Reception w/b 11th November
Date: 15th Nov 2024 @ 4:38pm
Well Reception, what a wonderful week we have all had! I must just take this opportunity to say how proud we continue to be of our superstar class. They are making superb progress and are just a joy to spend time with.
Phonics success continues as the children are now very settled in their new groups for the half term. Our phonics team are all very much enjoying teaching the Reception children. We continue to work on reviewing previously taught sounds to ensure a strong, secure foundation before introducing new content. We are also continuing to work on our blending skills, specifically with CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. We are just thrilled with the progress we have seen with reading and writing CVC words in just two weeks! Well done, Reception! You will find the sounds that they have focused on this week in the ‘How to help at home’ document. Please do continue to practise sounds and blending at home.
In maths this week, our focus has been deepening our understanding of 5 as a quantity by linking the number itself to the 5 fingers on one hand. We have been inspired by the rhyme ‘5 Little Peas in a Peapod Pressed’ and the Numberblocks episode ‘High Five’. We have explored ways to represent numbers to 5 using our fingers, die patterns and five frames.
This week, our literacy focus has been retelling our focus text ‘Juniper Jupiter’ and working on our comprehension of the text. We have enjoyed using a story map to help with this. Our adult-led written task this week has been to label images from Juniper Jupiter with written words. We labelled illustrations of: Juniper rescuing a cat from a tree (c-a-t); Juniper’s dad helping her to write her checklist (d-a-d); Juniper’s sidekick, Peanut the dog (d-o-g); Juniper and Peanut tucked up in bed after a busy day of superhero missions (b-e-d); and Juniper’s red superhero cape (r-e-d). The children worked so hard to write these words; we can already see the progress from last week’s CVC challenge! Super segmenting of the sounds and super letter formation! Next week, a new challenge is promised…an introduction to sentences!
Remembrance has been an important focus this week. We began by thinking about the poppy and what it represents. We know that people wear poppies to show that they are thinking about and remembering those that have served, and are currently serving in our armed forces. Buying a poppy helps to raise money to take care of soldiers and their families. We learnt that Remembrance Day is on 11th November each year and that, at 11 o’clock on Remembrance Day, people stay silent for two minutes to remember. On Remembrance Day, poppy wreaths are placed on statues and monuments. The children were ever so respectful and asked insightful questions. On Remembrance Day (Monday), Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 gathered at the flagpole. We talked about why we have a silence, the children shared prayers, and some children talked about family members who are serving, or have served, in our armed forces. We then observed a two-minute silence. The children stood beautifully and were very respectful. We have then engaged in related activities throughout the week. The children have created poppies with loose parts and playdough, printed poppies with potatoes and many children chose to create their own paintings using watercolours. In Thursday’s Forest School session, the children collected red leaves, green leaves and black/brown leaves to create a ‘nature picture’ of a poppy. Mr Simmons then showed the children how to use clay to make poppies. By next week, the clay poppies will have dried out so that we can paint them.
Our Makaton signs of the week have therefore been ‘poppy’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j70_ppObU6o) and ‘to remember’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-DK2mtywAc).
As we were at the flagpole on Monday, we unfortunately missed our PE slot after returning to school a little later than we originally thought. Therefore, Mr McAulay taught our PE lesson on Wednesday afternoon, when covering Miss Witham. As we focused lots on balancing, we knew it would be ok to wear our uniform for this lesson. Mr McAulay’s lesson had a pirate theme! It included hiding/finding ‘treasure’ and balancing on steppingstones. He was impressed with our balance and agility skills!
We have also been learning lots and lots of new signs as we sign along to our new Nativity songs. We ask that you please begin to look at your child’s lines together to best support them in our Nativity preparations. We are so proud of how they are already progressing with these preparations. It promises to be a wonderful performance!
I hope that you all enjoy a lovely weekend.
Miss Witham
