Adventure Books, Tapestry and Drawing Club
Adventure Books and Tapestry
The children will have their own journal in school which we call their adventure book. During child initiated learning time, the children often ask us to take photos of their amazing inventions and creations which we will later print out and then the children will cut themselves.
They then stick these photos in their adventure books and reflect on their learning with an adult. In the spring and summer term they will start to write in their journal too. This time together is really important and we use it as a time to reflect on learning but also time to develop communication and language as we write down exactly what the children tell us about their photos. For example, at the start of the year, there might be a photo of them playing in the water and when talking to an adult they might just say 'water'. The adult will take this time to conference with them and to encourage them to describe their learning further and to start to build a simple sentehnce structure. Hopefully by the end of the year the child will be using a full sentence to describe their learning such as 'I was making a magical potion with the water, it will turn you into a frog!'.
This time together with each child is really important to us and we can see that the children are excited and keen to add to their adventure books through out the year. The children are very proud of their adventure books and often show them off to other adults around the school and their friends as the books are easily accessible to the children, they can look back at their amazing work at any point throughout the day and recall past events.
As we really value these important times with your child and want to spend as much time as possible interacting and communicating with your child, we only use Tapestry (our online journal) for maths observations only. You will get a weekly update with how your child is getting on in their maths focus group and what they are learning in maths that week so you can practice that skill at home. We use Tapestry for important updates and a weekly maths observation only because we don't want the adults stuck behind an Ipad all day writing observations, we want our adults doing what they do best, which is interacting with the children and pushing their learning forward.
Drawing Club
Drawing Club is an approach designed by Greg Bottrill that immerses children into a world full of imagination. We at Napier fully embrace drawing club and can see the joy it brings to our children.
It is through drawing club that we open up the magic world of tales and story to children whilst at the same time enriching their language skills, developing their fine motor and share a really special time with them. Drawing Club is a fantastic place to start a child’s experience of school ‘Literacy’
- Monday- Vocab and character
- Tuesday- Vocab and setting
- Wednesday- Vocab and I wonder if...
- Thursday- Vocab and I wonder if...
- Friday- Vocab and I wonder if...
Drawing Club is based upon the 3M principle. These are making conversation, mark making and mathematics. We use a book, traditional tale or an animation as a portal for the week. Children learn new, exciting vocabulary that we revisit each day of the week. We draw characters on a Monday, settings on a Tuesday and we ‘wonder’ on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
We add maths to our drawings by talking about shapes, doubling, halving, addition, subtraction etc… We might be drawing a troll with a spherical shaped head, 2 strong, wiry hairs on his chin and double this amount coming out of each ear. He has one more than 4 buttons on his filthy, ripped shirt. Children observe as the teacher models drawing club each morning and then get the opportunity to complete their own drawings. They are invited to wear a lanyard showing they are part of drawing club and can borrow ideas from the teacher or create their own amazing ideas to share.
One of the most exciting parts of Drawing Club is adding secret symbols and passwords to our drawings. We always draw a secret symbol that can make anything happen! Sometimes we press them and aliens or unicorns become 3 times bigger, pencils turn into chocolate or hair turns multi-coloured! We then add a password to make the secret symbol work. This can be a mark, letter, digraph (2 letters that make one sound), a word or a sentence. As children make progress and become more confident with their phonics, their passwords develop and move towards phrases and sentences.
