Reading fluency
Each reading lesson, we incorporate some reading fluency. This allows the children to see the same short text all week and allows them to feel familiar and comfortable with it. Over a half term we provide a wide range of texts from poems to non-fiction. Fluency takes on the same structure each week. The teacher reads the text aloud on the first day whilst the children track the words. The following day we echo read. This is where the children echo back a line at a time. As the children become more familiar with the text, they read with a partner and then finally aloud to themselves. These sessions see children’s fluency increase and their knowledge of vocabulary also develop.
The text we’ve been reading this week links to topic and is all about interpolation.
Help at home: Get your child to read the text aloud to you. See how fluent they are!
Welcome to Reception meeting
It was great to see so many of you at the ‘Welcome to Reception‘ meeting this week. For those of you who were unable to attend, please find attached the PowerPoint shared at the meeting.
Writing – Must Dos
In Writing, we have been focusing on our ‘must dos’. These include making sure that each sentence we write has a capital letter at the start and punctuation at the end. We have also been making sure we use capital letters for proper nouns.
This has been important to remember in our Geography topic too when labelling our maps with the names of countries, cities and seas.
Help at home by writing a sentence with deliberate mistakes for your child to correct – playing teacher is always fun!
Getting to know you.
We’ve had such an exciting and busy week in nursery. Our returning children came back telling us all about their holidays, finding their friends and playing in their favourite places. We then welcomed our new friends at our stay and play sessions, grown-ups came too, to join in with all of the fun activities.
This week we’ve been busy helping the children to settle into their new environment. It can take quite some time to remember where everything is but the children are doing so well. They’ve been exploring all of the nursery provision, from building in the construction site to baking in the mud kitchen. We have had lots of fun!
Here are some pictures from our very busy first week in nursery,
Finding out what everyone enjoys playing is our next job. You can help us with this by adding a note to your child’s photo on our “What makes us tick” board. Whether its diggers or dancing to K-pop, we want to know. Ask your child’s key person for more details.
A few reminders
Please don’t forget your child needs a coat every day.
Please clearly name your child’s water bottle.
Don’t forget to register for your child’s milk with the dairy (details in your welcome pack)
Please return the” All about me” sheet – another way we can get to know lots about your child.
Geography: Where in the World am I?
This week, we’ve been learning about maps as part of our Geography topic – ‘Where in the world am I? We have been using an atlas to find the page that will support our learning the best. We have looked at maps showing the main cities in The United Kingdom and maps that show the highest mountains and longest rivers in The UK. We found out that The River Severn is the longest river in The UK and Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in The UK and Scotland.
Help at home by quizzing your child on their United Kingdom knowledge. How many rivers, cities and mountains can they name? Have a look at an atlas or google earth to locate some of them.
Science-The Human Body
We have begun our biology topic: The Human Body. We have been able to name many parts of our body and learn some new ones. This week we were working scientifically by investigating the question: ‘Do the oldest children have the longest feet?‘ After comparing our feet, we drew around them and put them in order of birthday month. Here are some of our findings:
No because some of the youngest children have big feet.
Some older children have big feet and some have small.
We all grow at different times and will be different sizes.
Help at home by naming and talking about different body parts, bones and their function.
Geography – We are Georgraphers!
This half term, our Geography topic in KS1 is ‘Where in the world am I?’ We have started our learning off by learning the names and location of7 continents. A fantastic way to remember each of the continents is to learn the continents song.
We’ve loved learning this song and have listened to it lots of times.
‘We live in Europe’. (AJ – 1A)
Each class spoke about how a continent is the largest piece of land. A country is smaller than a continent and a city is smaller than a country.
‘We live in England’. (LS – 1/2B)
We have also been learning about the 4 countries that make up the UK. We listened to another educational song that tells us all about the countries in the UK and what sorts of things you can find in each.
“United Kingdom Song” with signing | By Al Start | Primary School Geography
We placed or wrote labels on a map of the UK, adding each country in the correct place.
Help at home by listening to the songs above!
Please note these are on YouTube and we cannot be responsible for any videos that may follow. Please watch your child on YouTube.
Getting to know each other!
Settling in
It’s been wonderful to see so many happy faces this week as children came into their new classrooms. Most have now completed their transition sessions and we’re really enjoying getting to know them and seeing new friendships forming.
There are lots of routines to learn and things to remember at this stage, but we’ve been amazed at how quickly children are settling in. We’ve had a few missing lunch boxes, water bottles and cardigans – thank you for your patience at the end of the day as we help children to become more independent at home time. Labelling all of your child’s items with their name really helps with this.
We’ve had lots of fun exploring our new environment and learning this week. Take a look at what we’ve been up to:
Phonics
We started our phonics lessons this week. Children have learnt the sounds s, a, t and p. They practised listening carefully to the initial sound in a word and sorted objects into those beginning with ‘s’ and those that didn’t.
In phonics lessons, we teach children to use the pure sounds. For example, we say ‘ssss’ rather than ‘suh’. If you’d like to hear the sounds pronounced, you can watch a short video clip which shows all the letters we’ll cover this half term.
You’ll find out more about how we teach phonics at our Stay and Learn Phase 2 Phonics session on 06.10.25.
Help at home: Each week, you’ll receive a recap sheet of the phonics learning. Please look at this with your child and complete the short activities together.
PE
Children loved their first PE lesson this week! Lessons are fun and active, with a focus on developing fundamental movement skills.
- Reception PE will take place every Tuesday and Wednesday.
- On PE days, children should come to school wearing their PE kit. Further details can be found by following this link to our uniform policy.
- We won’t be starting swimming lessons just yet – we’ll send out more details closer to the time.
The Great Big Book of Families
Next week, we will be reading this story to help us learn more about each other’s families. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.) We’ll then talk about our own families and about people who are special to us.
Help at home: To help support our discussions, please send in a family photo that can stay on display in the classroom or email us a copy.
Everyday Items
Please make sure your child brings the following to school each day:
- Book bag
- Water bottle
- Waterproof coat (we spend lots of time outdoors, rain or shine)
We also ask that each child has these items, which can stay in school:
- A pair of wellies (kept under their peg)
- A bag of spare uniform/PE kit including underwear and socks (we’ll send it home to be replenished if needed)
All items should be clearly labelled with your child’s name. Please take a few minutes this weekend to check for any missing labels – thank you!
School Gateway App
If you’d like to receive important reminders and updates, please make sure you’ve downloaded the School Gateway App. You’ll find details in the information pack you received when your child started school, or email scholesoffice@spherefederation.org for support.
Best start in life
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has written a letter to parents with a focus on ensuring children have the best start in life. It signposts parents to the best start in life website – there’s information on Best Start Family Hubs and support with your child’s early health and learning.
Reading With Prosody: The Secret to Survival
This week in Reading, Year 5/6 have been exploring a diary entry inspired by the first story in our class novel Survivors. The story tells the true account of a young girl who was travelling by plane over the rainforest when disaster struck and she suddenly found herself alone, injured and fighting to survive in the wild.
We began the week by inferring how the girl might have been feeling at different points in her ordeal, using clues from the text to build a deeper understanding of her emotions.
As the week went on, we turned our focus to performing the diary entry in small groups. Using prosody, we worked hard to make our performances engaging for the rest of the class – changing our voices, adding expression and making sure the story sounded as dramatic as it felt on the page.
Help at Home: Ask you child about how to read and perform with prosody.