Leaf Man
This week, we’ve explored all things autumn!
Understanding the world; seasonal changes
We took an autumn walk to spot changes in the natural environment. We remembered lots of these from our nature study sessions.
Leaf Man
We’ve been reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.
“A Leaf Man’s got to go, where the wind blows”
The book takes us on Leaf Man’s journey, as he travels on the autumn wind across different autumnal landscapes.
Our ‘word of the week’ is seasons. We know that we have four seasons in the year; spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Inspired by the book, we made our own ‘Leaf Man’ pictures.
Understanding the world; Farmer time with Farmer Luke
Did you know that Reception classes have the opportunity to video call with a real-life farmer, working on his farm?! We speak to farmer Luke once each half term to see how farm life changes over the year and what jobs he is busy doing. Farmer Luke has an arable farm, so it’s a very busy harvesting time of year. He took some time out this week, to show Reception around the farm. Next door to his farm are some animals too. Reception were so excited to see the cows and were very impressed to see his amazing tractors!
Maths
Our focus in maths this week has been comparing quantities. We have developed our skills to look carefully and use the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to describe sets of objects.
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 Five Little Pumpkins.
click here to watch us recite this week’s poem!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) h, b, f and l. They have also been practicing writing the graphemes (the written letter).
We learnt the tricky word: the
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds each week.
Help at home; blending
Oral segmenting/blending games are great, both if your child is still learning to blend and for those children who are confident ‘blenders’, to revisit their skills. Here’s just one idea to try at home: Dress the Baby (idea taken from earlyimpactlearning.com)
Any toy can be used for this game. Put a baby doll or another toy down with some clothes round it- for example a hat, boots, a nappy, a coat and gloves.
Say one of the pieces of clothing in sound-talk. For example a boot would be a ‘b-oo-t.’ If your child can blend it, then they can put a piece that piece of clothing on the baby/toy. To make it easier, you can say all the pieces of clothing like robots before you start.
Let us know if you try this game at home!
Dates for your diary and reminders
Parent-teacher consultation (PTC) appointments- 22.10.24/24.10.24 (individual times) A zoom link will be sent for your appointment. Please use your child’s name as your screenname. Thank you.
Swimming lessons will begin after the half term break. On your child’s swimming day, please provide a swimsuit/swim shorts, a towel and a pair of goggles if needed. No floatation equipment is required, as we provide these in school. Your child should still come to school wearing their PE kit.
During autumn 1, your child has met our swimming instructor Miss Joicey and has had an opportunity to visit the pool.
Stay and Learn; Number (session 1)- 13.11.24 9am-10am This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school. This session will be focused on maths.
3,4 Class News – Topic and Writing
Should the Elgin Marbles be returned to Greece?
This has been the topic of conversation in our classroom this week! The children have learned all about the history of Elgin Marbles and have used the information to decide whether they think they should be returned to Greece or should stay in Britain.
Today, they practised their debating skills in small groups. They will use this knowledge to write a discussion text next week.
At home ask your child their opinion about the Elgin Marbles.
Science – Electricity
This week in Science we have started our new unit all about electricity. We began by seeing what we could remember about our previous learning and then shared this with our talk partners. We discussed that we would be using electrical components and that we needed to stay safe using equipment such as batteries. We worked together to create a series circuit and then added additional components to see the impact it had. The children drew scientific diagrams of their circuits and used the appropriate symbols. The children also used an app on the ipads to explore this further.
Help at home: Ask your child what a series circuit is and what the components are that make up a circuit.
Rewards, rewards, rewards
Adults give out Choice Chips to children who they spot making good choices around school and children who are following our school rules. In 1,2B we also give raffle tickets for individuals in the classroom who are making good choices. We also work towards a class target where we can all contribute to a reward. The last few weeks we have been working towards not interrupting and waiting our turn. We achieved it last week and went on the adventure playground as our reward. It was fun!
1A addition
Today in 1A we looked at the + symbol. We talked about how numbers in an addition expression are commutative. This means we can swap them around and the total stays the same. Whatever the order, the result is the same. We had a go at placing some conkers into two circles and then writing expressions to represent them. Here’s some of our learning:
Help at home: You could draw two circles and fill them with a number of objects like we did in class today. Can your child write the expression to represent the objects in the circles? Can they write a second expression where the numbers have been swapped around?
1,2B – Bonkers about conkers
Our poem last week was all about conkers. We have collected 657.
