Collected Resources

1. New Year banners
2. Dinner time!
3. Story time
4. Pattern making

1. Before any teaching, read Holidays and Festivals: Chinese New Year by Nancy Dickmann (to p15). Shared read the captions. Note how the words explain the photographs. What would be your favourite part of Chinese New Year?
2. Finish Holidays and Festivals, revisit captions. What things do Chinese families do to bring good luck? What colour is associated with good luck? Try some fortune cookies, if possible, and read messages on-screen (resources).
3. Watch the storytelling video of The Race Across the River, pausing to allow children to read animal names. After the first pages, ask children who they think will win. Who did win? Who was second? What do you think of Rat’s behaviour? What words could describe the rat, the ox etc.?
4. Look at the index in Holidays and Festivals: Chinese New Year. What does this page do? Repeat with the glossary. Why aren’t there pages like this in The Dragon Machine?

Poetry/Rhyme of the Week: Dragon, Dragon
Introduce on Monday. Send a copy of the song words home (see resources).

Group Reader: The Race Across the River
This beautifully illustrated retelling of the traditional tale explains how each year came to be named after an animal. The Jade Emperor’s birthday celebration turns into an exciting race across the river. Which order will the animals arrive in? This lovely story offers an opportunity to discuss place numbers, as well as fitting in perfectly with teaching about Chinese New Year.

1. Stanley's Stick
2. Sticky descriptions
3. Stick uses
4. Captions for Stick man

1. Reading Stanley's Stick phrases
2. Discussing Stick man
3. Rhyming words
4. Stick uses

1. Wild wood role play
2. Budding artists
3. Shifting sands
4. Sticky sculptures

1. Select a range of objects/photos to represent people, places or tasks that are special to you, e.g. photo of a friend, pebble from the beach, bike helmet. Identify each one and explain why you chose them, including the emotions they evoke. Invite the children to share significant people, places or tasks and to share the emotions they induce.
2. A range of fiction and non-fiction books about trees and the seasons.
3. Read Stanley’s Stick. Briefly identify how Stanley uses the straight stick. Next, suggest additional ideas for how Stanley could use his second stick. Compare and contrast the suggestions
4. Read Stick Man. Display pictures of Stick Man in different locations (resources). Sequence them. Identify strategies to read each caption (resources). Apply strategies to read captions aloud.

Poetry/Rhyme of the Week: One, Two, Buckle my Shoe (resources; see websites)
Introduce the poem and tune on Monday (send a copy home). Rehearse and sing throughout the week. Encourage children to identify the pairs of rhyming words in the poem and to sing it rhythmically.