Francis in action.

Task 2 (finally!): You have been amazing with questioning this week and steadily growing your written sentence length too. We thought that today, you might like a fresh challenge ...

There was once a girl who had tiger slippers, a butterfly hairslide, a kind granny, a starfish soap and many other wonderful things. As time went on she thought she lost her special items but it turned out they flew into the little girl's memory! Today, we would like you to design a 'Memory Poster' - describing one of the things she thought she had lost. Miss Francis has created an awesome example to give you some inspiration.

Reception: Do you think you could draw and label your item? Perhaps you could include key words like the colour, shape, design, or even sound that your item/thing/person might make.

Year 1: I wonder if you could include some beautiful adjectives (describing words) today. Fingers crossed!

Tuesday 12th January

Let's start to sew it together...

Task 1: We have learnt all three sections of our Story Map, so there is nothing new to learn - that means practise practise practise time! Every day now, as a brain warm up before Literacy, we all need to keep rehearsing the actions until we know them off by heart. I would recommend starting with Part 1 and adding Part 2/Part 3 line by line. Before you know it, you'll be sailing through the story . We don't need video evidence of this every day please - my Dojo feed is super full of so many wonderful posts that I am struggling a little to keep up!

Task 2: Yesterday you did an awesome job of writing questions (and remembered your question marks ???), some of you even sent in fabulous videos of family interviews . Today we are going to build on these as we create our first full sentence conversation!

First, think about a question you wrote down...

(To tiger) Why do you chase people?

During your interviews, you asked the question AND THEN the tiger REPLIED. So in our conversation, we need to write what tiger answered back:

(Ticky) Why do you chase people?

(Tiger) Because they run

Do you remember our verb sentence writing last week? We learnt to G-R-O-W our sentences, making them extra stretchy with lots of wonderful ideas and connectives (and, but, because) in. Let's see if I can do the same today:

(Ticky) Why do you chase people?

(Tiger) I like to chase people because it makes me laugh when they run on their funny little legs.

WOAH! Did you see that??? My sentence just grew and grew. I wonder if your answers today could be as long and exciting as mine? Choose 2 characters and write a conversation between them, starting with asking your most fabulous question from yesterday.

Reception: Do you have any toy people or animals at home? You could act out your conversation using your toys or you could even design puppets and build a puppet theatre!

Year 1: Use the conversation strips attached to write each of your sentences on. Remember, one character doesn't talk AND talk AND talk AND talk, the other character needs the chance to reply too. I wonder how many strips you can fit on one page. In fact, I wonder how many pages you could fill today!

Monday 11th January

The story finale!

Here we are, the beginning of Week 2 and already we are onto learning the third and final part of our Talk4Writing story: The Paper Dolls. Miss Francis and I have been blown away by your amazing memories so far, keep up the practice from here on in - remember, the better you know the original, the easier it will be to innovate on in days to come.

Task 1: hop on over to the video centre (https://churchillkentcofe.primarysite.media/media/talk4writing-part-3-the-paper-dolls) to see Miss Francis perform Part 3. You need to commit this to memory; actions AND words. Feedback from parents suggests that lots of repetition throughout the day is super helpful. 

Task 2 for you? Woo! We know the story, have learnt the meaning of the verbs AND used them in full sentences. Now it is time to delve a little deeper and spend some time getting to know the other characters just as well as Ticky, Tacky, Jackie the Backie, Jim with two noses and Jo with the Bow do.

In class, we LOVE to take part in 'hot-seating' - taking turns to pretend to be story characters and interviewing them. So, who in your family would make an excellent TIGER? Does anyone remind you of a CROCODILE? Could you act with an excellent PIGGY voice?

We are going to use questioning to help us understand a little more about what is happening in the lives of some of the other people and animals in the story. Take turns to ASK and ANSWER; just like the children in the photos below. Remember, questions always begin with question words. Can you think of any?

• what
• who
• why
• where
• when
• how
• do
• is...

Once you have verbally practised questioning and have lots of ideas flowing, have a go at writing your questions down. Don't forget you can 'magpie' steal the real spelling of each question word above  and ALL QUESTIONS END WITH A ? (question mark, of course -> ??????).

Reception: practise those handwriting skills by deciding which question word you want to start with and copying it into a giant speech bubble, then ask a grown up to write the rest of the sentence down as you say it. You can add in the magical ? at the end. If your brain is stretching today, go for writing it all by yourself - remember those finger spaces to help you read it back again.

Year 1: There are giant speech bubbles below as well as medium sized ones. Perhaps you have lots of questions to ask the same character. Maybe you would like to ask 4 different questions, one to each of your favourite characters. I challenge you to use AT least 4 different question words - think you can??