25/10/2019

Phonics

This week we have introduced the sounds ‘c’ and ‘g’. The children have played games to practice the skills of segmenting (distinguishing the separate sounds within a word) and blending (putting sounds together to make a word). Thank you for your support with reading at home. We are delighted with the progress the children are making in blending sounds to read words independently. Please continue with a few minutes of daily blending practice at home. When your child is writing at home, you could continue to say the words ‘stretched out’ to help them to hear the sounds within the word. As always, we have put handwriting activities in bags today, please support your child to complete these accurately. Please also continue to support your child with forming the letters a, i, m, s, t, n, o, p and b so that the writing of these can become ‘automatic’. Next week we will be looking at the sounds h and d.

Literacy

This week we have shared the story ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt.’ We have sequenced the events in the story to help us become storytellers ourselves and we have imagined going on our own bear hunt adventure. Today during our dance lesson the children will be acting out the story and adding their own music.

Maths

The children have really enjoyed our shape focus this week. To reinforce this learning, please talk at home about squares, rectangles, circles and triangles and count how many straight sides or curved sides they may have. Also count the corners. When talking about the difference between rectangles and squares, the children know that the sides of a square are equal in length but a rectangle has two longer sides and two shorter sides. Next week we will explore the number 3 and repeating pattern.

Activities

This week the children completed their first guided write in their writing books. They drew a picture of their own bear hunt adventure, and wrote a caption or label by working with an adult to listen for the sounds. The children also enjoyed sharing with their friends the things they had found on their Autumn walk during Half Term. We have spent time with each child teaching their next steps for shape, by following their interests. Next week, the children will start group guided reading and practise creating repeated patterns in small groups.

Other

We are so proud of the children for getting back into the school routine so quickly and sensibly after half term. Now that the children are settled, we wondered if any parents would like to volunteer to come into school on a weekly basis to support children’s learning in the Foundation Stage classrooms? The hope is that you will be able to listen to children read, change children’s library books, support letter formation and name writing practice, lead maths games with small groups of children etc. To fit with our timetable, this would need to be between 10.15am and 11.15am on a Monday, Tuesday or Thursday or between 2pm and 3.15pm any day of the week. Please let us know by Friday 1st November if this is something you would be interested in so that we can arrange a time for you to meet Mrs Martin for a safeguarding introduction.

Thank you for your kind donations for our junk modelling station, we now have enough to last us for a while!