Cannon Park Poetry Week

/ / English

“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,

 

Fingerprint Art

/ / Art & Design, Parent/Carer Support

Good morning, everyone! For our Friday activity, I’ve picked one of my favourites – fingerprint animal art! I often use this idea when creating Christmas cards or birthday cards. They’re simple to create and look very effective when put together. Here are some ideas:

You may also like to combine lots of creatures together to create an animal scene, like this:

Maths at home

/ / Mathematics, Parent/Carer Support

Today I would like to share one of my favourite teaching resources. NRICH.

NRICH is an innovative collaboration between the Faculties of Mathematics and Education at the University of Cambridge, part of the University’s Millennium Mathematics Project.

NRICH provides thousands of free online mathematics resources for ages 3 to 18, covering all stages of early years, primary and secondary school education – completely free and available to all.

Aims:

  • Enrich and enhance the experience of the mathematics curriculum for all learners
  • Develop mathematical thinking and problem-solving skills
  • Offer challenging, inspiring and engaging activities
  • Show rich mathematics in meaningful contexts
  • Work in partnership with teachers, schools and other educational settings to share expertise

Maths at home

Whether you are a parent, a carer, a teacher, or have multiple ‘hats’, you will find that our latest Primary and Secondary Features contain a wealth of resources to support learners working mathematically at home. Each feature contains age-appropriate activities which have been grouped in the following ways:

  • Just Jottings – to have a go at these activities, you need nothing more than pencil and paper. This is a great opportunity to encourage learners to think about different ways of representing their ideas and recording their findings. When doing mathematics, there is often a phase of ‘messy maths’ while working on a problem; the neatly written solutions that appear in maths textbooks only emerge after lots of scribbling, doodling and jotting!
  • Interactive Games and Puzzles – these activities all include an online interactive environment, where learners can explore and play, in order to test out ideas and make discoveries. (You can read more about using interactivities to promote curiosity in our article.)
  • Maths to Take Your Time Over – these activities are worth exploring over a few days or even a few weeks. Many of them are ‘low threshold high ceiling’, meaning they are easy to get started on, and they can be extended so may keep someone absorbed for a long time! Learners can keep coming back to the same activity, mulling ideas over in between periods of focused thinking, and recording their ideas and findings, whether independently or with support from you. Some low threshold high ceiling activities are appropriate over a range of ages so could be explored by several members of the family together.
  • Print It Out – to get the most out of these activities, you need access to a printer (black and white copies are usually fine).

In addition, the Primary Feature includes:

  • Homemade Maths – these activities need some everyday bits and pieces. Anything will do! You can use buttons, scraps of paper or even sweets as counters. Create your own digit cards from paper or card, and use Lego bricks instead of Multilink (interlocking cubes). If you have a printer you can print off number grids, circle templates, dotty grids, dominoes etc. from the printables page.
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