Week Ending 29/11/24
Date: 22nd Nov 2024 @ 1:47pm
Happy Friday and nearly the start of December! Brrrrr! As the cold weather kicks in we expect the children may wish to wrap up nice and warm with gloves, scarves and hats. Please encourage your child to carefully look after these things in school (and label where possible) as they can tend to get lost especially this time of the year. Please try to avoid sending in umbrellas with your child, thank you.
It's been another busy week learning about 'The Three Little Pigs' as they embark on their journey to build their own homes. We challenged the children to use the materials that they could find to build their own homes which couldn’t be blown away by the big, bad wolf. We made sure they were safe and strong!
Classroom Secrets Kids
As a school we have recently signed up for an account with Classroom Secrets Kids. This website is full of practical, fun and engaging activiites linked to the National Curriculum. Classroom Secrets Kids can be accessed anywhere, anytime and on any device through individual logins (login card found in your child's reading record).The site is safe to use independently, as there are no messaging features between users. Each week or so I will be assigning some activities relating to the learning we have done in school for your child to complete if you so wish! THIS IS OPTIONAL HOMEWORK. These assigned activities and programmes will appear on the dashboard when
logged in.
Every resource is designed by teachers to make learning entertaining and allow children to put their knowledge into practice. All of the activities are bright, colourful and interactive so that children can enjoy learning online. I do not expect you to complete all tasks assigned to your dashboard in one sitting. You may want to dip into this now and thento consolidate learning.
Dates for the diary:
- Nativity Dress rehearsal –Thursday 12th This is our final practice before the children get to show you. We will be performing in front of our buddies and the Done Room pre-school at 9:30am. If you are in the village and would like to volunteer to walk us down to the church (or back) we would greatly appreciate it.
- Nativity –Friday 13th December at 2pm at St Helen’s Church. We will also need some parent walkers please!
- Christmas Dinner Day– Wednesday 19th This week your child has pre-ordered their Christmas dinner in school. You will be informed what your child has ordered via email. If you would like to change your child’s order, please contact the school office by Monday 16th December. Unfortunately, there will only be a roast dinner or nut roast on offer for this day. If your child would prefer something else, please provide a packed lunch for this day. Christmas jumpers can be worn and please bring in a Christmas cracker for the children to pull at the table with their friends. Thank you.
- Last day – Friday 20thChildren finish at 1:30pm on this day. Treehouse is still available should you require wrap around care.
Little Wandle – Phonics
This week we have learnt our final Phase 2 sounds by learning the sounds SH, TH (voiced and unvoiced), NG and NK using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. We have also learnt four new tricky words 'SHE', 'HE', 'TO' and ‘OF'. Similar to last week, we’ve been teaching the tricky bit in the words ‘she’ and ‘he’ is the ‘E’ because it makes the ‘ee’ sound. We learnt the rhyme ‘he, she, me, we, be, all end with an e (ee)’. Please continue to use the tricky word pack in your child’s reading folder to support them.
Over the next few weeks we will be completing this half term’s phonics assessment. Your child's results will be recorded in their reading record and a percentage will be given. 80% is on track. Please see me if you require any support for home learning. In the assessment your child will be completing four activities:
- Grapheme recall (letter recognition) These include S, A, T, P, I, N, M, D, G, O, C, K, CK, E, U, R, H, B, F/FF, L/LL, J, V, W, X, Y, Z/ZZ, QU, CH, TH, NG, NK.
- Oral blending (c-a-t = cat)
- Decoding (by applying taught sounds to simple CVC words)
- Tricky words. These include put, pull, full, as, and, has, his, her, go, no, to, into, she, push, he, of, we, me, be, is, I, the.
I have attached the link to support the pronunciation of the sounds we have learnt this half term in Phase 2. In your child's book bag you will also find a helpful grapheme sheet with the sounds we have left this half term. Please ensure you are looking at these as well as your child's next steps in their reading record after their assessment. The pace in Spring term does increase and we will be learning lots of new Phase 3 digraphs. It is imperative that your child is secure in these Phase 2 sounds to progress onto the next set of books.
In Kinetic Letters, we introduced the children to the 'Window Cleaner' Family that consists of L, I, T, and U. In this family we use the 'down bump and flick' to wipe away the water action. We try to make all our letters start from the correct branch (Brave Monkey and Scared Monkey). Remember no letters start from the ground! We also attempted to form the letter 'e' from the 'Special Squirter' Family. 'E' is on it's own as it has its own rules. We start just underneath Scared Monkey branch which allows us to 'push across, up, pull around and push (along the ground). The children have found this the trickiest letter so far. Practice makes permanent!
In Maths, we have been continuing with partitioning numbers 1-5 into two groups and recombining them (finding the inverse) to make the whole again. We have introduced the concept of 'First, Then, Now' simple maths stories to represent an addition number sentence. Can your child use a story to help with the addition number sentence 2 + 3? First, there were two people on the bus, then three more people got on, now there are 5 people altogether on the bus. I have attached a document which gives visual representations of simple maths stories. Model one of the stories to your child using 'FIRST, THEN, NOW' then ask them to tell you another. This can be used in lots of different contexts! Remember to upload any of these 'WOW' moments to Tapestry for us to see.
On Monday, we dressed up for a special glow in the dark dodgeball treat. The children looked amazing and had a great time! In the afternoon, we read a few pages of our book and thought if we were moving house, what would we pack in our bags? We created a list and used our phonics to correspond to each grapheme.
On Tuesday, we continued to read our story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and looked at the new vocabulary and discussed its meaning (beware, chuckled, warning). We used the magnetic letters to build words and experimented with changing initial phonemes. We also had the best time in the glow in the dark dodgeball game. The children listened carefully to the rules and showed great sportsmanship. Later on, Jack the Dog told us about being thankful that God had sent his son to born as part of his big plan. We also thought about how thankful Mary and Joseph were to the kind innkeeper who let them stay in his stable and how Angel Gabriel told Mary the good news.
On Wednesday, we had a fun-filled time with Mr Elton by creating shapes in gymnastics. In the afternoon, we discussed what we knew about wolves and described the wolf in the story using adjectives. I took on the role as the wolf and the children asked insightful questions to find out more information about Mr Wolf.
On Thursday, we talked about the festival of Christmas, including when and why it is celebrated. The children then took part in a Christmas group sing song involving singing, creating vocal sounds and playing instruments and moving to traditional Christmas songs like Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Next week we will be learning about different Christmas traditions around the world. If you have any connection to different cultures and would like for us to discuss it with the children then can you let me know either by email or Tapestry. We would love to share this with all of our children!
On Friday, we enjoyed going to celebration assembly, practising our nativity and doing phonics. In the afternoon, we try to be builders and got to make a house for the Three Little Pigs. We then used a 'wolf' (Miss Selwyn's hairdryer) to pretend to blow it down. Did they stand strong and safe from the wolf's huffs and puffs just like Percy's? See Twitter and Tapestry for the answer.
Our Mystery Reader this week was Charlie B's mum, thank you for coming to share a story with us!
Please can you let me know if I've booked you in as Mystery Reader on Friday 6th December. I can't seem to find anything in my diary!
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Charlie B!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
