If we had been in school this week, we would have been filming our role play from 'The Tempest'. We are going to try and film a little of this next week so you should have something to see.

Meanwhile, we have two challenges for the children to complete this week.

1. We would like the children to write a story about an adventure they had when they found themselves on the island from The Tempest. It is their own made up story but can include some of the characters from The Tempest. Don't try and include all the characters - that will get confusing - one or two is sufficient. Last week, in school, we planned these stories and the children drew story maps. We then rehearsed telling our stories out loud and trying to include exciting time words and adjectives. Miss Spollen practised this with you on your zoom on Friday.

If any child would like to redraw their story map, in order to help themselves write the story, I have included a blank one below. I have also included a word mat with the characters names and prompts to remember some of our exciting words. There is lined paper to print on our 'spelling' page, if you would like it. 

We really would like the children to write the best story they have ever done, in beautiful joined handwriting. Therefore, we are going to suggest that you just write a little of this each day this week until it is finished. Don't try and rush. Take your time and check your work carefully for spelling and punctuation. Most children will now be able to use different types of sentences: statements, questions and exclamations. They should also be writing some longer sentences joined by conjunctions - we have worked on 'and', 'but' and 'because'. 

We look forward to reading these stories when we return to school and may share some work in progress on the zooms as we go through the week. Happy writing!

2. We would like the children to revise all their year 1 high frequency spellings. We will help you with this on our zooms. There are 44 words and we will focus on 8 or 9 each day. Every year, the year 2 teachers will do a spelling test at the beginning of September to see if the children know their year 1 spellings. These are the words that they will use regularly when they write and writing is so much easier for children if they have a good bank of known words to rely on. Look at our 'spelling' section for ideas about how to learn spellings. There are many good spelling games on the internet too. Here are our words: