Reception w/b 13th January
Date: 17th Jan 2025 @ 4:04pm
It has been lovely to enjoy some sunny (although chilly) weather this week in Reception! The children are making wonderful progress and we are very proud of their positive, determined attitude to learning.
Our consolidation of Set 1 sounds has continued in phonics and the children continue to impress with their speed and confidence when recognising sounds, reading words and writing words. Now that letter formation habits are becoming more secure, we are encouraging the children to think carefully about the relative size of the letters and their position on the line e.g. ‘in sh, s is small and h is tall’; ‘g is a descender – her face sits on the line, her hair curls under the line’. It is also so lovely to see the children continue to grow in confidence with their reading and the pride that they feel. Thank you so much for your support with reading at home; I hope that the children enjoy the new stories that they have brought home this week.
In our NCETM Mastering Number sessions, we have continued to use our subitising (speedy spotting skills) for increasingly complex arrangements of dots. Describing sub-groups within these arrangements has also helped us to consolidate our knowledge of part-whole relations e.g. ‘I can see 3 dots on the top and 1 dot on the bottom. 3 is a part, 1 is a part, the whole is 4’. 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. Towards the end of the week, we have used number tracks to play dice-based games, including Snakes and Ladders. Playing games with dice will consolidate the children’s understanding of the stable order of numbers and allow them to link the numbers on a track to the quantities on a die.
The children continue to be captivated by the Naughty Bus story. This week, we continued to orally retell the story, with the aid of the story map. The children can now retell the story so confidently and could sequence the events of the book ever so speedily. This will be so helpful in the weeks that follow as we complete different writing tasks related to the story. This week’s adult-led writing activity was very popular! We have been focusing on drawing self-portraits, thinking really carefully about the lines and shapes that we use and the position of our facial features. The children took such care when drawing these and it is amazing to see such progress since their initial baseline self-portraits. We then each wrote a sentence underneath our portrait, to practise our sentence skills, name writing skills and recall of the red word ‘I’. The sentence was ‘I am [name].’; we focused on our use of finger spaces and a full stop.
The Naughty Bus also inspired some of our outdoor learning this week. We thought about the Naughty Bus sinking to the bottom of the pond and therefore decided to collect objects and predict whether they would float or sink. We then tested these objects by placing them into some warm water. We are super scientists!
In Forest School, Mr Simmons introduced us to a map of our school grounds. He challenged us to read the map, spotting representations of the different areas of our playground/Forest School e.g. the Reception outdoor area, the trim trail, the Forest School hut. We then used our maps to find Naughty Bus, who was hiding in Forest School! This is one of many practical experiences we will enjoy over the next few weeks to develop our map skills. Thank you, Mr Simmons!
This half term, our music lessons will be themed around weather and, after last week’s weather, this week’s theme, of course, had to be snow! With Mrs McAree, we began by listening to the song ‘North Wind Doth Blow’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/primary-school-songs-the-north-wind-doth-blow/zm74gwx . As we listened, we tapped the pulse on our knees. Once we were able to do this, we used percussion instruments to play the pulse along with the video whilst singing along. We then listened to ‘The Snow is Dancing’ by Debussy, played on the marimba, and discussed how the music matches the snow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbGHIejHWqY . In the provision, children then created their own music inspired by the snow, using quiet, gentle sounds.
Enormous fun was had by all in this week’s PE lesson as we launched our new unit ‘Football FUNdamentals’. The object was to move with a ball using our feet. After warming-up with a ‘colourful cones’ game, we began to experiment with moving the ball around the hall with our feet. To keep the ball close to us, we needed to use small, gentle touches with the ball. We also discovered that we needed to use the inside of our foot to touch the ball, not the toe – ‘toe toe toe, no, no, no’! Once we were feeling more confident, we added cones to the hall and were challenged to dribble the ball around the hall, avoiding the cones. There was now an added challenge of keeping an eye on the ball as we weaved between cones, whilst also frequently looking up to avoid bumping into our friends. I was ever so impressed with our Reception footballers; we predict that this will be a fantastic half term of PE!
In Spanish, we learnt how to say ‘my name is…’: Me llamo… The children are thoroughly enjoying their Spanish lessons!
In our PSED lesson, we launched our new ‘Keeping Safe’ unit; this week, we considered what is safe to go onto our bodies. We thought about what we put on our bodies at different times e.g. when we play outside (coat, scarf, hat etc.);if we hurt ourselves when playing (plaster, cream); at night time (pyjamas, slippers). We considered which things are ok, which things are not so good and why. For example, we discussed the fact that we try to keep mud and paint off of our bodies and we certainly don’t want these things in our eyes or in our mouths as this could make us poorly. It is therefore very important that we wash our hands. Next, Lydia volunteered to lie on our large sheet of paper whilst we drew around her to create an outline of a person. After labelling the body, we looked at some pictures of things that might go on our bodies. We thought about how these things can help to keep us safe and also the part that they need to play in making sure this happens (e.g. washing with soap to keep safe from germs, putting on warm clothes to keep safe from cold weather).
We have also had another No Outsiders lesson this week, which focused on the story ‘Blue Chameleon’ by Emily Gravett. This story helped us to celebrate that everyone is different in our class and we can make friends with anyone. We can absolutely be friends with someone who is different from us.
Our RE focus for this term shall be stories that Jesus heard and told. On Monday, we began our first lesson by discussing our favourite stories. We wondered whether Jesus listened to stories. Why did he not hear the stories of Elmer, The Gruffalo or The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Which stories did he listen to? Did he have beautifully illustrated books or a Yoto player? We looked in the Bible, noticing all of the pages before the story of the birth of Jesus. This is the Old Testament which is comprised of many stories that Jesus heard when he was young. We then listened to the story of Daniel in the lions’ den. After reading this story, we used drama to retell the events of the story. We thought that Daniel was incredibly brave; his faith in God helped him to feel brave as he trusted that God would always protect him. We thought that Christians could learn that God is always with us and He protects us. The story teaches that God has a plan and we can trust God. In the provision, children made collage lion faces to remind them of Daniel’s bravery and faith, drawing a picture on the back of a time when they have felt brave.
Wow, what a lot of learning we have enjoyed this week! Reception, you really are such superstars and such a joy to teach. I wish you all a wonderful weekend.
Miss Witham
