Fantastic fieldwork!
5,6 B went straight out into the very British drizzle this morning to complete some fieldwork. As part of topic, the children have been learning that trees store large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. They are able to calculate how much carbon is stored in each tree by measuring the girth of the trunk – the distance around the tree trunk. The children measured a sample of trees using string and metre rulers and recorded their results. Back at school, the children will calculate the estimated carbon store once back at school.
Working together.
Thanks to everyone who brought in Autumn treasures. We shared our final few this week. So many interesting things pumpkins, conkers and acorns. We have really enjoyed sharing their contents and finding out all about them.
Using them all we created a display to explore together. Magnifying glasses helped us to look closely,
“The pine cone looks big”
“I see lines on the leaf”
The artist, Andy Goldsworthy inspired our autumnal creative work this week. We worked together to create a spiral pattern of conkers, pine cones and leaves.
Our interest in autumn has helped us to develop our fine motor skills too. This is the development of the muscles in the fingers. This will help us to develop an effective pencil grip.
We balanced conkers and fir cones on up- turned cups. Used tongs to add conkers to our recipes in the mud kitchen. Then caught leaves with tongs in the water tray.
Why not try this at home ? Use old kitchen tongs or pegs to pick up the leaves in your garden or at the park. Let us know how you get on.
We always enjoy watching the children lead their own learning in nursery. This happens when they develop their own activities. Last week they used the hoops and decided to collect objects from around the outdoor provision that matched the colours of the hoops. Leaves, bricks, pens, flowers and cars were all placed into colour sets.
They then found orange flowers and pink bricks, but there weren’t any orange or pink hoops. What to do? They found some coloured paper and completed the sets. Lots of mathematical talk, co operation and team work. Super learning nursery.
Next week’s learning
Our story next week is Room on the Broom, it’s written by the very popular author, Julia Donaldson. You may be familiar with the story from the BBC version. You can watch it on BBC iplayer
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Incy Wincey Spider Can you sing this at home?
A few reminders
- Parent Teacher consultations – Please don’t forget to sign up for these 10 minute appointments. This is an opportunity to find out how your child has settled into nursery. It’s on zoom this time, the next meetings will be in person.
- We still need your family photos. The children are really enjoying talking about their special people and seeing their photos in our home area each day.
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!