Class News

What is my child learning?

Phonics

You’ve probably heard your child talking about digraphs, trigraphs and tricky words. A few parents have been asking what their child is talking about so we’ll be sending an information flyer home to help.

Your child has been learning all the letter sounds for the alphabet – please see the YouTube video for help pronouncing the ‘pure’ sounds.

Since January, your child has started to learn the letter names for these ‘pure’ sounds. We have enjoyed singing a song that sings the letter sounds AND names. Your child has also been learning to read digraphs and trigraphs.

Digraphs consist of two letters (graphemes) but they only make one sound (phoneme). The digraphs are shown below:

Trigraphs consist of three letters (graphemes) but they only make one sound (phoneme). The trigraphs are shown below:

Using their digraph and trigraph knowledge your child will be able to read words such as…

The sound buttons/lines shown underneath the letters help your child sound out words. A line is shown when the letters make a digraph or trigraph- that way your child will only make one sound when reading a digraph/trigraph.

Sound buttons and lines are not everywhere so we need to teach your child to independently spot the digraphs and trigraphs so that they only make one sound when reading a digraph/trigraph!

Can your child spot any digraphs or trigraphs in their reading book?

Tricky words are words your child cannot sound out using their phonic knowledge – they just have to know them by sight… that’s what makes them tricky!

New PE days

After our badminton coaching last half term, we’ll be continuing to develop our skills this half term with our own classes. PE days this half term are:

• 1K (Miss Parling) – Tuesday
• 1,2V (Mrs Latham) – Friday
• 2KL (Wednesday) – Wednesday

Home Link – Holiday adventures

Don’t forget the Home Link activity for this week was to let us know all about your holidays! We look forward to hearing all about your adventures. Please scroll to our previous post if you need any more details.

Welcome back!

Week 1 – What are we learning this week?

Welcome back to nursery. We hope that you all had a relaxing and fun week off and are ready to learn. We’re sure that the next 6 weeks will bring us lots of eggcitement…

We’ll begin our week in nursery continuing with our dinosaur themed learning. Children were really interested in all things to do with dinosaurs before we broke up and when we asked them about their interests and what they’d like to learn about, they were keen to keep our dinosaur enhancements. In the last week of term, Freya brought in some ‘fossils’ of dinosaur footprints that she had made as part of her home link activity; they created lots of discussion about fossils and how they were made and so she is going to help her nursery friends make their own this week. We’ll be looking at the different sizes and shapes of dinosaur footprints. Have you ever wondered how big a T-Rex’s footprint was?  We might try and find the answer to this, and any other dinosaur questions that children have, using non-fiction books and the internet.

We’ll be looking for any new interests and fascinations that occur during children’s play this week. Please let us know if your child has suddenly become interested in anything new – jot it down on a post-it note on our interest board.

Before the holidays, we had a few children who were obviously enjoying the cold weather and ‘Frozen’ themed role play. We’ve responded to this with a new small world area in the Sunshine room; we’re sure this will be very popular! You may also have noticed that we’ve had a move around! We’ve expanded our construction area and it now includes a selection of interesting props. Children have already begun to incorporate them into their role play.

Children began to make their own Valentine’s Day cards in the week before the holidays so we enhanced the writing table with lots of Valentine’s themed craft resources. It was a very busy table and it was great to see so many children writing/mark making! 

Scholes swimming lessons

Most of the Year 1 and 2 children are working on or towards their ASA Learn to Swim Stage 2 Awards in school swimming lessons this half term. Nicole (our swimming instructor) is pleased with their progress and will assess the children at the end of term. If your child achieves the award, a slip will be sent home. There has been a focus on breaststroke, water confidence (including swimming 5m under water), swimming through a hoop and picking up sinker rings. The next award will be 10m badge which requires breaststroke, backstroke and front crawl. The strokes will be a big focus next half term.

Children in Reception class (F2) are working on their Duckling 1 badge and will also be assessed soon. Their water confidence and ability to get changed independently has also improved since they started swimming lessons in school.

