Phonics
Year 2 were in the hall this morning being very active to learn their phonics. There was great teamwork and enjoyment on show – well done, everyone!
English
Reading for Pleasure Award
Congratulations, Miss Cleveland!
Last weekend, Miss Cleveland attended the virtual ceremony for the Egmont Reading for Pleasure Teacher Awards. Egmont Publishing, in partnership with The Open University and UK Literacy Association, aim to recognise teachers, support staff, and schools whose research-informed practices make a real difference to children’s reading for pleasure. Miss Cleveland was delighted to be Highly Commended as a School Reading Champion for all the work she has done at our school to help foster a love of reading in our pupils and staff, and sharing best practice with other schools.
The Phoenix Comic Crashes The Summer Reading Challenge
The Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge 2020 has joined forces with The Phoenix comic to bring more ‘silly’ fun to the nation’s most popular reading challenge.
A special take-over issue of the comic featuring activities, information and illustrations from Jamie Smart, Adam Stower and official Summer Reading Challenge illustrator Laura Ellen Anderson will be on sale from Friday 17th July with a FREE digital edition made available on the Summer Reading Challenge website from today (Wednesday 15th July 2020) until the end of September 2020.
Emma Braithwaite, Programme Manager, Children’s Reading, The Reading Agency says:
“We’ve always been big fans of The Phoenix at The Reading Agency, so we’re incredibly excited to team up with them for this special edition to celebrate the Summer Reading Challenge. Comics are a fantastic way to engage children with reading – with their smart, funny stories and amazing illustrations, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. We want to say a huge thank you to The Phoenix for generously allowing us to host the special edition on our website, so that children taking part in the Challenge can read it for free this summer.”
Tom Fickling, Managing Director, The Phoenix says:
“We are absolutely delighted to partner with The Reading Agency to help spread the word about the Summer Reading Challenge. Getting kids of all ages reading is at the absolute heart of everything The Phoenix does. At a time when the pandemic has affected physical access to schools and libraries, schemes like The Summer Reading Challenge are more important than ever. So, get to the website and get reading!”
The Summer Reading Challenge is the biggest children’s reading for pleasure programme in the UK. Last year over 700,000 children and their families took part. Please encourage your children to read anything that makes them happy – whether it be a comic, joke book, poetry, fiction or non-fiction, in digital or print format, from e-book lending through the public library service or from what they already have at home, with the Summer Reading Challenge official book collection as a guide.
summerreadingchallenge.org.uk #SillySquad2020 www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk
Join The Silly Squad for this Year’s Summer Reading Challenge
With the disruption caused by COVID-19 and the impact of social distancing on schools and public libraries,
The Reading Agency’s annual Summer Reading Challenge has gone digital for 2020.
The Summer Reading Challenge encourages children aged 4-11 to read during the long summer holiday with
research showing that children’s reading can ‘dip’ severely during the summer if they do not have regular access
to books. This year’s theme will also encourage children to read anything that makes them happy – whether it
be a comic, joke book, poetry, fiction or non-fiction, in digital or print format, from e-book lending through the
public library service or from what they already have at home, with the Summer Reading Challenge official book
collection as a guide.
research showing that children’s reading can ‘dip’ severely during the summer if they do not have regular access
to books. This year’s theme will also encourage children to read anything that makes them happy – whether it
be a comic, joke book, poetry, fiction or non-fiction, in digital or print format, from e-book lending through the
public library service or from what they already have at home, with the Summer Reading Challenge official book
collection as a guide.
The new digital Challenge launches today with a whole host of virtual (super silly) events
with guest celebrities and authors. The website is free to access, featuring games, quizzes and
downloadable activities to encourage children and their families to take part in the Challenge at
home. Although library buildings are closed, libraries will also continue to deliver the Challenge through virtual
services and e-lending platforms. You can sign up and get started here.
with guest celebrities and authors. The website is free to access, featuring games, quizzes and
downloadable activities to encourage children and their families to take part in the Challenge at
home. Although library buildings are closed, libraries will also continue to deliver the Challenge through virtual
services and e-lending platforms. You can sign up and get started here.
We’d love you to get involved this summer and join the #SillySquad2020. Head over to the Summer Reading Challenge Facebook page for the virtual launch party from 4pm today, hosted by Sam & Mark from CBBC.
Cannon Park Poetry Week
“You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart.”
