Week Ending 22/09/23
Date: 17th Sep 2023 @ 5:18pm
Happy Friday! And just like that we have come to an end of another week and the end of our first book, ‘We’re Going to Find a Monster’. We have had a wonderful adventure with Charlie and Eddie and experienced going over the shimmering ocean, up the huge, high moutains, through the deep, dark jungle, past the bubbly bubble lake until we found the monster's lair. We've had great fun pretending to put on our grumpy monster voices and joining in with the story with key phrases. This led us to retell the story using pictures in a story map. A story map is a great way of recalling the main points of the story in sequential order. When reading to your child at night, get them to retell the story using their own words to see if they have understood what has been read to them. This is fantastic for supporting our language skills, especially using the correct tense. E.g. Charlie and Eddie go-ed over the ocean. Always give a choice between two options. For instance, 'Charlie and Eddie go-ed or Charlie and Eddie went?' Your child will then hopefully pick the correct verb and model saying the whole sentence back to them for them to try.
A Polite Reminder
Please may we ask that all soft toys/magazines etc are left at home. We do not want your child to lose this or get it damaged whilst it is in school. In your welcome pack, there was a small mesh bag where you are able to put pictures/small toys or reminders of home should your child need it in their tray. Thank you.
Tapestry
Tapestry is your online learning journey of your child's time in Reception. We get to share WOW moments with you and is our main form of sharing your child's progress with you from week to week. We love seeing what the children get up to outside of school so please keep sharing! At the end of the year you will get to download your child's learning journal with both our and your observations. Please could I politely ask that this is only used for observations. If you would like to get in contact, please go through admin@tarporleyce.cheshire.such.uk.
Emails are checked everyday and we try to get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you.
Cauliflower Cards - deadline is Friday 20th October
The PTA each year organise an exciting Christmas Design Project for the Autumn term! Your child has the opportunity to create a piece of Christmas artwork and have it printed on a range of products. If they would like to take part, please see the order form which has been sent home this week in your child's book bag.
The Christmas designs can be professionally printed and purchased on a range of products including Cards, Tags, Wrapping Paper and Gift Mugs.
Please read the artwork guidelines printed on your child’s order form... most art materials can be used, but colour pencils, white or silver attached to a white background and photographs are not recommended. Bold and bright designs that fill the paper produce the best effect. Large areas of white background are less effective. Important details must not be placed within 5mm of the edge of the paper.
For further inspiration go to www.cauliflowercards.co.uk and view their gallery.
1. Artwork must be attached to the order form with the arrow on the form circled indicating the top of the work.
2. Please keep designs flat and damage free, as marks will show on the final print.
Orders and payment must be made online using the unique code located at the top of the pupil order form. Please refer to your order form for further instructions.
Each order form must be unique so please do not photocopy the form for other members of your family you can get extra copies from your school.
All artwork where orders have been placed must be returned to school by: Friday 20th October.
Cards will be delivered by the beginning of December.
Autumn Walk (weather permitting) – Thursday 28th September
Good news! Next week we plan on going on our annual conker walk to the field adjacent to the school. We do not cross any main roads and use the side path to the left-hand side of the main car park to access the field through the forest. We will be back for normal pick up time.
Your child will need:
- A waterproof coat (labelled)
- Wellies (Labelled)
In the class talk, I mentioned about leaving a pair of spare wellies in school throughout the year should your child need them. We do have spares but not enough for the whole class.
Date for the Diary
- Harvest Service – Tuesday 10th October 2pm. We will need adults to help us walk down to church at 1:30pm, please let the office know if you are able to help. Thank you.
- Imagine That Trip – Thursday 9th Please see this week’s email with further details. If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to ask. We will need parent volunteers so please let us know if you’d like to join us for the day!
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This week we learnt four new sound I, N, M, and D using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. Please continue to practise recognising these sounds wherever possible. E.g. on signs, in menus, bedtime stories so your child is seeing them in new contexts. This week we have been beginning to put some of these sounds together to form CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and blending to read them. Each lesson we have revisited initial sounds, rhyming couplets, listening skills and the most important, oral blending and segmenting. I have uploaded the oral blending tutorial again as a refresher to now apply our first eight sounds. Please continue to encourage your child to orally blend simple CVC words such as hat, pin, mud etc. We want to ensure every child becomes confident enough to independently blend as soon as possible. That way, we can focus on the sounds that we learn each day and confidently blend and segment words containing those sounds. Practice makes permanent! This week we have also been consolidating recognising the graphemes S, A, T, P. Please see attached the Little Wandle Home Learning sheet if you would like practise at home.
It's really important at this time that the children try not to get into bad habits when learning these sounds. We try to avoid something called a 'schwar' such as sounding out the word cat as cuh-a-tuh. Otherwise this ends up blending to be 'catter'. Please ensure your child is using the pure sound to support correct blending. I will be writing about reading books in next week's blog.
In Maths, we have been learning about measurement, in particular height. We have been using mathematical vocabulary to compare the heights of different objects finding things that a taller and shorter. We have applied this language to activities like building towers and saying 'Tower A is taller than tower B' for example. Then we moved on to ordering the heights of different objects in the classroom and consolidated using the terminology (taller/shorter than/tallest/shortest).I have uploaded an activity below should you wish to continue this learning at home.
On Monday, we found the monster was hiding in the scariest, smelliest and messiest place in the whole wide world (the brothers’ bedroom!). We then found clues to match to the descriptions and practised our segmenting and initial sounds.
On Tuesday, we read the Colour Monster story and focused on the different emotions in the story. We found out that most of us are the yellow (happy), green (calm) or pink (loving) monster. We then held our own Relaxation Day and created a list of things we could do to relax our brains. In the afternoon we had another story with Jack the Dog where we learnt about being truthful and saying sorry.
On Wednesday, the rain wasn’t quite on our side so we went into the hall and had a fun, energetic PE lesson with Mr Elton. Fingers crossed the weather improves for next week.
On Thursday, we finished our story and created a story map to retell as a class. This led us to creating our own story maps of ‘We’re Going to Find a Monster’ by mark making our ideas. In the afternoon, we met our Year 6 buddies and spent the afternoon playing with them.
On Friday, we learnt about Harvest and how we celebrate this time of year. We thought about being thankful to the farmers who work hard to grow the crops and learnt our Harvest song. We can’t wait to show you.
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, George H!
Our Mystery Reader was Drew’s Mum! Thank you for coming to share your story with us!
Please speak me if you would like to be Mystery Reader and we can put you in the diary. Remember you can have other family members come and read a story too. These are the remaining dates for this term…
Friday 1st December 3pm
Friday 8th December 3pm
Friday 15th December 3pm
Thursday 21st December (last day of Autumn term) 3pm
Thank you for all your support. Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