Here are some comments from children about their swimming lessons…

• ‘I can now do backstroke.’
• ‘I have enjoyed doing different strokes.’
• ‘We do frog legs. Bend, out, together!’
• ‘When I first went under the water, it was a bit scary. I enjoy going under the water now!’
• ‘I like going under the water to fetch the mermaid toy.’

Super Skippers

The whole school enjoyed sessions delivered by Jodi Corcoran from Skipping School this week. The primary aim is fitness through fun and she includes every child in the sessions, regardless of their skills. There is a clear pathway through the skills to ensure all children make progress. After all the sessions, there was a celebration assembly for the whole school. Lots of children demonstrated their achievements.

Please bring skipping ropes into school after half term so the children can continue to improve their skills.

See children demonstrating the skills below for more skipping ideas. Which ones can you do?

• double jump
• face to face
• paired
• crossover
• continuous crossover
• butterfly 
• partner butterfly
• side swing
• pretzel

Pupil voice

Your child will be coming home with a pupil feedback form. Please talk to your child about the questions and record their answers. Your child’s voice matters and we would like to know their feelings and opinions about their learning at school.

Reading Workshop

Thank you to all the parents who attended the reading workshop during parents’ evening last night. Don’t worry if you missed it because the workshop will be running again during the parents’ evening on Wednesday 07 February between 5pm and 7pm.

The workshop provides tips and advice on how to support your child’s reading at home. The year 6 children running the workshop demonstrate games and activities to encourage a love of reading. If you have five minutes after visiting your child’s class teacher, then pop in and see what the children have to offer.

Below are some comments from parents who attended the workshop:

• “This was a useful and informative workshop. Useful for our two younger children.”
• “Good descriptive information to support at home.”
• “Really fun and enjoyable. I’d recommend coming.”

Home Link – Half term adventures

Please remember to complete the Dinosaur Home Link if you haven’t already. Children love to see their pictures on display and enjoy sharing their favourite story books from home with their friends.

There are lots of dinosaur related games and activities on-line. You could listen to a story all about a dinosaur on CBeebies bedtime stories.

Holiday fun

We always like to find out what the children have been doing in half term, but their usual response is, “I can’t remember!”

Please can you help them! Send us some photographs, save a leaflet from somewhere you visit or draw a picture together of something that you do.  It usually opens up a great conversation and other children will often then join in.  Thank you – we look forward to hearing all about your holiday activities.

Here come the dinosaurs… STOMP, STOMP, STOMP!

Week 5 – Dinosaurs

It was great to see the excitement and interest in our new dinosaur enhancements last week. Children were particularly drawn to the maths area where they lined up the mini dinosaurs to count them and to sort them according to various categories including size, type and colour. We began to find out lots of facts about dinosaurs; we talked about their body shapes and what type of food they ate. Children enjoyed learning some new big words, including herbivore and carnivore. We wonder if they can remember what they mean?  Many children became interested in volcanoes and lava throughout the week. We watched some videos of volcanoes erupting and the children were set a challenge… Could they make their own erupting volcanoes using the Duplo bricks? There was a lot of team work as the children created a volcano shape using the bricks and with a bit of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda magic, they enjoyed watching the fizzing and bubbling as their volcano erupted!

Mark making was a popular activity outside last week. Children used the giant chalks to draw lines, circles and crosses on the playground. (Great for developing their gross motor skills!)

Week 6 – What are we learning this week?

Wow! The final week of half term already. As the children are still keen to find out more about dinosaurs, we’ll continue to see where this interest leads us this week.  In group time, we’re learning to hear the initial sounds in words and we’ll be learning a new letter.  It’s the first sound in one of our favourite dinosaurs… stegosaurus. We’ll play eye spy with objects beginning with ‘s’ and will sort objects into those beginning with ‘d’ and ‘s’ sounds.

You can listen to the ‘s’ Jolly Phonics song that we will be listening to  here. Children don’t need to be able to write the letter ‘s’ just yet, we will focus on the ‘s’ sound that it makes and will identify words that begin with this sound. What can you find at home that begins with ‘s’? If you notice your child becoming more aware of sounds, remember to e-mail us their Wow moments.