Reception w/b 6th March
Date: 10th Mar 2023 @ 3:57pm
Wow, what wonderful children we have in Reception! It is such a joy to observe the excitement and pride they take in their progress as they continue to enthusiastically engage in all aspects of their learning. Superstars!
In phonics, we are noticing that children are writing their words and sentences with increasing independence and are becoming increasingly familiar with the elements of a good sentence (capital letters, full stops, finger spaces, use of Fred fingers, checking it through). We are all now Set 1 ‘special friends’ experts as these have been repeatedly practised and revised. We are now in the process of learning/revising Set 2 sounds so that they become just as familiar; please do continue to watch the videos and practise these sounds at home. The children are also now very familiar and confident with our guided reading routines, allowing them to really focus on fluency and comprehension. Our class target continues to be to reread the sentence after decoding it to help secure our understanding. This then helps us when we answer comprehension questions later in the session. Mrs North is pleased with the accuracy of our letter formation, including when writing our names. Some of the letters which are most commonly formed incorrectly are: a, g, d, j, b and f. We are therefore practising these letters frequently in the ‘speed sounds’ section of our phonics lessons.
In our NCETM Mastering Number maths sessions this week, our focus has been doubles. First, we used our skills of subitising and comparison to identify when 2 sets are equal or NOT equal. We saw a range of familiar representations including dice and fingers to explore the idea of ‘2 equal parts’, and then found the whole by combining these parts. The use of gesture has been particularly important this week. When children made a double pattern on their fingers, they matched their fingers to ‘check’ that the same number is shown on each hand. E.g. 3 on this hand, 3 on this hand…double 3! We could then identify that double 3 equals 6. By the end of the week, we could recall some doubles facts from memory! We also enjoyed using ladybirds, counters and mirrors in the provision to make doubles with ladybird spots.
Our Numicon Firm Foundations work has focused on finding the difference, helping to build the foundations for our subtraction work. We enjoyed using Numicon shapes in the playdough to support our understanding. E.g. we pressed a 7 shape into the playdough and then lay a 4 shape over the 7 impression. This helped us to see that there were 3 dots left on the impression so…the difference between 7 and 4 is 3! We also lined up objects as another method of comparison. E.g. if I have 5 red buttons in a row and 3 blue buttons in the next row, I can see that there are 2 red buttons without a match – the difference between 5 and 3 is 2!
It has been our planning week in English. All week, we have rehearsed our story map to ensure that the structure of the narrative and the language used is really familiar to us – we are now super storytellers. We noticed that our losing story is written in 4 parts. This led to the introduction of our Story Friends: Opening Octopus, Build-Up Bear, Problem Penguin and Ending Elephant. We added the Story Friends alongside the sections of our story map and they prompted a discussion about the contents of each section. Once we were really familiar with our retelling of ‘The Something’ we answered comprehension questions about it as a class. Later in the week, it was our class planning session. We started with 4 hula hoops that correspond to the colours of the story friends. We then used small world objects and pictures to innovate our story. E.g. instead of a story about Dan and his dog losing a red ball, Miss Witham’s story is about Tom and his bunny losing a blue car. We also changed other aspects of the story depending on our level of confidence. The children then created their own individual plans, ready to help them to write their stories next week. These look amazing, and range from stories about Harry Potter losing his wand in Hogwarts to a young boy losing his cuddly toy down a mysterious hole in the wardrobe. I can’t wait to read our stories next week!
We have also been thinking about rhymes this week. To help, we isolated the ending sound (e.g. the word is ‘sun’ the ending sound is ‘un’) to help us to find rhyming words, including nonsense words (e.g. fun, bun, run, vun, yun). I wonder how many rhymes you can find at home?
On Monday afternoon, we introduced this week’s EAD (Expressive Arts and Design) challenge. The dragon in our story ‘The Something’ inspired us to use plasticine to create our own dragons. We watched videos and looked at pictures for reference/inspiration but I loved that all of these dragons were unique! Towards the end of the afternoon, we welcomed Mrs Tice to sing and dance together once again. We loved using the egg shakers that she brought for us all to use. To end the day, Mrs McLean brought the worship table down to Reception to lead a class worship time. We explored the value of Hope. We discussed how Jesus said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” We then looked at how we can be lights that guide and support others.
On Tuesday afternoon, we introduced our new My Happy Mind unit: ‘Relate’. In this module the children will understand why positive relationships matter and how we can have good relationships with other people. We’ll be learning all about how to understand and celebrate our differences. Thinking back to our previous unit ‘celebrate’, we’ll also look at how our character strengths help us to relate. To launch our unit, we read the new story ‘Rose’s Story Day’ which focuses on the importance of listening to others. This helped us to begin to think about what makes a good friend and how to be a good friend. The children then created their own ‘recipes for a good friend’. These included ingredients such as: a sprinkle of kindness, a spoonful of sharing, a pinch of laughter, a dollop of love etc. What a lovely activity this was!
On Wednesday morning, Reverend Sandi visited us to answer our questions about Easter. After sharing what we already know about Easter, the children asked some questions such as: Why were some of the people mean to Jesus when he arrived on the donkey? Why did Jesus only stay for a few days when he was risen? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Reverend Sandi talked through our questions with us and explained that there are also some things that we just can’t know; God is so clever and all-knowing that we as humans can’t always understand. We are very much looking forward to visiting Reverend Sandi at St Oswald’s for our Mothering Sunday service and Reception class visit. In Wednesday afternoon’s RE session, after recapping the events of Holy Week, we discovered that our focus would be the Last Supper. After watching a video retelling the Last Supper, we recreated some aspects. First, I washed some of the children’s feet and then the children washed each other’s feet. We asked: What does it feel like to do this for someone else? How would it have felt to have Jesus wash your feet? Why did Jesus do that? The children quite rightly concluded that this was to show respect and love for the disciples. We then thought about Jesus sharing the bread and the wine and what they represented. We therefore broke and tasted a variety of different bread, thinking about Jesus saying “This is my body, broken for you. Eat this and remember me.”
On Thursday afternoon, Mrs Edwards introduced us to the next character in Friendship Terrace: Rough Ryan. This helped us to think about being gentle and respecting friends and their personal space. Due to the very cold weather, we were unable to get into the hall so enjoyed our dance lesson in the classroom with Miss Toft.
This afternoon, our UTW (Understanding the World) focus was pets! We thoroughly enjoyed sharing the photographs and videos of our pets and the children talked to us about them, including answering questions that the other children had asked. Thank you so much for sharing these photos with us. What a joyful way to spend an afternoon!
We have had two very contrasting days of weather in Forest School this week! On Tuesday morning, we enjoyed a beautifully sunny morning making bird feeders. We set up 3 different stations for 3 types of bird feeder. At one station, we were spreading jam/honey/margarine on a cardboard tube/egg box and then rolling this in bird seed before hanging the tube on a branch. At another station, we threaded Cheerios onto string and then tied these to the trees. At the final station, Mr Simmons helped us to cut oranges in half and scrape out the insides. We filled them with bird seed and then used skewers and string to hang them in the trees. What a wonderful way to learn to look after our local wildlife! I am sure that the birds have been grateful for these bird feeders during this very cold spell of weather. On Thursday, we were most excited to venture out into the quickly falling snow and discover what the birds had already eaten. We then spent some time exploring the changes to the environment as a result of the weather, although not for quite as long as our usual sessions as we were very cold!
What fun we have had! I hope that you all stay nice and warm this weekend and I shall look forward to the start of another super week on Monday.
With many thanks,
Miss Witham
