KS1 PE Football
We had an exciting delivery of 36 brand new blue footballs! We have certainly been putting them to good use, over the past few weeks. Exploring the football to complete knee-ups and kick-ups has been such fun. Dribbling, passing, defending ‘gates’ have all been activities to help us strengthen our skills. Thankfully the weather has been on our side too.
Help at home: Take a football to an open space and let your child show you their skills.
Henri’s Scissors
Henri’s Scissors – Exploring Art Like Matisse!
This week we have been reading Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter. (If you’re watching it on YouTube, here’s a top tip: click the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this helps to avoid inappropriate clips and encourages your child to engage purposefully rather than watching video after video.)
The story is a biographical children’s book about the famous artist, Henri Matisse. We learned about his life and discovered how, even when he became unwell and could no longer paint, he continued to make beautiful artwork by “painting with scissors” – cutting bold shapes and colours to create collages.
Our word of the week was artist. We talked about different types of art and artists, introducing new vocabulary such as sculptor, sculpture and collage.
Then, we became artists ourselves by creating our own colourful collages – just like Matisse!
We used our language and communication skills to explore and respond to Matisse’s artwork. We looked closely at the colours, shapes and patterns and thought carefully about which pieces we liked and why.
We also discussed questions such as:
- Why do you think the artist painted this?
- Which is your favourite, and why?
Here are some of our thoughtful responses:
I like the white part. It looks like snowflakes.
I like the colours because they’re like a rainbow.
I can see square shapes. They both have the same colour at the back.
Phonics
This week, children have been learning the phonemes (the sounds that letters make) h, b, f, and l. They’ve also been practising writing the graphemes (the written letters) for these sounds.
We’ve been challenging children to spell words using the letters they already know. This week, your child has been spelling the words: dog, ten, red, mum and kid.
Can your child tell you which phonemes they can hear in these words?
d-o-g t-e-n r-e-d m-u-m k-i-d
We’ve also learnt a new tricky word: the.
A tricky word is a word that can’t be sounded out using phonics – it’s one they simply have to learn by sight.
The children now know three tricky words: I, is and the
Help at Home: You can support your child’s learning at home by writing these tricky words on pieces of paper or sticky notes and placing them around your house. Keep challenging your child to read them whenever they see them – the more practice, the better! These words need to be recognised instantly, just by looking.
Poetry Basket
Children love listening to and joining in with poems each week. We learn a new poem every Monday and recite it together throughout the week.
Saying the poems out loud helps us focus on sounds, rhythm and rhyme, which supports our early reading skills. We’ve noticed that some poems have a fast and lively beat, while others are slow and gentle.
Follow the link to watch Reception recite this week’s poem – Leaves are falling.
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been using our subitising skills to identify patterns up to 4.
Subitising means being able to see a small number of objects and know how many there are without counting – for example, recognising that there are three dots just by looking.
We practised spotting changes to see whether there were more, fewer or the same and describing the changes we could see. We also explored different representations of 4 using multilink cubes – inspired by our introduction to Numberblock 4!
And finally, here are a few photos from this week’s learning.
Help at home – autumn leaves and conkers.
If you go on a walk this weekend, we’d really appreciate donations of dry leaves to help us with an art project next week. We also need some conkers and acorns to use in our maths learning – see how many you can find! Thank you for your support.
Stay and Learn – Phase 2 Phonics
A big thank you to all the parents and carers who joined us on Monday for our Phonics Phase 2 Stay and Learn session. We hope you enjoyed seeing a lesson in action, taking part in activities with your child and found the teacher presentation helpful.
Click here to view the presentation slides.
You might also find the Little Wandle website useful to learn more about how we teach phonics in school. You’ll find useful videos showing how to pronounce phonemes using pure sounds and tips for supporting your child with wordless books.
We also have lots of information about phonics in the ‘Learn more – phonics’ section of our school website.
Reading in Reception
Children read in small groups (up to six) with an adult each morning. They work with the same book across the week, reading four times (Mon–Thurs). The week’s eBook is usually shared by Thursday evening.
Days 1–2: Decoding
Children are introduced to new vocabulary and key decodable words – words that can be segmented and blended. We then read through the book together. The aim at this stage is to develop automaticity (recognising words by sight or memory), which helps make reading more fluent and confident.
Day 3: Prosody
Prosody refers to the patterns of stress, intonation and rhythm in speech – in other words, sounding like a storyteller! This is modelled to the children, who are taught to notice clues in the text that influence how we read aloud. For example:
- How is the character feeling?
- Is there an exclamation or question mark?
- Should we pause briefly at a full stop?
Day 4: Comprehension
Children are asked a range of questions to check their understanding of what they have read. You can find some of these questions on the last page of the eBook – they’re great for chatting about the story at home.
Reading Reports & Support
Teachers check reading reports regularly via Collins Hub and will make ‘keeping in touch’ calls if reading hasn’t been recorded, just to see if we can help. If you’re having trouble accessing eBooks, please speak to your class teacher. iPads are available to hire from the school office if needed.
Reading Records
Please send your child’s reading record to school every Friday, with a short comment about how they’ve been getting on. This can include any reading at home – not just eBooks.
We’d Love Your Feedback
Thank you again for joining our Stay and Learn session. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Please scan the QR code to fill out our feedback form.
Maths
Both year 1s and 2s have been using part whole models to represent numbers.
Year 1s have been using them to show the composition of numbers.
2 and 1 make 3 – 2 is a part, 1 is a part, 3 is the whole.
