Conker collecting for counting in 1,2B
We are loving collecting conkers in our class. There were audible gasps and squeals of excitement when we passed 100 today – we have 130!
It’s really helping us to see the importance of counting in 10s and counting 10s and 1s.
Help at home by collecting something and counting the 10s and 1s.
Y3/4 Reading
Children in 3/4 have been sharing their love of reading in our Book Club sessions. Each week, children complete one activity in response to what they have read during the week. This past week it was ‘Book Wars’!
Help at home by listening to your child read regularly. Encourage them to discuss with you what they think of their book and why.
The importance of attendance
What did you do today? ‘We just played’…is the answer many parents of Reception children get. But here’s just a few of the things your child would miss if they’re absent for five consecutive days.
Phonics: Children learn four new graphemes and three tricky words each week.
Reading: Children practise reading books that closely match their phonics, plus loads of stories are read aloud and celebrated. We visit the school library once a week to choose a book to take home.
Poetry picnic: There’s a poetry session every day –another valuable activity which helps children learn to read.
Writing: We write every day using the graphemes that we’ve learned.
Handwriting: Children learn how to form letters correctly, otherwise joining letters will be difficult in Key Stage 1.
Maths: We’ve four maths sessions a week, setting the foundations for children to be successful in using and applying numbers in the future.
Alongside all of this, children learn Science, Music and other subjects. Even more importantly, children learn to concentrate in a large group, to share resources, take turns when speaking, answer in full sentences, regulate our feelings and prepare ourselves for future learning.
There’s a lot happening when ‘we just play’!
Family Photographs
As we’re getting to know everyone, we like to talk about our families and home life. To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery. These will be displayed in our home corner for children to look at and talk about with staff and their friends. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reading as a historian
We are using a book to help us learn about the Great Fire of London – Vlad and the Great Fire of London. It is written from the point of view of a flea and a rat! We will be discussing and answering questions about the story and then writing sentences to show our understanding.
Living and Learning- I know that rights come with responsibilities
We have been learning that we have the right to learn but a responsibility to be great learners. Here is a list of top tips we came up with to be great learners:
- be in class on time
- be prepared for all lessons
- take good care of school property
- complete spelling, reading and talk time homework
- be ready
- respect ourselves and others
- listen and react well
- doing our best – every day!
We also talked about Children’s rights in the UK. These include:
Help at home: watch this video and ask your child what their rights are
Was the Great Fire Of London actually ‘great?’
We are all well and truly on the Topic train now. This half term our Topic is all about History and in particular, The Great Fire Of London.
We started our History journey thinking about timelines. We looked at the timeline for the day which we have in our classrooms. Using this, we learnt how important it is for events to be plotted in chronological order.
In class we discussed similarities between houses now and houses in the past. We sorted some of their features into a Venn diagram.
After learning how long ago The Great Fire Of London happened, we began to unpick some of the events that occurred during that time and ordered them in our groups. We wondered why people call it the Great Fire Of London because it doesn’t sound very great! We learnt that the word ‘great’ can also mean big.
This week we have begun to learn about Samuel Pepys and why he is such an important historic figure.
Here are some facts that we have learnt so far:
- We know that The Great Fire Of London happened in 1666
- We know it started on the 2nd of September.
- We know the fire blazed for three days.
- We know that the fire started in a bakery on Pudding Lane.
- We know it was Thomas Farrinar’s bakery.
- We know that the fire spread quickly because the houses had been built from wood. They had also been built very close together.
- We know that houses today have been built in a much safer way!
- We know that 87 churches were destroyed.
- We know that there were no telephones or a Fire Brigade back then so people could not have called 999 for help.
Help at home: Discuss the facts around The Great Fire Of London with your child. Can you find out any more interesting or unusual facts? You could visit your local library to find out more.
Collaborative learning in 1,2B
In one of hour history lessons this week, we worked with a partner to discuss how people might have felt and what they did during the Great Fire of London. Year 1s and 2s are often doing different learning, but today we worked with a partner from a different year group. It helps children to get to know everybody and builds our ‘class community’ feeling too.
KS1 Dictation for writing
All the children have made a great start to their writing journeys this year. We have been really pleased with their enthusiasm.
In Key Stage One, we use dictation as a tool to help children with their writing. During dictation, the teachers will either have sentences already in mind or they will discuss and decide on a sentence with the children. Dictation allows children to watch as an adult models using different writing skills effectively. Together we practise letter formation, spacing between words, spelling, where and when to use punctuation such as capital letters and full stops. Teachers also model how to listen to sounds in words and write the corresponding letters.
Here are some examples of our dictated sentences:
Help at home: You could think of some simple sentences to write with your child at home. These could be about anything at all from writing about what you did at the weekend or a sentence about a film or a program you have watched on the telly.
Ask them about the process and how they do it school. I’m sure they’d be happy to share with you how skilful they are at counting the words in the sentence and using their Phoneme Fingers to listen for sounds in words. You could also include some tricky words or some of your child’s spelling words.
Living and learning : manners
We highlighted manners in our Living and Learning lessons last week (but the message will continue all year).
Small words can make a big difference.
We also talked about greeting other people and also how powerful smiling at other people can be.
Help at home by modelling good manners.