Squirrels' Class Blog
Sunday 24th March
Marvellous March!
It’s been a marvellous (yet, rainy) March so far! Squirrels have very much enjoyed our Pathways book, Major Glad, Major Dizzy. It’s an interesting story about two toy soldiers, a naughty sister who wants to play with toys instead of sewing (I don’t blame her) and how things change as we travel from life in 1870 to present day. Children have made wonderful links to their previous learning about London landmarks and loved spotting clues that fit into our class timeline (who knew Queen Victoria would get a cheer when we spotted her photo in the book?). We’ve been working hard this week writing our final write away (assessment piece) and it’s been a very proud moment to see so much progress with sentence structure, punctuation, the use of conjunctions and becoming more confident spellers (Y1s love using their grow the code phonics mats, Y2s delight in telling me newly learnt spelling rules). It’s been lovely watching Squirrels find their writers voice as they add more detail to their work. This week we’ll focus on writing our final pieces in neat ready to go on our let Your Writing Shine display.
Our Pathways book also linked in wonderfully with our Toys from the Past learning in History as we explored what toys used to look like… yes, children were shocked to hear that Miss Jones grew up with dial up internet (what do you mean you couldn’t use the internet if someone was on the phone!?) and phones could only make phone calls! We loved sharing our favourite toys and were excited to discover that some toys are loved no matter what time period they are in.
In phonics this half term, we have been busy growing our brains learning alternative sounds for well-known GPCs and alternative spellings for well-known sounds. Squirrels have given their all as this has been a considerably tricky part in our phonics journey (we know now 4 news ways to write /or/ and /s/ and can spot the schwa in some words). Phonics assessments will start this week to see how well your child is progressing in their phonics journey.
In RE this half term, we have focused on our No Outsiders curriculum celebrating differences. We’ve started each lesson by sharing a book together and talking about physical and cultural differences and the importance of acceptance and kindness. Squirrels have loved taking part in class discussions and have overall shown themselves as kind, thoughtful and accepting Squirrels with children declaring they couldn’t see ANY differences at all!
We will learn about the Easter story this week, reflect on our promises for Lent (what else can we do to show love and kindness to each other?), and explore and retell the Easter story with our class Easter garden.
Here’s to looking forward to one last fab week together before enjoying the Easter break, eating chocolate eggs (I will be doing this in my pyjamas!) and getting Easter bonnets ready for when we return.
Take care,
Miss Jones
Dates for the diary - Spring Term
- Wednesday 14th February and Thursday 15th February– Parents Evening. This will be held face-to-face in the school hall on Wednesday and virtually through schoolcloud on Thursday.
- Tuesday 13th February – Whole School Chester Zoo trip
- Thursday 7thMarch – World Book Day (children can dress up as their favourite book character or in cosy pjs)
Parents Evening
Next week is pupil progress meetings. I will talk through how much progress your child has made and give you an idea of their next steps in reading, writing and maths. I will give you an idea of how on track they are to be at 'expected' level by the end of the year as well as talking to you about how lovely your children are! Meetings will be 10 minutes long and I'll be using a timer to make sure I stick to schedule. If you have any concerns or questions, I’ll give you a chance to raise these at the beginning of our conversation as a priority. If you have any unanswered questions, we can schedule another meeting to discuss anything in more detail after half term.
Chester Zoo Trip
Children will need to bring a packed lunch. Please order a school packed lunch on ParentPay or tick packed lunch from home. All children will need to carry a small backpack for their lunch and water bottle. They will need to be able to carry this themselves while walking around Chester Zoo for the whole day. Children should wear full school uniform and comfortable footwear suitable for the weather. Please send them with warm coats, hats and gloves as we will be outside for most of the day. We can't wait to spot the animals from The Lion Inside and I'm sure we will have no problem finding our 'roars' like the mouse!
We will be travelling by coach from the Community Centre and children should arrive at school at the normal time. We plan to return before the end of the school day.
Happy last week before half-term!
Miss Jones
Thursday 8th February
Hurray for fantastic February! I’m sure February is met with lots of exclamations of “finally!” after a cold wet January. Our focus this half term has been reading and writing our own version of The Lion Inside, getting to grips with numbers past 10 (Y1) or learning how to multiply and divide (Y2), learning about the seasons and weather changes (we’ve used cloudy and raining a LOT on our class weather chart, when will it be sunny?!), learning how to navigate spreadsheets in computing, practising our animal dance moves in PE on Fridays with Miss Jones (the Jungle Book soundtrack has been a crowd pleaser), learning about maps, continents and China in Geography, and learning about different beliefs about how the world was made in RE. Our brains are seriously growing every day!
In phonics, we have been playing a new game called where in the word? Now we’ve grown our brains and the phonic ‘code’ we now know more GPCs for the same sounds (ee, ea, e-e, ie, y, e). Our focus this week has been to sound talk each word and tell our talking partners where in the word is the ‘ee’ sound. We then group words with the same GPCs and this helps us remember new spelling rules (Penny has the ‘ee’ sound at the end so it could be an ‘y’, ‘ie’ or ‘ee’). This can be a fun game to play together while reading with your child at home to get them spotting patterns in words that have similar spellings and sounds. We have also encountered tricky words with quad graphs (4 letters, 1 sound) in! We’ve been learning how to read ‘thought’ and ‘through’ and trying our best not to be tricked by them. Little Wandle call it 'tricky' because they have not been taught that part of the code yet so any words used to be tricky because of the grapheme 'a' being the phoneme 'e' and the grapheme 'y' being the phoneme 'ee'. Now of course we know about the GPC 'y' as 'ee' so that is no longer a tricky part. Hurray! Ask your child to read tricky words in their reading book (there is a tricky word box at the beginning of every Little Wandle reading book) and tell you what part makes them tricky. Squirrels have been fab at explaining this to each other and trying hard to remember in our writing, we won’t be tricked! This week is a Grow the Code revision week before our half termly assessment so keep reading daily please.
Speaking of reading, we have new days for our reading lessons. Our days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We will change Little Wandle books every Wednesday. Please make sure your child brings their reading record to school every day and their reading book ready to change every Wednesday. Library books are changed every Friday.
This week Squirrels have been busy writing their own version of The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright. Safe to say we are more than excited to be going to Chester Zoo next Tuesday to find our own roars!
In maths Year 1 have been learning about place value to 20 (What does a number really mean? What makes that number? How do we write that number accurately every single time? Have we learnt all its number bonds so we don't need to use our fingers for 8+ 1 or 6+ 3 or 4+ 5, we just know these are number bonds of 9). We are into teen numbers now. Here are the misconceptions that Squirrels might make when learning:
- say 'ty' instead of 'teen'
- hear 'ty' instead of 'teen'
- confuse the ones and the tens number (eg understand '16' but write 61 because of the 'six' then 'teen')
- confuse 61/16 in understanding, not 'seeing' that the tens number dominates the ones number in amount.
- be working so hard on one element of the maths (writing the numbers accurately in formation, understanding which number to write due to its place value, knowing its 'teen' not 'ty') that some other elements will get lost and wrong.
- they don't see that the 0 gets covered up by the ones number and write 106
- we say the ones number before the tens number for 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 unlike any other number above 20
- we have to learn to spell these numbers (think eleven, twelve, thirteen, fifteen)
A fun game we have been playing in class is called X-Ray vision. It’s a 2-player game that uses digit cards (make your own at home with paper!) 0-20. The players put the cards in order and player 1 closes their eyes while player 2 turns a few cards face down. Player 1 has to use their ‘x-ray vision’ to tell player 2 which numbers have been turned over. Knowledge of number order and tens and ones should come into play when reasoning which numbers are missing e.g. I know 18 has been turned over because it’s one more than 17 and one less than 19.
While Year 1 have been busy learning about new numbers to 20, Year 2 have been busy learning how to multiply and divide numbers! A letter will be coming home about TTRockstars this week as a way for your child to practise their times tables while rocking out.
Don’t forget its parents evening next week! I look forward to talking to you about your lovely children and the progress they’ve made so far.
We’ve been grateful for our marvellous mystery readers so far, we don’t currently have any booked in for the rest of the term. If you would like to be a mystery reader, please contact the office.
That’s all from me!
Miss Jones
Monday 27th November
Wow what a busy few weeks Squirrels have had! Parent evenings, book look, and Victorian day! It was wonderful to see you all at parents’ evening and share how your child lets their light shine and how much progress they’ve made in 12 weeks.
Squirrels have blown me away with their super-ness in growing their brains, resilience and bravery towards new and tricky things, and most of all, their kindness towards each other. The innocence and all-round loveliness of 5- and 6-year olds will always amaze me. One of my favourite moments from last week was during our RE lesson. We were discussing how Mary would feel when Angel Gabriel told her she would be having a baby. Shocked, happy and blessed because she had been chosen by God were our thoughts. We then thought about how Mary would feel after giving birth to baby Jesus. Shocked and happy were mentioned again along with “in a lot of pain because she’s just had a baby!”. A nod in agreement and a few muffled laughs from adults in the room; I’ll always love hearing these answers.
I’m excited to say it’s finally beginning to look a lot like Christmas this week! We’ve been busy making our Christmas crafts for the fair this Friday, and it’s been lights, camera, action with our Nativity rehearsals officially beginning. Our actors have been booming their lines, the songs are being sung every day (Little donkey is a firm favourite) and the narrators have been practising their prosody skills that would make any TV presenter proud! We can’t wait to perform our nativity to you all on the 13th December.
Squirrels have been working hard these past few weeks growing their brains as we grow the code in our phonic and spelling lessons. As we learn and revise alternative GPCs (‘ee’ as in sheep, ‘ea’ as in treat, ‘y’ as in Romilly, ‘ie’ as in Georgie and ‘e-e’ as in these), the ‘code’ in our reading books becomes decodable and we become more fluent and confident readers. Your child’s reading progress relies on learning the code and practise makes perfect! The code comes thick and fast in Y1 and revision and learning new spelling rules in Y2 means practising daily will move your child’s learning on.
We will be introducing our Reading Challenge for Year 1’s (Year 2’s already do this with Mr Brown) this week to support a love of reading. Listening to your child read 5 times a week (5-10 minutes) will support your child’s confidence and fluency, especially with our Little Wandle books which should provide confident (almost memorised) reading from our reading lessons 3 times a week in school. Please write every time your child reads to you in their reading record and your child will move up the reading challenge towards the goal of 50 reads. Once accomplished, rewards are plentiful with 25 house points for their house, a shiny red sticker for their sticker book, and heaps of cheers to celebrate their amazing-ness! They will then start again with another reward at the end, this time with the knowledge they are readers and (hopefully) have a love of reading. Reading records will be checked on Mondays and/or Thursdays so please send them in.
As we’re on the topic of reading, a big THANK YOU to our fantastic mystery readers. Gosh, have we been excited every Friday waiting with (sort of) closed eyes to see who our secret reader will be! If you fancy a slot on a Friday at 3pm, email or phone the office (admin@tarporleyce.cheshire.sch.uk) and we'll fit you in. Chocolate is always appreciated but not expected, we love seeing who our secret reader is and what our new book will be!
That’s all from me! Hopefully see you at our Christmas fair on Friday at 6, I’ll be the one wearing antlers and full of Christmas cheer.
Miss Jones
Monday 25th September
Can you believe we’re nearly a full month into being super squirrels? We’ve been busy learning about our body parts (which included a life size drawing of Harry W which is now on display on our Science working wall), rocking out to our Harvest Festival song (we can’t wait for you to see us and our amazing air guitars!), describing the terrible storm the boy and penguin found themselves in in Lost and Found, practising our whisper voices and wonderful prosody in our reading lessons 3 times a week, putting on our digraph spotter ‘goggles’ and having our eyes peeled for digraphs and trigraphs in phonics, making 3D shapes with Mr Brown, learning about how we belong in RE, practising whole body movement by covering the playground in our creative spiral drawings in Art (pictures to follow on Twitter), learning how to use a rekenrek (slide and tip!), and generally growing our brains and our love of learning! We certainly are busy!
Our main focus this term is reading, reading and you guessed it, more reading! We are loving our gorgeous Little Wandle books and making sure Year 1s are waking their brains up by revisiting phase 3 and phase 4 phonic code and Year 2s are securing and growing in confidence with phase 5 code and their enjoyment of reading. Please keep reading every night. Reading daily and having conversations with your child about what they are reading will help build fluency, enhance vocabulary and foster a deeper comprehension.
Below are useful dates for your diary. I will also add a ‘Dates for your Diary’ tab on our class page so you can keep checking.
September:
Week 25th: school clubs start
October:
Tuesday 10th: Harvest Festival at St Helens at 2pm - parents and carers welcome
Wednesday 18th: Baptism with Rev Jim
Friday 20th: PTA cheese and wine at school
Week 23rd: Parent Evenings
Friday 27th: Inset Day/Break up for half term
November:
Monday 6th: first day back
Wednesday 8th: Flu jabs and Book Look (3pm-5pm)
Friday 10th: Victorian Day – dress up!
Friday 17th: Children in Need
Friday 24th/Monday 27th: Book Fair
December:
Wednesday 13th: KS1 Nativity at St Helen’s 6pm
Thursday 14th: Squirrels’ Christmas trip – tbc
Wednesday 20th: Christmas dinner
Thursday 21st: Break up for Christmas!
Thank you also for your patience and smiling faces at the end of the day. Please wave if you feel I'm not seeing you. I am trying hard to learn everyone's grown up and place your face to your child so apologies if I'm still looking lost when I see you, I promise I'll get there!
I’m off to practise my Harvest Festival air guitar.
Miss Jones
Monday 4th September
Hello! I hope you have all had a lovely summer break and are looking forward to starting a new year.
We are so excited to welcome your children back to school tomorrow. We will take this week to ensure your children are settled, know where everything is and what new routines there are and most importantly, have fun together as super Squirrels!
Our first day together will focus on meeting the adults and children in our new class, establishing new routines (where to put our book bags/coats/water bottles, where to line up outside, where to sit on the carpet, where and when to go to the toilet) so all children feel comfortable in their new classroom.
We have a gentle start planned for this week. We will have daily worship together in class, book votes for story time, opportunities to grow (and wake up!) our brains in phonics, gorgeous new reading books to share, shape monsters to create in maths and lots of opportunities to play together with our friends and make memories as a new class family.
A new and exciting experience for your children will be our Ray of the Day! Ray of the Day is someone in our class who has let their light shine brightly in some way that day. They will get to take either Barney the Bear or Daisy the Rabbit home for one night and then share the fun things they did together with the class the next day. We especially enjoy hearing about yummy tea's, favourite books and love to see drawings of the fun things your child did with Barney and Daisy. There is a special message from Barney and Daisy in the front page of the Ray of the Day book to look at.
We have an exciting year ahead of us! Keep checking our class page over the year to find out what we're doing.
See you tomorrow!
Miss Jones
