Weekly Update 29.01.07

Hi everyone!

This week, we hope, will be an exciting one!

First of all, it is book week and we look forward to see you at our book fair which is open from Tuesday to Friday evening after school. At the end of the week we will be asking the children to come in to school dressed as a character from a traditional tale. If your child does not want to get dressed up they must come in to school, on the day, in their school uniform. We are also asking the children to complete a 'passport' for a character from a traditional story. They have done a similar task in class, so they should know what to do.

This week (and next week) we will be having a Rich Task Week in school.
The theme for this week is The Great Fire of London, and next week we will be using what we have learned about suitable building materials, to design a house for a character from a traditional tale.

This week.

We will begin the week by completing some bits of assessment left over from the last week.

From Monday afternoon we will begin our Rich Task.

The main learning objectives for the topic of the Fire of London:-

• finding out how and why the fire happened.
• looking at the conditions the people lived in at that time.
• the types of materials the houses were made from.
• comparing a modern home with a Stuart home.
• what is an 'eye witness' account of events?
• who was Samuel Pepys and what did he do?
• finding out why cities are safer today.
• compering modern and historical fire fighting methods.

Linked to the historical aspect of the topic, we will be learning about the suitability of a range of materials for a particular purpose. We are aiming to discover which materials would be the most fire resistant, and most suitable, to use for house building.

If any of you have any contacts in the Fire Service who would be willing to come into school and talk to the children about fire fighting and safety, please could you inform a member of staff. Thanks.

Some interesting websites:-

This has a crossword, a quiz, a wordsearch and information about firefighting through the ages.

http://www.historyonthenet.com/Stuarts/great_fire.htm

http://tlfe.org.uk/clicker/flashhistoryks1/fireofLondon.swf

This is good as a stimulus for art work.

http://www.warrinerprimaries.com/Topic/fireani.htm

http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/greatfire.htm

This has some information about Samuel Pepys, including a recipe for cakes which would have been made in the bakery which started the fire!

http://www.pepys.info/

Numeracy.

We will be carrying on with our normal numeracy curriculum.

This week we will be learning about odd and even numbers.

ALL children MUST be able to recognise odd and even numbers to at least 10.

MOST children SHOULD be able to recognise odd and even numbers to 50.

SOME children COULD recognise odd and even numbers to at least 100.

We would like the children to look at a range of numbers that are familiar to them and decide whether they are odd or even e.g:-

• their age
• parents/ brothers or sisters ages
• house number
• number of people in their family
• number of pets
• number of houses in the road
• number of buttons on their shirt
• ANY THING YOU CAN THINK OF!

We will discuss this in class with the childen by the end of the week.

Some websites which may be useful:-

http://ww.cricknorthants.sch.uk/assets/Flash%20studio/cfmaths/Odd%20Evens/npmenu.swf

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/maths/caerfilly/odd_even/odd_even_files/fullscreen.htm

http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/halloween/math-games/index.html#

Thank you for your continued support.

Have a fabulous week!

The Year 1/2 Team

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(Are there an odd or even number of kisses?)