Author: Mrs Porter

Phonics

This week we have looked at the phase 3 sounds ‘ear’, ‘ure’ and then revisited the other sounds from this half term through playing phonics bingo. Words include:

ear, hear, dear, year, fear, beard

manure, secure, cure, mature

Each day the children applied their phonics learning over the half term to a short writing task. It has been a real pleasure seeing how much they have all improved.

Maths

We have continued to explore 2-D and 3-D shapes with Polydron as well as becoming familiar with calculators, with children learning to check their answers when adding and subtracting two single-digit numbers. This also helps to reinforce the abstract symbols used for adding, subtracting and equals.

We have also been counting with one-to-one correspondence which is when the person counting touches each object and says the numeral name aloud. This is a far more complex skill than rote counting. Giving your child as much practice as you can counting one-to-one will really support them to develop this very important skill.

We also sang ‘Ten Green Bottles’. We began to think about how we would write what happens when we takeaway 1 from a set. We learnt the symbol we use to indicate that we are ‘taking-away’ and the symbol that tells us what that is the same as – or ‘equals’.

Modal making and speaking and listening

Children have been encouraged to plan what they want to make and think carefully about how they can improve each modal that they complete. Children were given the opportunity to explain their creations each day focusing on using past, present and future forms correctly, thinking about how they sequenced what they were saying (Today I … First … Then … Next … Finally) as well as trying to be as clear as possible using sensible language. The children listening were then given the chance to ask questions.

Meet the Teacher

On Tuesday, the children met with their teacher for next year, Miss Perry. They created an ‘all about me plate’ which they used to let Miss Perry know a little bit more about them.

Physical Development

Some boys got creative and used the largest Polydron pieces to create a Hop Scotch track. We also continued to complete a run outside to help keep our fitness levels up. We played a few rounds of musical statues and enjoyed creating our own climbing frame using the tyres in our outdoor area. Despite the rain and strong winds, we still managed to enjoy our snack outside each day in our make-shift gazebo.

Have a lovely weekend!

Phonics

It has been amazing to see how much progress the children have been making in phonics – both reading and spelling words with the sounds we have been learning. The link below has some great resources to help children practice reading and spelling further.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/read-write-inc-phonics-guide/#set2

Writing

This week we have spent 15 minutes each morning reinforcing phonics work through writing simple sentences following some brief taught input. We watched a video read by Oliver Jeffers about a boy who threw things at a problem only for them to get stuck. We thought about what we might throw up a tree and made a lovely display for our classroom with our ideas.

Another day, we realised that we weren’t too sure about what the word ‘future’ meant, so we talked about some of the jobs we might want to do in the when we are older in the ‘future’ and made a class book with beautiful illustrations and simple sentences about what we had decided on. We enjoyed reading it together as a class at the end of the day

Yesterday, we watched a video about our solar system from ‘Storybots’ (I’ve learnt so much from this programme!) and then chose our favourite planet and wrote one interesting fact about it.

Today we watched an animated film called ‘Something Fishy’ and wrote a sentence about what we saw.

The children are getting very good at counting the sounds in words and choosing from the ‘special friends’ (phonemes, digraphs and trigraphs) they have learnt this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiVkDMLh81w

Maths

We have been busy in maths this week too. We have continued to run a snack shop each day where children have to identify the correct coin in order to take their snack and explored these coins through a busy fingers activity too. Children also made and described shapes with lolly sticks as well as 3D shapes using polydron, created their own patters using peg boards and made (some quite creative) patterns with numicon. Some children enjoyed a game of Snakes and Ladders in our outdoor area too.

Physical Development

We also continued to get lots of exercise including running with Mrs O’Conner, regular ‘brain breaks’ through the ‘Penguins Attention’ song and an increasingly challenging obstacle course to develop our balancing and coordination. PE sessions with Ms Bowen, including learning how to travel in different ways and working with a partner to pass a quoit for a relay race. We’re certainly ready for our lunch each day!

We’ve got lots to look forward to next week too – including the children meeting their new teacher for next year – I can say confidently that she’s a very lucky teacher because I for one have been having fantastic time with this hardworking, creative and lovely group of children.

Mr Sallis

Lots of great learning this week.

Phonics

We continued to revisit phonics sounds learnt during the spring term. This week we focused on ‘oa’, ‘igh’, ‘ar’, ‘oi’ and ‘oo’/’oo’. You could see how many of these ‘special friends’ they can find in the books you read at home.

Busy Fingers

This week, children made patterns by drawing around shapes, making paper clip chains (one group made one with over 100 paper clips which they then used as a giant skipping rope!) and exporing how many different ways you can make 10 with numicon.

Coins

We also completed some activities that helped us to recognise different coins, including using a snack shop to help us decide which coins we needed to use to purchase different snacks.

Another really fun week was had by all!

Mr Sallis