Week Ending 04/02/22
Date: 2nd Feb 2022 @ 8:33am
Happy Friday! How is it February already? We hope you have had a lovely week, Dormice and Hedgehogs certainly have been extra busy! We have finally completed our story 'Let's All Creep Through Crocodile Creek' which has inspired our children to become 'Courageous Advocates'. We believe this develops resilience, teamwork, courage and independence and an understanding of the wider world and how they can help make it a better place, enabling our children to flourish. We have discussed why crocodiles are endangered and believe we can make a difference to save them, no act is too small. Thank you for actively supporting us in our first event of the year. We raised just over £90 at the cake sale so have been able to sponsor a caiman for each class at Chester Zoo. You should be able to see our school and class names appear on the plaques outside the caiman enclosure in the coming months! We look forward to continuing our hard work and championing different causes which are special and meaningful to us.This is only the beginning!
This week in phonics we have learnt four new sounds; AI, EE, IGH and OA. We have also learnt the harder to read and spell words; WAS and HER. These will be in your online reading books for this week as the children begin to read longer sentences. Please continue to reread your decodable books to practice the four new sounds we have learnt this week. These are called vowel digraphs and the ‘igh’ is a trigraph which is three letters that make one sound. A good way of spotting these new digraphs is by becoming Digraph Detectives and flicking through your book to find the ‘ai’ sound. For instance, in words like rain, train or wait. The more your child can recognise these vowel digraphs the easier it will become to recall these graphemes when writing as they are seeing them so frequently in their decodable books.
Reading
In Essential Letters and Sounds we normally have a review and assessment week each half term. Next week in Phonics we will be revising all of the sounds we have learnt so far and applying them to words and sentences. These are the sounds we have learnt in Phase 3; J, V, W, X, Y, Z, ZZ, QU, SH, CH, TH, NG, NK, AI, EE, IGH, OA. We will be completing a short assessment with your child regarding these sounds and we will give two ticks and an arrow which show their next steps in their reading record. This will focus on letter recognition of the sounds in isolation, reading words containing the sounds, writing the grapheme of these sounds and writing words containing the sound. Therefore we will not be doing an individual read with your child this week but will change your physical book as well as set new online books.
The following week we will be benchmarking all the children which is a short assessment where your child will read a short book and will be asked questions about what they have read. Comprehension is just as important as being able to decode the words on the page. That is why we encourage you to reread decodable books four times to build up fluency and understanding of what they've read. Hopefully we will be able to get through these assessments before Parents Evening but if we don't then we will inform you after your child has completed it. Please ensure you have booked onto SchoolCloud as this meeting will discuss the progress your child has made and the next steps in their learning. If you have any problems then please contact the school office.
In Maths we have been learning about one more and one less up to number 10. We found out that by adding one more the numbers get one block bigger and if we take one away the number gets one less each time. Counting songs are a fantastic resource for this, especially songs that require you to take away one less each time. E.g. Ten Green Bottles, Five Currant Buns, Five Little Ducks and Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the bed. To extend you may want to match this to the number sentence (5-1 = 4, "four is one less than five"). Using the mathematical terminology and modelling "X is one more/less than X" has been a key focus this week. I have attached some activities should you want to consolidate this learning at home. Once your child has completed a question ask them to tell you the stem sentence "one more than X is X and one less than X is X." Another great game is Guess My Number! Think of a number and give your child clues using one more and less, you may want to use lego blocks as resources to support and build towers. Use questioning such as 'can you build me a tower that is one more than mine?" or "If I have a tower of 7, can you build me a tower that is one less?"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08q39b4/numberblocks-series-2-just-add-one?seriesId=b0bl5v3r
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/chinese-dragon-ordering (A Chinese New Year ordering and sequencing online game)
On Monday, we got out the glockenspiels again and consolidated the songs we have learnt so far. This week we learnt ‘Twinkle Twinkle’.
On Tuesday, to complete our story of ‘Let’s All Creep Through Crocodile Creek’ we retold the adventure of Rabbit, Mouse and Tortoise as they traverse through the swingy vines, the slimy logs and the pointy thorns.
On Wednesday, we created our own story maps to retell the story and added our own pictures and captions/sentences.
On Thursday, we held a Courageous Advocacy afternoon where we discussed how crocodiles are endangered. We then thought of ways we could raise money…by holding a cake sale! We hope you enjoyed the delicious cakes made by the children. The money raised will go towards a wonderful cause and we will keep you informed about when we expect our sponsorship to be up at Chester Zoo for you to go and see.Thank you for your generous donations!
On Friday, we began our Chinese New Year festivities where we tried some traditional food, made colourful crafts and learnt about the history of this celebration. If you share in this celebration please do upload anything you do for us to see on Tapestry.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week, Alfie and Hattie!
Our mystery readers this week was Darcy’s Dad and Charlotte’s Dad. Thank you for coming to share a story with us! Please speak to your child’s class teacher to put a date in the diary if you would like to be mystery reader.
Both classes need a new mystery reader for next half term so please do come and see us if you're interested!!!
Have a fantastic weekend!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Nicholas
