Reception w/b 11th March
Date: 15th Mar 2024 @ 4:33pm
It has been a week of confidence, collaboration, and curiosity in Reception, with an abundance of wonderful learning to be proud of.
Within our phonics lessons, we are progressing through the Set 2 sounds with confidence, whilst continuing to recap Set 1 sounds. We are applying our Set 1 sound knowledge and ability to read 4 and 5 sound words within our guided reading sessions, where we continue to encounter new red words. Within the next two weeks, I shall check children’s red word knowledge as part of our reading assessments.
Our NCETM Mastering Number focus has been doubles; we have continued to explore the composition of numbers within 10, focusing on the ‘special case’ of when 2 equal parts combine to make a whole. First, we used our skills of comparison to identify when 2 sets are equal or NOT equal. As we have explored 2 equal parts of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, we have applied our subitising skills as well as starting to recall some doubles facts when an image or physical resource is not available to support us. We have also represented these doubles facts in the form of addition number sentences, from 1+1=2 to 5+5=10. We have enjoyed using mirrors, folding paper to print a set of painted dots twice, rolling two dice until they show a double, sorting dominoes to find the doubles, exploring ladybird and butterfly wing doubles.
Within our literacy sessions, we have been writing the losing stories that we planned last week, inspired by Dan losing his red ball in ‘The Something’. We have written a sentence per day, one each for Opening Octopus, Build-up Bear, Problem Penguin and Ending Elephant, using the sentence starters ‘Once there was’, ‘One day’, ‘Unfortunately’ and ‘Weeks passed until’. The children have now each written a 4-sentence story, an amazing achievement; it has been such a joy to observe their pride in their writing. Mrs McAree and I have been so very impressed with the independence and confidence observed within this process, as children consider their use of capital letters, full stops, finger spaces, correct letter formation and use of Fred Fingers. We have a class full of wonderful authors! Next week, we shall apply our super writing skills within a non-fiction context as we follow and extend our current interest in frogs.
In Spanish, Miss Jones taught us how to count from 1 – 5 in Spanish: uno = 1, dos = 2, tres = 3, cuatro = 4, cinco = 5.
In Forest School, after lots of fun with last week’s bird feeder activity, our interest in birds continued. We therefore enjoyed building nests for birds, linking sticks to make circular shapes and using moss, leaves and grass to make the nests comfortable.
In PE with Miss Jones, our focus was to move around whilst knocking targets down with a ball. To warm up, we travelled around the hall, moving like different animals. Next, we split into two teams, ‘Building Beavers’ and ‘Wrecking Rhinos’. The rhinos ran around pushing over the foam bricks, whilst the beavers ran around standing them back up, without either team being allowed to enter the hoops. We then swapped roles. Once we were familiar with the rules of the game, the rhinos then had a ball each which they needed to roll with their hands to knock down the bricks. The beavers had to dribble their ball to the hoops and then stand the bricks back up. The teams then swapped once again. We had lots of fun and improved our accuracy!
As ever, we thoroughly enjoyed our music lesson as we progressed to the next focus in our ‘Animals’ unit – fish. To warm up, we used this Ocean Odyssey video (https://youtu.be/qv0qzPcj14U?list=PLLj9zcicoXcMgkYVUb-CF_LaabltjfOoN), following the sea creatures and performing different actions to the beat of the song. We then watched this video of the Kanneh-Mason family playing Aquarium from Saint Saen’s Carnival of the animals: https://youtu.be/KOx7zmO5ppw. We discussed the tempo of the music and the different instruments we could see and hear, before moving around the room to the music, imagining we were different sea creatures. The final song of the lesson was ‘Down there under the sea’, performed by Singing Hands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI9nYYgbAwQ). We learnt to sing the song and sign along. Then, we explored a selection of percussion instruments to decide which instruments would sound most like the fish, whales, sharks, shells and crabs. We split into these 5 groups and selected the corresponding instruments for each animal. Finally, we played along to ‘Down there under the sea’, with each group only playing for their verse.
To begin our RE session, we explored our Chatterbox and the items it contained. Inside, we discovered: a cross, an angel, eggs decorated with palm leaves, books containing Easter stories etc. This prompted conversation and questions which led us to the conclusion that we will be learning about Easter this half-term. Next, we used the Lion Storyteller Bible to help tell the stories of Palm Sunday (The Great Parade), the Last Supper (An Important Meal), the crucifixion (A Dreadful Day) and the resurrection (A Happy Day). This helped us to sequence pictures of the events of Holy Week and link the pictures with the objects in the Chatterbox. This week, our particular focus was Palm Sunday. We watched the following video: https://youtu.be/lTmbTuutBgg. We then made our own palm leaves to wave as we sing along to We Have a King who Rides a Donkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJqFuiafDf8 which we shall enjoy next week. We will continue to explore Palm Sunday and the events of Holy Week across the half term, exploring different elements of Holy Week in more detail within each lesson.
In our PSED No Outsiders lesson, we focused on The Family Book by Todd Par. We first asked, ‘What is a family?’ before reading the story. We discussed the different families mentioned in the book and discussed whether there were any families in the book that were like our families. We recognised that all families are different and celebrated these differences.
This week, we also started a collaborative artwork challenge, seasonal artwork inspired by the cherry tree in our story, The Something. First, we spent some time talking about the seasons: their order, changes that happen, what the weather is like, the clothes we may wear, the activities we may do, how seasonal changes affect animals and plants. We watched a time lapse of a cherry tree which you can watch here: https://www.zeitraffer.tv/en/nature-time-lapse/seasons/time-lapse-cherry-tree-4-seasons-cherry-blossoming-flowering/. We have then created a background for each season. Next week, we shall decorate the tree to show the changes that happen each season, as well as adding seasonal details to the background.
Another wonderful week in Reception! I hope that you all have a lovely weekend.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
