Phase 2 – Whole school ideas and information

Aim to read to your child for a minimum of ½ hour a day.

If this is difficult, you can download 100s of fantastic books from audible. https://stories.audible.com/start-listen

Lots of authors have filmed themselves reading one of their books e.g. Cressida Cowell reading How to Train Your Dragon (on YouTube).

Tell us by email which books you have listened to.

We will create a list of your books read/ recommendations on the website

Minchinhampton Academy Book Swap Shop

Each day, from Monday 20th onwards, we will be putting out books on a book trolley outside the ‘kitchen’ gate. Please come and take a book. If you swap it for one of your own that you have finished with, all the better for sustaining the ‘Swap Shop.’ It goes without saying- please observe social distancing and clean the books when you get them home.

There will be a separate box outside for families to drop back school library books.

A message from  Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

We’re very pleased to announce that you can still shop at the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop – online and by mail order. We have a new online bookshop at www.yellowlightedbookshop.co.uk where you can buy books that we have in stock (or at least, that the computer thinks we have in stock), and we will post (or deliver) books to your door.

There is a flat delivery charge of £3 whether you buy a slim paperback or a big wodge of hardbacks – we like to keep it simple. If we don’t have the book you want on our stock file, most publishers are still fulfilling orders, so we can get pretty anything you might want. Email us at ylbtetbury@me.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Aim to have a ½ hour family discussion/ debate around the dinner table/ in the garden/ on a walk–

using the Philosophy for Children /homelearning/2020/03/26/time-to-talk/
and/or the debating ideas /homelearning/2020/03/31/spot-and-stripe-p4c-videos/

After the debate/P4C discussion- tell your class your opinion on class Padlet

Times tables – https://www.timestables.co.uk/multiplication-tables-check/

Y1 upwards: https://www.mymaths.co.uk/

Joe Wicks

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxW1XT0iEJo0TYlRfn6rYQ

Try some mindfulness out with your children. Let them teach you- a number of classes have been having mindfulness ‘lessons’ with Mrs Saeed and Mrs Smith.

Have a go at finger breathing, petal breathing, FOFBOC, tummy breathing with a breathing buddy, mindful mouthful, playing attention, gratitude meditation.

Alternatively use the resources here to help you.

https://www.ghll.org.uk/GHLL%20mindfulness%20activities%20updated.pdf

https://www.shambhala.com/sittingstilllikeafrog/

Use your login details to discover new music units on Charanga. Why not take the opportunity to learn an instrument together using Charanga’s instrument tutorials– we tried in school last week – it was great fun!

Why not complete one of these strengths surveys https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/user/login?destination=node/434

created by one of the well-known founders of positive psychology, Martin Seligman. We have begun doing these surveys with children from Year 3 up, because we strongly believe it is important to recognise and build on our strengths. There are surveys for adults and children. The child one, called the ‘VIA Survey of Character Strengths’ can be found here- https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter

There are nearly 200 questions! It should only take you 30-40 minutes to complete.

Get the children to reflect on their strengths and how they might be able to use them.

Why not explore how you and your children learn, using this list of ideas from /homelearning/2020/04/08/metacognition-activities/

All home learning opportunities and resources are on the school website under the tab ‘Home Learning.’

Please share your child’s learning on Tapestry and we will reply. We will also put photos and short videos onto Tapestry to support the learning we have planned.

Please use the Padlet link for your child’s class.

They can comment on posts and show work to their class and teacher. They/you will be provided with instructions.

Your child’s class teacher will be aiming to phone children once every 2 weeks for a quick catch up and to answer any questions. These calls will be no more than 10 minutes. In the absence of a phone conversation, we will look to communicate in another way.

If your child would like to send their work to their teacher or they have a question and would like some advice about their learning, please contact the class teacher via the class emails listed below. Please can we ask you to use the email option as responsibly and sparingly as you can- with 30 children in a class, teachers will only have so much time.