Big Talk Homework

Talk Talk Talk!

This will be Class 3's first week of Big Talk Homework. Big Talk aims to develop young children's ability to become confident and articulate communicators. Through good quality talk children will be able to extend their sentences, make choices for the vocabulary they use and restructure sentences, which in turn produces a higher level of writing. Big Talk also provides an opportunity for the children to talk about research they have done and what they have found out, their ideas on a given topic and much more with all family members.

Monday 31st January

The children's Talk Homework is to find out about one feature of a castle (it does not have to be Caerphilly Castle)

This week we will start learning about Caerphilly Castle. We will be looking at images of the castle since it was built and sequencing them on a time line, we will also be looking at plans of the castle to identify it's features.

On Friday, the children will have to talk about their chosen feature they have researched and write a caption for an image of that feature. When researching and talking about the feature you may want to consider the following questions:

What was it used for?

Who would have used it?

Why was it constructed in that way? E.g. Why were the towers tall? Why were the arrow slits narrow? Etc.

The children may wish to note their findings down in the form of a spider diagram that contains words, pictures, or short phrases if they feel it will help them talk about their chosen feature on Friday.

Good luck and have fun!

Remember, all you have to do is TALK!

Homework!

Building Castles

Your home task for the next two weeks is to build a 3D model of a castle.You should focus on the external features and ensure your castle has a tower and drawbridge. Please help your child to look at books or images to enchance your model. You may even

wish to vist a castle with your child before you build it!
Have fun and be creative!!

Here are some images to help you get started:

Castles

What an action packed term we have ahead of us!

Over the last week the children have thoroughly enjoyed planning our new topic about castles. They have planned for and are currently making a castle for our role play corner. The children will be able to develop their knowledge and understanding of what life was like living in a castle. We will be finding out about several castles in Wales, and later in the term hope to visit Caerphilly Castle.

The children are extremely excited about learning many aspects of castles. We will keep you informed about the all the fun activities we do on our class blog, however, I'm sure the children will keep you updated and enthralled at home with all the new things they are learning and experiencing!

Some of the things we have already been making are; Knight's weapons using meccano, making figures of Kings, Knights and Queens for our small world castle and moat, using 2D shapes to draw castles and making crowns for our class reward system. The children have also been learning the names and places of some important castles in Wales and labelling the main features of castles!

If you have any specialised knowledge or resources you would like to share with the children please pop in to let me know.
Thank you for your continued support.
Mrs Bailey