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DIARY FOR WEEK COMMENCING 29th January 2024 Year 1 & 2 Fascinating Facts Year 1 Cricket* Year 2 & 3 Football* Year 3 Virtual Reality
Year 1 Lets Get Moving Year 1 Wellbeing Year 2 STEM Year 2 & 3 French Year 3 Swimming Year 3 Tennis* Year 2 & 3 Dance Club*
WE DN E S DAY
Year 1 Football Skills* Year 1 Yoga* Year 2 & 3 Choir
School Council Year 1 Board Games
THURS DAY
Year 1 Outdoor Games Year 2 Tennis* Year 2 Art Yeat 2 & 3 European Cultures Year 3 Netball
Year 3 Cookery Year 3 Sewing Year 1 Lexia
FRI DAY
Here are some other top tips for writing for enjoyment and pleasure at home. Try journalling and have lovely notebooks and writing implements, use technology to write, write notes, cards, signs and lists, recipes, songs and more, keep writing to bite size chunks, transcribe for your child to model writing, praise all writing and avoid over correcting writing and damaging confidence. Back to the adults. It’s also vital that as adults we model writing for pleasure and talk about writing with our children so that they see it as an activity to be enjoyed and that we choose to do. You can read more here Writing_in_2023.pdf (literacytrust.org.uk) new-writing-for-pleasuremanifesto-.pdf (wordpress.com) It is our aim to build a community of readers and writers, all vital skills for future learning and academic success, but also for the pure pleasure and enjoyment that can be gained by engaging with and producing literature. Next week to support reading and writing for pleasure we will be celebrating National Storytelling Week. You will find further details on the next page of this newsletter and we look forward to children sharing their favourite stories with children in other year groups. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend.
TUE SDAY
I’ve seen many examples of writing for pleasure in action in school this week. When I visited Conkers, the children were talking about a problem and came up with a great solution. The children were sad about their models being broken up at tidy up time, so they decided to use their named peg dolls to write their names on post it notes to place on their models to show they were to be kept. The children had a reason to write, were all keen to have a go and the motivation to write removed any barriers. This morning the children in RC were so engaged and excited in a purposeful and special writing task. They had been given a mission to write secret messages for Mrs Salisbury and couldn’t wait to take their message to her and share them with pride. She was then able to give them lots of praise and they took such pleasure in a task well done. Our thematic approach in Years 1-3 promotes writing for pleasure. In Year 1 the children have been writing dragon passports for the dragons in the class text letting their imaginations guide their writing and make choices. Year 2 have used artwork as an inspiration to write descriptions about the wonderful character of Mr Toad and in Year 3 the children have enjoyed writing poetry which offers freedom from the constraints that can come with other genres allowing for freedom and creativity. Year 3 have also been using their class text to write recipes for some delicious smoothies that they will be creating next week. All of this writing provides for the affective domains and so the children can write both as pleasure and for pleasure.
Friday 26th January 2024
MON DAY
Writing is one of the key skills that we teach children, beginning with the very early stages of mark making in Nursery through to writing confidently for different purposes in Year 3. It’s probably one of the hardest tasks that children learn, as it places multiple demands on the child at one time. They must think about how to form their letters correctly and neatly, spell words, select vocabulary for meaning, apply grammar and punctuation rules, structure writing and develop ideas and convey meaning. This means that children can easily see writing as a chore and simply too hard! Writing is a challenge, but also a vital skill and an important tool for creativity, an outlet for self-expression and can be a pleasurable activity. We know that children who enjoy writing and are motivated to write are eight times more likely to achieve well academically (Clark, 2017). Therefore, writing for pleasure is a vital consideration when teaching young writers. This article highlights research that evidences a drop-in writing for enjoyment Children’s enjoyment of writing has fallen to ‘crisis point’, research finds | Books | The Guardian Interestingly, the report found that the majority of young children do enjoy writing, despite finding it a tricky skill to master, but this falls away as they progress through school with just one in four sixteen year old’s reporting that they enjoy writing. The conclusion is that we must offer children opportunities to write for enjoyment, so how do we do this? Firstly, we need to ensure writing takes account of the following key affective domains which are selfefficacy (I can), motivation (I have a purpose to write), agency (I can choose what to write about), volition (I can do it), self-regulation (I know how) and identity (I see myself as a writer). As teachers and parents, we need to have regard to these affective domains when offering writing opportunities to children.
Newsletter No: 16
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