Reading: We are always looking for effective ways to introduce our children to new texts and to focus on reading for meaning and enjoyment. Shared Reading is a whole-class activity: the children follow a text together, listening to how the punctuation, expression and intonation should sound, as the facilitator reads to them. With older learners multiple copies of the same text are needed while with younger children, Big Books or enlarged texts are used while the facilitator points to each line as it is read aloud.
And the best thing about Shared Reading? Children are encouraged to join in and this makes it an inclusive activity which can be used with a range of reading abilities. Joyful reading experiences make for confident, independent readers!
In the sports (Running) hour we continue with the touch rugby theme while in the drama lessons (Right-ing) we see tremendous progress in the manner in which children solve real-life problems. Using a “Dear Abby” letter in which a personal problem is expressed, learners are put into 3 groups. Each group is required to think of either a good solution, a bad solution or the worst solution to the problem which they then act out in order to see the consequence of the advice they have given. It is wonderful to see the learners come up with constructive, realistic ways in which a situation can potentially be solved, and also that they are aware of how they could make a problem worse!