The government have announced that due to the ongoing Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, all schools in England will be closing in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. I appreciate how difficult of a time this is for you all and I wish you health and safety for the potentially challenging weeks to come. I know many of you will have many concerns during this period, and that your child’s learning may rank quite low on this list, but, in an attempt to help us to support your children and maintain as much normality as possible, we as a staff have decided to send home learning packs for your child to complete at home. In these packs are a range of resources focused primarily upon maths, reading and spelling, punctuation and grammar which will act as revision aids to allow you to maintain the learning your child has engaged in so far this year. Obviously, the packs are a finite resource but the types of questions and aspects of learning that they propose can be used for you at home to set your child more work, based upon the template that these resources provide. I do hope that you find them useful in bringing routine to your child’s days during the quarantine period. Please do not return these packs at the end of the closure period, as this could further perpetuate any potential spread of disease.
Our school has set up year group email addresses which will be checked by staff at least once a week, should you have any questions about your child’s learning at home or queries about the content of the pack. The Year 2 address is year2@our-lady.blackpool.sch.uk . I will try to respond to as many of your queries as is possible!
As well as this, we would like to recommend other online resources that can be used in order to give your child a broader depth of curriculum experiences. These are listed below:
Twinkl – got to www.twinkl.co.uk/offer and enter the code CVDTWINKLHELPS to be able to access a fantastic bank of educational resources which can be printed – or copied or read on screen if you do not have printing facilities. Resources are easily grouped and can be accessed by going to KS1 -> Year 2 and then choosing the subject area you wish to focus on.
Education city – www.educationcity.com – login and password on packs.
Sumdog – www.sumdog.com – is a site with numerous useful resources. Account details on packs.
Times Table Rockstars - www.ttrockstars.com - Login and password on packs - practice times tables.
Starfall – www.teach.starfall.com – a reading and phonics website – although American, there are many useful resources here.
Reading Bear – www.readingbear.org – another site with a range of reading activities.
Phonics play – www.phonicsplay.co.uk – another brilliant Phonics resource site with interactive games.
Letters and Sounds – www.letters-and-sounds.com – Phonics resources
Oxford Owl – www.oxfordowl.co.uk - Reading and phonics resources
Bee bot app – search ‘bee bot app’ on the google play or apple app store – computer programming skills
Explorify – www.explorify.wellcome.ac.uk – Lots of great Science resources
ICT games – www.ictgames.co.uk – Lots of educational games.
Topmarks – www.topmarks.co.uk – Lots of educational resources.
PE with Joe – youtube ‘the body coach’ – PE lessons for kids, new every morning.
Get epic – www.getepic.com – access to a free month for appropriate reading materials.
White Rose Maths – www.whiterosemaths.com/resources/schemes-of-learning/primary-sols/ - This is a fantastic maths resource site with home learning packs.
Primary Stars – www.primarystarseducation.co.uk/covid-19-year-2
Cosmic Yoga – www.youtube.com/user/cosmickidsyoga - Mindfulness through Yoga.
Go Noodle – www.youtube.com/user/gonoodlegames/featured - Brain activities to keep your mind fresh!
Audible – search the app store for ‘audible’, also available on Alexa and Google Home Devices – This audio book company are apparently offering free children’s audio books – great for letting them settle down to listen to a great story!
Amazon Kindle – available as an app on all devices – This is not free but I wonder whether a £7.99 Amazon Prime account would grant access to e-books for your child!
Finally, we will be sending home a ‘scrapbook’ for children to use for any writing activities they may engage in. I would like each child to keep a daily diary of anything they do or learn written in full sentences with exciting vocabulary. I appreciate that there may not be many exciting things to include in the diary.
Also, please focus on any of the following writing areas to maintain skills in these areas:
Narrative stories/fairy tales/stories about familiar places/adventure or quest stories
Non fiction texts such as explanations (e.g. life cycles), instructions (e.g. how to make a cake), letters (write to a famous person), reports (all about animals/places, etc)
Poems – use rhyme, rhythm and alliteration to write simple poems.
When writing these text types, please focus upon the follow grammar and punctuation: capital letters and full stops, adjectives to describe nouns, adverbs to describe actions, question sentences (what is your favourite toy?), exclamation sentences (what a fantastic day it was!/ How lovely that picture looks!), command sentences (get that toy!, come here, etc) commas for lists, words with suffixes (-ed, -ing, -ful, -less, -er, -est, -ness, -ment), time phrases (first, once, then , next, one day, the very next morning etc), conjunctions (and, or, but, because, so, if, when, until, etc), apostrophes for possession (John’s dog) and for omission (can’t, won’t, didn’t).Regularly practicing these will maintain your children’s skill in these areas.
Keep mindful that all future updates will be relayed solely through our school website. The address is http://www.ourladyassumption-sch.co.uk/
We wish you all the best for the coming weeks and look forward to seeing you all soon.
God bless, stay safe and stay well,
Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.