Carol Ann Duffy
From nursery rhymes to Norse myths and picture books to pop songs, poetry has always been used to tell stories. Poems are a lovely way of thinking carefully about the words you choose to describe something, someone or somewhere, or to tell a story. This week is poetry week and each day, we’ll be challenging you to create a specific type of poem.
There is also a challenge that may take you a little longer to complete than the daily challenges, should you wish to take it on! Performance poetry is a real skill to perfect but is hugely entertaining to do and for others to watch. There is even a building society using performance poetry in their adverts on TV!
We’d like you to pick a poem, (it could be one you’ve written or one you love by someone else) rehearse it and then perform it for your family. If you could share it with us in your Google Classroom on Friday this week, that would be brilliant too. Remember not to include other family members in your recording though!
Someone who is really rather good at performance poetry is Michael Rosen, so I’m going to let him give you some hints and tips on how to do it really well.
All of the class stories this week will be links to poets, so they will give you ideas of how other poets perform too.
We look forward to seeing all of your poetry over the course of the week,
Reading
Good morning everyone! For my last post before the Easter holidays, I’d like to encourage one thing – reading!
As a school, we are part of the Coventry Schools Library Service. They have been working hard to support home learning by putting together a virtual Reading Club for all Coventry children to be able to access. The virtual reading club gives children an opportunity to submit book reviews and take part in mini challenges. They will have a rolling program of mini challenges over the next couple of months to keep it fresh. The first 2 are a mini Easter Reading challenge where the children are asked to read and review 3 books and also an illustration challenge where children can create their own book character and submit it to win a prize. It also has downloads to support parents in encouraging reading for pleasure at home, links to free reading resources and a Book doctor (where you can contact our specialist librarians for advice on what to read next).
You can find all of this linked from our home page www.coventry.gov.uk/sls
Or follow this link to the specific page www.coventry.gov.uk/slsreadingclub
Story Time
Reading and listening to stories is so important for children. For as long as schools are closed, Amazon have made their Audible resources free. Children everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories, including titles across six different languages, that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and just being children. All stories are free to stream on your desktop, laptop, phone or tablet. Click on the image below:
Amazon have also made a number of Kindle Books available for free download. Click here for more information.
Newspapers
Good morning, Cannon Park! I hope you all feeling well and you had a lovely weekend. This is our second week of learning at home. By now, you might be in more of a routine to help structure you day and you might be getting a little more used to that routine. However, your new routine won’t last forever – we will be back at school before you know it!
One thing that I’m doing more than usual at the moment is reading the news. In school, we subscribe to First News, which is a newspaper written especially for children. Fortunately, they are creating free access to their products for a limited period of time, to help parents and children during school closures.
First News is a weekly newspaper aimed at 7 to 14-year-olds that aims to get children talking about the news in an easy to understand and non-threatening way. They cover issues which are relevant to children and which specifically affect them. Inside you’ll find a mix of world news and UK news, but also loads of fun stuff, such as entertainment, games, animals, sport and puzzles.
News is all around us and children pick up on news wherever they go. But not all news is bad and they passionately believe there are lots of positive stories out there. They love to cover the nice news too and celebrate what is good about the world.
For today’s activity, why not encourage your child to read through First News. Following this, they could:
- write their own newspaper article about current events
- create a short news report to film like CBBC Newsround
- share a ‘good news’ story with a family member to spread positive news
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Open in new tab World Book Day
Everyone in school enjoyed celebrating books yesterday for World Book Day. The children, who were dressed in their PJs with their favourite bedtime story, enjoyed doing a variety of bookish activities. Mrs MacDonald rang the bell several times throughout the day, which meant the children had to ‘drop everything and read’.
Thank you to the families who sent in cakes as part of our Great Bookish Bake Off. The money raised in the cake sale at the end of the day will go right back into buying books for our library, which the children will enjoy.
Finally, a big thank you to all the parents and carers and grandparents who came in to join us for the Big Read at the end of the day. It was lovely to see so many children enjoying stories!
Video Book Reviews
Year 5 had a reflective morning thinking about some of their favourite books, and then created some amazing video reviews. One was for this year’s winning book in the Hooked On Books category for the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards. We’d like to say a huge congratulations to Kirsty Applebaum for winning – we loved The Middler – and a massive thank you to Coventry School Library Service who organise the awards each year. As you can tell from this video, all of the children have loved taking part, and have all got involved!
