Rabbits' blog 2
Date: 7th Sep 2024 @ 6:23am
Friday 6th September
Week 1 done! Got to say I'm feeling a little less 'perky' than I was this time last week when I was at Nantwich Food Festival but I'm just as happy. The new Rabbits are a wonderful set of children and I am impressed with several aspects of their learning beehaviour: their listening skills are good- exactly where I would expect them to be; they follow instructions respectfully; they show kindness to each other; they want to learn (ok so they want to play more but that's ok at the moment) and they are being open to new things. I'm excited to be their teacher this year.
I hope my messages got to all of you yesterday; some people replied so I assume they did. This blog will aim to give you information about our weeks and ideas for you at home. The first one is: try to ask 'Tell me something good about your day today' rather than 'How was your day?' . I guarantee each child will have had a positive experience many times during the day even if some aspect was overwhelmingly negative to them :( Not a common thing generally but even I cannot control all their feelings! Please speak to me if you are worried about any aspect of school - the smaller the problem, the quicker we can fix it.
So these first 3 days have been about getting to know the expectations and each other. We have started some aspects of the curriculum - phonics, maths, maths mastery, English, kinetic letters and next week we will add reading, RE, PE and history - all being well and their resilience holds out! Certainly by break time Friday morning, they were pretty much done and it took a lot of energy to keep them focused and learning the rest of the day so we lightened the load a bit in the afternoon. DId they tell you that we had an impromptu fire alarm? (an over abundance of steam in the kitchens!) They dealt with it brilliantly as we quickly evacuated and lined up on the top playground waiting for the all-clear. That turned PE into an impromptu obstacle course session on the trim trail (and hopefully gave them a playtime idea for the future).
They were particularly excited to see that they have their own book for everything! I showed them how to stick in their own context label before the lesson and I cannot emphasise this enough - I don't normally expect them to do this before Christmas but they listened and by day 2 hardly any needed to be restuck. #slay
They have learning partners and carpet spaces now. This cuts down unnecessary stress/behaviour issues over where shall I sit today and with whom. I change this every half term or so.
In maths, we are learning to verbalise ways of sorting objects. I want them to confidently be saying something along the lines of: this group of objects have been sorted by colour/shape/size etc. I wonder if you could practise this at home with toys, food etc. We did it in the classroom then went outside and loved sorting twigs, stones, fallen leaves, grass. Some got really quite creative. We have the year 1 squirrels with us for maths and they enjoyed mixing up and being a bit of a larger group again.
Apologies for no library book this week. It was more important to let them play and keep cool. Reading will be a priority from next week. I will send a Little Wandle book home on Thursdays (or Fridays) and a library book and maybe a general read for pleasure book (they are not always decodable so better as a read with me book). Aim for them to read to you every day. As the year progresses they will be able to read to themselves - if you want- so you can still cook tea or do their hair or whateever while they are reading out loud to you.
Here's to a sunnny weekend and some sleep!
Mrs H
