Week Ending 19/01/24
Date: 9th Jan 2024 @ 7:18pm
Happy Friday! This week we have been introduced to our new story book 'Let's All Creep Through Crocodile Creek' which takes us on an adventure through a creek. We have been thinking about the different journeys we make day-to-day (house to school, to the park, to Delamere forest). The children had lots of ideas about the journeys they had made over the Christmas holidays including visits to Santa, light trails and exploring new places.
Dates for the diary (Spring Term)
- Friday 26th and Saturday 27th January – PTA Beer Festival! Come and join us from 6pm at the Community Centre.
- Tuesday 13th February – Chester Zoo trip (Whole School)
- Monday 12th February/Wednesday 14th February – Parents Evening.
- Thursday 7th March – World Book Day
- Wednesday 27th March – Dormice class assembly (9am – school hall)
Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI)
This week we have undertaken the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) assessment which is designed for Reception pupils to support their language and early literacy skills. This assessment has given us an indication of who may benefit most from receiving targeted small group work and one-to-one support each week with an adult. In addition, we will be starting NELI Whole Class in the coming weeks. NELI Whole Class is a companion to the NELI programme. It has been developed to be used alongside the NELI programme, delivered by a teacher to the whole class. NELI Whole Class complements and enhances NELI to support us in delivering oral language enrichment to all the children in the class as well as further boosting the skills of the children who are receiving the intervention. It targets vocabulary, narrative skills, and active listening.
In the next few weeks we will be sending home a report in your child's book bag which provides the scores for each area assessed.
- Expressive Vocabulary (EV) assesses the ability to name pictures; a measure of vocabulary knowledge
- Listening Comprehension (LC) assesses the ability to understand spoken stories; a measure of both literal and inferential language comprehension and expressive language skills
- Receptive Vocabulary (RV) assesses the ability to match spoken words to pictures; a measure of vocabulary understanding
- Sentence Repetition (SR) assesses the ability to repeat sentences; a measure of language comprehension and production skills
We will be letting you know if your child will benefit from the small group intervention in the coming weeks.
We have included some information at the bottom of the page which will help you develop your child's vocabulary, comprehension and listening at home. If your child still isn't forming their speech sounds correctly, there is some great guidance here: https://www.royalwolverhampton.nhs.uk/services/service-directory-a-z/speech-and-language-therapy-children/activities-and-advice/speech-sound-skills/
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This week we learnt four new sound OO (as in boot), OO (as in cook), AR, and OR using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. The mnemonics for these new sounds are very catchy so if your child is struggling to recall the grapheme ask them to recall the phrase to help them remember. My favourite is ‘OR, born with a horn’ which is a picture of two unicorns, how lovely! We practised reading these words by decoding and then saying the sounds in our head to read fluently. The children are having lots of opportunity to practise reading fluently in our Reading Practice Sessions, using prosody (their teacher voice) and answering lots of comprehension questions. A useful tip to enhance children’s comprehension skills is to use the starter sentence ‘I know that because…’ When reading at home you might get the answer “I don’t know” to a question but keep encouraging your child to reread to support these useful skills. They do know it, but may need more practise. Rereading for fluency is key! Think: Does the picture tell you anything? What have you read which can help you? Is it a word? Something someone said?
Unfortunately, due to curriculum hour on Thursday and me not being in school today, I have been unable to put the Little Wandle books in your child's book bag. Mrs Line has changed their sharing book for the weekend. I will be putting in this week's book on Monday. In the meantime, you may wish to practise this week's sounds by using the downloadable home learning sheet below. Thank you for your understanding.
In Maths, we have been playing lots of counting games that require us to count both forwards and backwards and saying the number names in order to 10. We played a game by passing an object around a circle, if you said 10 you were out! We also challenged the children to play a similar game but you have a choice of one or two numbers to say at a time. You could extend this game up to 21 and have a choice of one, two or three numbers at a time. The children are always on the look out to try and catch you out and make you say 21! In our starters we’ve been singing lots of number songs such as 5 Little Ducks, 5 Currant Buns and 10 Green Bottles. These are particularly useful for counting backwards!
In Kinetic Letters, we have been practising some of the Fisher Family (Y, G, J, F). The Fisher Family letters all start from Scared Monkey and go underneath the line to ‘catch’ the fish from the pit. Take care when going under the ‘ground’ as you don’t want to go too far into the pit as Skip’s tail will get stuck in the mud! We say to the children that we must go to the next scared monkey branch on the line below to avoid this.
On Monday, we started our brand new story 'Let's all Creep Through Crocodile Creep' by receiving a letter that had been left for us in the classroom by three friends, Rabbit, Tortoise and Mouse who had been on an adventure. We discussed the different journeys we had been on both near and far.
On Tuesday, we discussed a journey we had all made together recently, to the Church! We looked on Google Maps and then drew our own simple map and labelled key physical features of our walk to Church including shops, traffic lights and even The Swan!
On Wednesday, to continue our topic on journeys we discussed modes of transport and made a variety of vehicles to transport us on our adventures.
On Thursday, the children were challenged to traverse the equipment with an added ladder as a challenge. In the afternoon, we had our loved ones come in to share in our learning. It was time for the children to make their own map of their journey to Church and label it by applying the sounds that they have learnt so far. They did a fantastic job!
On Friday, after the madness of Christmas we are back to our weekly music lessons where today we learnt the nursery rhyme Wind the Bobbin up with actions to help us perform. A big thank you to Mrs Line for covering for me today! The black ice didn't quite agree with my car on the way to work this morning. Please excuse no reading books for the weekend. I will be sure to put them in on Monday when I return.
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Elsie!
Our Mystery Reader this week was Sullivan's mum. Thank you for coming to share a story with us!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
