Week Ending 19/05/23
Date: 17th May 2023 @ 4:37pm
Happy Friday! Though the weather has been up and down this week, we have made the most of our learning with all things dinosaurs through non-fiction videos and books.
This week we have continued to read our story of 'Gigantosaurus' by Jonny Duddle. Fun fact, Miss Selwyn’s mummy taught Mr Duddle’s children a few years ago and went to Miss Selwyn’s primary school. We told the children about a fun game we used to play when we were little and this was the card game, Top Trumps. Some children had played this game before and so we all set out to create dinosaur ones. We worked hard to write our own versions and enjoyed exploring the dinosaurs we met in our story.
Dates for the diary this half term:
Tuesday 23rd May - Class Photos - Children to come in their smartest uniform please including a jumper/cardigan.
Sports Day – Next Wednesday! (24th May 9am – 10am)
Next Wednesday we will be holding our EYFS Sports Day where your child will be working towards helping their team win the Sports Day shield. The gates will close at 8:55am so please make your way around through the gates to the right of the main entrance and a member of staff will let you onto the field to find a seat. We ask that your child come to school in either a yellow, red, blue or green top, this is dependent on which coloured house your child is in.
Beeston – RED
Cholmondeley – BLUE
Peckforton – GREEN
Chester – YELLOW
Normal PE shorts/leggings/jogging bottoms and trainers to be worn with your coloured top. If the weather is warm we ask that you apply sun cream in the morning before school and bring a sunhat and a labelled water bottle.
The PTA will be running a tea, coffee and cake stall if you would like any refreshments during the races.
Fingers crossed the weather will be on our side!
Talking Point – A Good Friend
In the story, one of the dinosaurs tricks the others into believing that Gingatosaurus is coming when he isn’t, which makes for an exciting end when he does show up! We have been thinking about telling lies and why being honest is better. So our Big Question this week is ‘Was Bonehead (the dinosaur) a good friend? What makes a good friend?’ We see daily kindness from our Reception children so perhaps next week you could use one of the things on your list to be a good friend to someone in your class or at home.
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This term we move onto Phase 4 in our phonics journey! The children do not learn any new phonemes or graphemes. Instead, they are taught to further manipulate the phonemes and graphemes they have already learnt. They will begin to explore more polysyllabic words (words containing more than one syllable) and read and spell words containing adjacent consonants. E.g. string, milk, brush, scoop etc. Phase 4 requires the children to blend an increasing number of sounds together. These words are often referred to in relation to how many vowels and consonants they contain.
E.g. CVC words (consonant / vowel / consonant) such as sad, net, him.
This week we have been focusing on word endings such as -ing, -ed and -est such as swimming, printed and freshest. We has also been looking at words that end with -ed but sound like /t/. For example, bumped, blinked and helped. We will be doing lots of consolidating of these as we transition the children to Year 1. We have also learnt the tricky words out and today.
As always, please see the downloadable attachment below to practise the phase 4 words and tricky words we have been learning this week.
Reminder: Please can you continue to record each time you read with your child so we can see when their reading for pleasure book needs changing. Thank you.
As we have been learning about the suffix -ed this week, we've been helping the children to develop their speech through using the past tense. Offering choices is one of the best ways to promote speech in children. It creates opportunities for us to model the correct word in certain contexts. For example, a child might say "I goed to the park' We don't want to correct them but by giving them a choice of two words and them choosing between them, it gives your child a greater degree of success. You may reply by saying "goed to the park" or "went to the park". "I went to the park." Keep practising modelling past tense verbs, especially with the suffix -ed by giving two choices that your child can choose between. Remember practice makes permanent!
In Maths, we have been learning all about the counting system by exploring our teens numbers. We found out that each teen number is one ten and X number of ones. E.g. 14 = 1 ten and 4 ones etc. We have been using numicon to help us to spot this pattern and when it changes when we get to 20! To help us with this, we played the traditional game of bingo with teens numbers and different representations of these (tens frame, unifix cubes, numicon). We have been practising counting backwards starting from twenty a lot this week which is essential for when the children come to subtract. You can play lots of different games with counting especially ‘I say, you say’ where you might start from 20 taking it in turns with your child until you get to 1. You could change this up by saying two or three numbers in a row and your child would have to copy by doing the next two numbers. E.g 18, 17 and so on. Keep practising counting back from 20 at home, count backwards on the stairs or before going down the slide at the park.
On Monday, we continued to read and meet new dinosaurs in our book. Today we learnt all about the Triceratops through various non-fiction books and videos and found out lots of interesting facts.
On Tuesday, we had fun exploring the Brachiosaurus. Did you know they were estimated to have a life span of up to 100 years?
On Wednesday, we learnt about the Stegosaurus. After that, the children chose one of the dinosaurs they had learnt about to create their very own traditional Top Trumps card! The children can’t wait to play with them!
On Thursday, we had some visitors come into school to set us a 20-minute sponsored fitness challenge on the field. Instinct Gym in Tarporley came in to help use raise money to improve The Daily Mile track. As a school we need to raise about £15,000 to improve our track.
If you would like to help use cross that finish line, you can donate via the link below or in a sealed envelope. Thank you.
On Friday, it was Dress Down Day and the children came to school in their wonderful clothes. The sun made an apperance so we went outside to practice all of our Sports Day races in preparation for the big day.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week, Ella and Isaac!
Please be aware that celebration assembly is now 9:30am!
Our mystery readers this week were Violette’s Granny and Emily and Gracie's Mum. Thank you for coming to share your 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. If you have not been one and would like to then please get in touch as we only have 8 more weeks before the end of the year. It is a real highlight of the week and the children love meeting you!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Nicholas