2 and 4 make 6 – 2 is a part, 4 is a part, 6 is the whole.
Year 2s have been using them to represent the tens and ones in two digit numbers.
31 is 3 tens and 1 one. 30 plus 1 is equal to 31.
42 is 4 tens and 2 ones. 40 plus 2 is equal to 42.
Help at home by talking about how numbers can be split or how many tens and ones they have.
We are all readers!
In KS1, we take reading very seriously. We are so impressed with the children’s dedication to become fantastic, fluent readers. We love hearing the stories they tell, which books they enjoy and most of all we love hearing them read.
In Year 1, we have been doing some ‘freeze frames’ of our class novel this week, The Enchanted Wood. We retold our favourite parts of the story and acted it out.
The Battle of the Bears and the Land of Ice and Snow
The Rocking Land
The Three Bears House
The talking bunnies
In Year 2, the children have been reading short recaps of their favourite chapters in the book. The children have also been using their imagination to draw a picture of a characters house, based on the description in the book. This is the house of Moonface, where everything inside is round!
Help at home by discussing books you have read and ask children to recap parts of the story. Ask children what they enjoyed the most!
Report writing
The children have been working hard in writing their non-chronological reports over the last couple of weeks. The had to use their imaginations to create a city of their own and write a report to describe its features. They had to link their non-chronological reports to our geography topic and include themes such as city expansion and urban green spaces. They also had to include some parenthesis and think about different ways to start sentences to make it interesting for the reader.
Reading: It’s so important!
We hope that you’re enjoying reading your child’s library book with them. We call this a ‘love of reading’ book – to do just that, encourage a love of reading for your child! Reading to and with your child can have a huge positive impact on your child’s education.
This research is a powerful message of the impact you can have when reading to/with your child:
At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.
We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!
Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.
Happy reading!
Daffodils by William Wordsworth
To celebrate National Poetry Day, all of Year 5,6 channelled their inner William Wordsworth as they performed Daffodils. This time, the audience was made up of teachers and classmates, but that didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking!
Each class took turns to recite different parts of the poem, creating one big collaborative performance that even Mr Wordsworth himself would have been proud of. With confident voices, expressive gestures, and just the right amount of dramatic flair, the children brought the famous poem to life (without a single daffodil in sight).
In the words of Wordsworth himself: “And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.”
It was a wonderful way to celebrate poetry, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed taking part.
Help at home: Read or listen to a poem together and talk about what it really means. Or, if you’re feeling brave, have your own mini poetry performance – bonus points for dramatic pauses!
Autumn treasures
Thank you for returning your autumn treasure bags to nursery. This week, we began to look at their contents. The children enjoyed talking about what they had found and where they found their autumn treasure. Don’t worry if you haven’t had a chance to go for a walk yet, there’s still time. Please return your bag to Nursery over the next week.
We’ve been learning all about autumn this week; we talked about the changes that we could see around us in our Nursery garden. We saw that the leaves were changing colour and falling from the branches. We listened to a song about autumn leaves falling down and named lots of different coloured leaves that we could see outside.
In our story corner, children have enjoyed listening to the story of ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. They’re getting really good at re-telling the story and joining in with the repeated refrains.
Next week, we’ll continue to learn about autumn and will look at some artwork by Andy Goldsworthy, so don’t forget to bring your autumn treasure bag back to nursery.
Help at home
Next week our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Humpty Dumpty Can you join in with this nursery rhyme?
We are continuing to explore “We’re going on a bear hunt” We will be joining in with the rhyme and adding our own sound effects.
Reminders
- Our individual photographs will take place on Tuesday 07 October. If your child does not attend nursery on a Tuesday but you would like them to have their photograph taken please contact school.
- Don’t forget to send in your family photos to add to our display. The children are really enjoying talking about them. Send them to our email address scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
We’re going on a Bear Hunt
We’re going on a Bear hunt
The well loved story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen was the focus story for our learning this week. Both classes enjoyed joining in with the story and retelling it in our reading areas.
We used the story as a prompt to go on our own hunt in the school grounds. With an areal map of school in hand, we went on a sound hunt. We searched for some of the graphemes we have learnt so far.
The map’s telling us to go to the gazebo!
Understanding the World
Thank you to everyone who sent in photographs of their front doors. We used them to draw our houses and other types of homes too.
This one’s my house. It has two handles and white all around.
Mine has windows.
My house has a blue door.
Phonics
Autumn 1, week 4 has focused on the new phonemes: /ck/, /e/, /u/ and /r/.
/ck/ is our first diagraph and the children have been great at remembering that two letters can work together to make one sound. We also learnt the new tricky word: the.
The children are doing ever such a good job at blending orally using all their known sounds (phonemes) and they have begun to blend to read independently in our phonics sessions too. Keep it up Reception!
Poem Of The Week
This week’s poem of the week is Falling Apples.
Help at home: you could set up a stage at home (a sofa or chair would be fine) and let your child perform the poem to you using the actions we learnt in class.
Maths
This week we have learnt that numbers can be composed of ones. We joined in with the STEM sentence “one and one and one make three” and made collections of three things for Baby Bear.
Help at home: You could make different collections of three things at home. You could look at how three can be made of one and one and one or from two and one.
Stay and Learn
Our first stay and learn session will be on Monday 6th October.
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about phonics and watch your child learning in school. There will also be a coffee morning and a Phonics information presentation before the session. We look forward to welcoming you then 🙂