Transport
Children returned to Nursery happily on Monday and enjoyed telling us about their holiday adventures. Thank you to everyone that emailed us a half term holiday photograph; children shared them with their friends at snack time and told us about their walks, bike rides and days out.
As children told us about their holidays, we ended up talking about different types of transport, including trains, boats and planes. During story times, we’ve enjoyed hearing about the adventures of ‘The Little Red Train‘ and watching a song about a magic train ride.
Children loved using the remote controlled cars this week and were able to move them backwards and forwards between the train station and garage.
In maths, we’re learning about night and day and will be moving on to ordering key events in our daily routines next week.
Help at home: Talk to your child about day and night time. What activities do people do in the day and at night? What do they do in the morning/afternoon/evening?
Reminders
- Yellow group children – Please make sure you have signed up for a Parent Consultation appointment
- On sunny days, please ensure your child is wearing suncream in the morning and has a NAMED hat and NAMED waterbottle at Nursery.
Living and Learning
‘I know how to respect the similarities and differences of people.’
In Living and Learning sessions this week, KS1 have been discussing the similarities and differences between themselves and others around them.
We talked about some differences between boys and girls and spoke in detail about a how a lot of these differences are actually opinion rather than fact. For example that only boys can play football and that only girls can wear makeup.
One child in 2C said, ‘Girls and boys have different histories because in the past, boys had more rights.’
The children were very respectful towards one another, listened politely and shared their own ideas with care.
Where in the World?
Can you believe we are in the last half term of the school year? We have lots of great things coming up in Summer 2. This half term’s theme is ‘Where in the World?’ We’ll be exploring maps to identify which country and city we live in, thinking about coastal habitats and sealife and preparing to move into year one.
As we prepare the children for their transition, you may hear them talking more about ‘getting ready’ for year one. Thank you to parents and carers who’ve already started to support with this, by encouraging children to come into school and complete their morning jobs independently.
One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab
We’ve been reading One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab by April Sayre and Jeff Sayre.
This book, which is set on a beach, has a maths link. It describes how many legs you can see when combining different animals, insects and humans!
In our writing, we’ve used images from the book and described what we can see.
The book has also inspired lots of talk around seaside locations we have visited before.
Help at home- To continue our discussions around seaside locations, it would be lovely to have some pictures up around the classroom of the children visiting a beach. Please email these over to the usual address below:
Geography- Where do we live?
In our non-fiction reading, we’ve been looking at maps of the United Kingdom. Country is our word of the week. We’ve learnt that there are many countries across the world and that our country is called England.
The children enjoyed looking at a map of the United Kingdom, locating Leeds and having a go at reading other town and city names on the map. We’ve also been creating our own maps by copying images and place names or using our imaginations. We focused on adding a coastline to show which areas are land and which are sea.
Help at home- Next week, we’ll be focusing on our city; Leeds. Please have a chat with your child about their favourite places to visit in the city, as we’ll be asking about this in class.
Maths; counting and arrangement of shapes
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be revisiting mathematical skills learnt across the year. This week, we’ve been counting collections of objects from larger sets.
We made collections of 20 and shared some great maths reasoning when talking about ways to group our objects to make it easier to see there is 20:
“we put one Numicon peg on each finger and did it twice… we did that because we know that 10 add 10 makes 20!”
“put one counter under each finger of one hand…we need 4 groups of 5”
“we made 2 groups of 10”
“we made a tower of 20 with multilink cubes because they are easier to count in a row than when they are spread out”
In provision, we’ve been using Tangram pictures to match position, orientation and arrangement of shapes.
Art; Observational drawing and Artist focus
We’ve been making observational drawings of real-life objects that have washed up on beaches.
We also began a project based on our focus artist; Alexander Calder. We’ve been cutting shapes from card, which will be used over the next few weeks to make mobile sculptures based on Calder’s work.
Phonics
Summer 2 week 1 has focused on phase 4 words with long vowel sounds.
In provision, we’ve been having a go at ‘sentence substitution’; reading a sentence and replacing one word with a different word, making sure the sentence still makes sense.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Thunderstorm
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
Pictures of outdoor learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
Swimming
Rainbow- 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July
Sunshine- 14 June, 28 June, 12 July
Residential Day Two
The children have had another fun-filled day: piranha pool, zip line, canoeing, raftbuilding, a knight’s quest and caving.
Maths – telling the time
This week in Year 2 we have been learning how to tell the time. We have really focussed on how to recognise: o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to the hour. We have practised looking at clocks often, showing times in intervals of 15 minutes. We know that the ‘long’ hand shows the minutes and the ‘short’ hand shows the hour.
We know that:
‘When the minute hand is pointing to the 12 it is o’clock.’
‘When the minute hand is pointing to the 6 it is half past.’
‘When the minute hand is pointing to the 3 it is quarter past.’
‘When the minute hand is pointing to the 9 it is quartet to.‘
The children have shown lots of enthusiasm about learning the time! Help at home: by talking about time often at home. E.g. ‘It is 8 o’clock, it is now bedtime.’
Why not also try using a teaching clock at home so that your child can practise the time? Teaching Clock (topmarks.co.uk)
Residential Day One
What an action-packed day we’ve had: night line, crate challenge, archery, dungeon, giant swing, climbing and trapeze. Lunch was a happy and healthy pizza, crisps and Kit Kat and dinner was a chicken curry or fish fingers and chips.
It’s been a fantastic day with plenty of smiles, fears conquered and encouraging chants.
Zog theatre trip – Year 2
Year 2 had a fantastic day at The Carriageworks theatre today watching a performance of Zog, the classic story by Julia Donaldson. We have used the story to work on our reading fluency, reading with prosody and also writing. It has also shaped discussions about resilience – keeping on trying even when things are tough.
Zog theatre trip – Year 1
Year 1 had a fantastic day at The Carriageworks theatre today watching a performance of Zog, the classic story by Julia Donaldson. We have used the story to work on our reading fluency, reading with prosody and also writing. It has also shaped discussions about resilience – keeping on trying even when things are tough.
Living and Learning
This term, year 5 and 6 complete their relationship and sex education lessons. These allow the children to learn about growing up and puberty. We ensure that the classroom continues to be a safe, respectful environment in which the children can ask appropriate questions. We will be discussing how their bodies change – using the correct biological vocabulary. We will also be discussing how puberty can affect their emotions and how to deal with this. We make sure the children are clear of where to get help if needed.
Help at home: Talk to your child about what has been discussed each week. Do they know the correct vocabulary and do they have a good understanding of what has been discussed in class?
Science: we are biologists
Our new science unit is about animals and humans. This means we are being biologists as we are studying living things. Our first lesson was looking at our new vocabulary. We then focused on gestation periods – the length of time a baby is in the womb. We particularly looked at babies developing in a woman’s womb. We used secondary sources of information to research this.
Here is our new vocabulary.
Help at home: Can you help your child learn our new vocabulary. Have some fun with it and play some games. What about Pictionary!