Reception w/b 2nd January
Date: 6th Jan 2023 @ 4:27pm
A very warm welcome back and wishing you all a Happy New Year. It has been just wonderful to begin a new term with the children this week and we have been so impressed with each and every one of them.
We ‘hit the ground running’ with our phonics sessions and were very pleased with how well the children had retained their sounds. Over the next few weeks, we shall be consolidating our Set 1 sound knowledge and really focusing on reading and writing words. Please look out for a Dojo message to find out the sounds your child has focused on this week. Next week, we shall also begin our more formalised guided reading timetable, meaning that each child will read with an adult three times per week. We are very grateful for your support with reading at home and the benefits of the children reading their book at least three times at home are evident in their progress.
In our NCETM Mastering Number sessions, children have been using their perceptual subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) in increasingly complex arrangements, moving from dots in a line and arrangements of 2, to a focus on standard dice arrangements. For larger quantities, the children have been using skills of conceptual subitising, beginning to quickly see the sub-groups within these larger numbers. A key focus this week has been developing skills of visualising; the children were encouraged to look carefully at arrangements of dots before the picture was removed and they needed to explain what they saw. Using spatial language to describe sub-groups within these arrangements will help to deepen the children’s understanding of part–whole relations and allow them to further consider composition (the numbers within numbers). Moving forward, the children will continue to use subitising skills to explore and deeply understand the composition of numbers within 10. This will support their increasing fluency with number bonds and help them to develop efficient and flexible calculation strategies in Key Stage 1 and beyond. This week’s related Numberblocks clip was taken from Series 3, Episode 1, Once Upon a Time. This clip focuses on the numeral linked to Three.
Within Numicon Firm Foundations we have introduced number rods and focused on recognising Numicon Shape patterns. We have enjoyed using the Numicon Shape spinner and recognising the Numicon Shape that it lands on and the corresponding numeral. The number rods have been particularly popular during provision time and we have used them to make pictures, using language for length and height as we did so.
On Wednesday, we discovered that buses were going to be particularly important within our learning this half-term. We considered questions such as: What job do buses have? Why are they so important? Where do you see them? What numbers do you know from buses? Where do they go? Where would like to go on a bus? Where do you like to sit on a bus? It was interesting to listen to what we all already knew about buses. Then, today, Miss Witham discovered that her desk was very messy! Her pencil pot had been knocked over and the desk was covered in pens! Next to this mess was a small, red bus. We predicted who could be responsible for this mess and the suggestions included: Elvie the elf, a Jedi ninja, an alien with one eye or a dinosaur. When we discovered a book next to the mess, we realised who was responsible…Naughty Bus! We read the book and then discussed it together; we were particularly interested in how the words had been written to reflect what was happening in the story e.g. the word ‘buildings’ was stretched so that the letters looked tall and thin like skyscrapers. Next week, we will be introduced to the Naughty Bus story map as we further familiarise ourselves with this story.
As part of our Naughty Bus inspired learning, we have been exploring transport this week, focusing particularly on how transport has changed. The children were fascinated by photographs of transport in the past (e.g. old propeller planes, a penny farthing, steam trains) and were excellent at sorting the transport photographs into past/present or old/new.
We have also enjoyed plenty of Naughty Bus inspired learning in our provision time this week. These activities included: sketching zoomed-in photographs of transport (e.g. a boat propeller, windscreen wipers, the number on a bus); small world ‘Brereton blocks’ using photographs of buildings in our local area; a selection of books about transport, toys and our local area; a ‘Sound Streets’ tuff tray including roads, cars and Set 1 sound parking spaces; diggers in the sand tray; using large construction equipment to make vehicles outdoors.
On Thursday, Mrs Edwards began the afternoon with a PSED session about what it means to be a good friend. Everybody then headed to the hall for their first gymnastics lesson. This session focused particularly on shapes and the children were: using their bodies to create shapes (e.g. Rocket shape, Star shape, Sitting Star, Moon, Dish, Flying Saucer, Squatty Alien, Pike Alien); moving around the hall in the Space shapes; creating growing shapes as part of a performance.
To conclude our week, we enjoyed another No Outsiders lesson focused on the message: we all like different things. Our objectives were to: tell you the things I like; make my own mind up; ask others what they think. Our focus book was You Choose by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart. Every child had chance to share their opinion and tell the class what they would choose on that page. We then looked at some different images of objects/food etc. and sorted them into “things I like” and “things I don’t like”. Lots of us chose different things – even though we like different things, we can still be friends. We decided that our class is wonderful because, even though we are all different and like different things, we all get a chance to talk.
Congratulations Reception on a superb start to the term. I can’t wait to discover the adventures we will enjoy through our Naughty Bus topic!
I hope that you all have a lovely weekend and I shall look forward to seeing you on Monday.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