All these conkers have helped us count big numbers in 10s and the left over 1s. We also used them to partition 10 in different ways.
We have now returned them to nature on the field now, for the animals to eat and maybe some will grown in to trees themselves!
Let’s get creative.
Talk of Autumn filled nursey this week as we continued to share our amazing Autumn treasures. If you haven’t returned yours to nursery yet, don’t worry, we will continue to share them until Friday.
We enjoyed using some of our Autumn treasure to create our own autumnal artwork inspired by the artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Whilst doing this, we also used some of our sorting skills to sort the leaves into different colour piles.
In the Maths area we used our Autumn treasures to copy and continue repeating patterns. Why not try this at home with toys eg car, brick, car, brick, car.
Autumn has inspired our learning in the sensory areas too. We have scooped and poured red and green lentils and barley. We listened to the sound it made as it dropped onto the tray and how it felt as it trickled through our fingers. We used the light frame to create pictures with leaves made from various materials. We watched how the light made the leaves change.
Group time learning activities began this week. We enjoyed drawing different patterns on some wellies. We drew horizontal lines, spots and some children created their own patterns including ‘x’ and zig-zags.
Help at home
Next week our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Humpty Dumpty
Can you join in with this rhyme?
Reminders
- We have been sharing lots of family photographs at group time this week. If you are still to send yours in its not to late send it to the nursery email address scholesnursey@spherefederation.org
- Please make sure that your child’s shoes are named. We have some identical pairs this year.
Stay and Learn; Phonics Phase 2 10.10.24
A big thank you to parents and carers who joined us on Thursday for our Phonics Phase 2 Stay and Learn session. We hope you enjoyed watching a lesson in action, taking part in some activities with your child and that the teacher presentation was informative. If you would like to access the slides from our presentation, please click here
Here’s some more information about phonics and reading in Reception…
What do reading groups look like in class?
Children read with an adult at the same time each morning. They look at the same book throughout the week, in groups of 6 or less. We usually read 4 times a week (Mon-Thurs). The current week’s eBook is usually issued by Thursday evening.
Day 1/2- Decoding– children are introduced to new vocabulary, key decodable words (words that can be segmented and blended) and read through the book together. The aim is to work towards automaticity (reading the words on sight/memory recognition), which in turn makes reading more fluent.
Day 3- Prosody– prosody is the patterns of stress, intonation and rhythm in speech (i.e. sounding like a story-teller!) this is modelled to the children and they are taught to spot features in the text that will affect the way we read the words (for example; how is the character feeling? is there an exclamation/question mark or other grammatical features? and briefly pausing when we see a full stop)
Day 4- Comprehension– the children will be asked a range of questions to check their understanding of what they have read. These can usually be found on the last page of the eBook, if you’d like to use them at home as talking points.
Reading reports and Keeping in Touch
Teachers will check reading reports each week via Collins Hub and will make ‘keeping in touch’ phone calls to those who have not read within the week, to see if we can offer any further support. You can also ask your class teacher at any time, if you are having issues accessing reading at home. Please remember that if you do not have a compatible device, you can hire an iPad through our school office.
Reading records
Please remember to send your child’s reading records to school each Friday. Please add a short comment about how your child has been getting on with their reading at home. Remember, this can also be about other reading as well as eBooks.
Feedback
Finally, another thank you to those of you who attended the Stay and Learn. We would love your feedback!
Please scan the QR code to fill out our feedback form.
Y3/4 Topic
This week, we’ve started learning about The Elgin Marbles as part of our topic on Ancient Greece. These were statues and friezes from the Parthenon that are still debated today, since many are housed in London and not in their native home of Athens.
We discussed the reasons put forward both for and against returning them. This links not just with our topic but also writing, where we’ve been looking at discussion texts. We always enjoy a healthy difference of opinion and we also see this in action in our weekly ‘Philosophy Friday’ discussions where we share our opinions on different topics.
Help at home by prompting a discussion with your child. Cats vs dogs? Winter vs summer? Ancient Greeks vs Romans? Can they give reasons on both sides and think about something from more than one angle?
Year 3,4 Class News
In Reading, we have explored the Greek Myth ‘Icarus and Daedalus’. The children summarised the events in the story and considered how the characters felt at different parts.
Help at home by asking your child to retell this story and discuss with them how each character felt.
In Science, we have collected data on invertebrates by recording the number of invertebrates spotted in the school grounds. After recording the data in a tally chart, the children presented their information in a graph. Why not try this at home?
