Reception w/b 26th February
Date: 2nd Mar 2024 @ 5:23pm
A warm welcome back! It has been an exciting first week of Spring 2 for Reception and we trust that you have all enjoyed a lovely half term.
We ‘hit the ground running’ in our phonics groups after last half term’s super reading assessments; we have all been focusing on either consolidating or introducing Set 2 sounds. We are all now experts at writing words in our phonics sessions and are now beginning to enjoy writing daily sentences in our phonics sessions, applying our knowledge of finger spaces, full stops and capital letters. What super writers we have in Reception! Mrs McAree, Miss Jones and I have also been thoroughly impressed during guided reading sessions as the children read their first text for their new reading level. Whilst the new text may have seemed more challenging on Monday, by Thursday morning the children were reading with such confidence and fluency, reaping the benefits of a longer reading cycle. We were also amazed by the comprehension skills that we have observed. Superstars!
In maths, our focus number song (5 Little Ducks) inspired us as we explored ‘taking away’ and recording subtraction number sentences. We began by exploring subtracting 1 as we sang the song e.g. 5 little ducks went swimming but only 4 came back: 5 – 1 = 4. We explored the subtraction sign and realised that the number sentence can be written exactly as we say the number story: 5 take away 1 is equal to 4. We also learnt that, as well as ‘take away’, we can also say ‘subtract’. We shall explore more mathematical language relating to subtraction over the coming weeks. We then progressed to taking away groups of ducks, rather than just one at a time. We practised instantly seeing (subitising) how many ducks remained, using our number bond knowledge to say how many had been taken away. We have then practised writing related number sentences e.g. 6 – 2 = 4. This week of learning has also been a super opportunity to consolidate our understanding of the composition of numbers as we have investigated the numbers within 7 and part-whole relations (e.g. 7 is made of 5 and 2, 3 and 4, 6 and 1, 0 and 7…).
On Monday morning, we discovered a small hole near to a tree on our school grounds. We were brimming with ideas about this hole, wondering…How did it get here? Is it dangerous? Could something be down the hole? What kind of creatures live down holes? Will it get any bigger? The children had so many wonderful predictions to share with well-explained reasons. They then enthusiastically recorded their predictions, writing the stem sentence ‘I think it is a…’. During Tuesday’s snack and chat time, we looked at some illustrations of animals/creatures living underground and enjoyed talking about these with our friends. In our literacy lesson, we then met ‘Dan’, who entered our classroom looking ever so upset. Through questioning, we discovered that Dan had lost his red ball. He showed us a story written all about him, entitled ‘The Something’. He read up to page 3, where the ball was lost, but became simply too upset to read on! Dan needed our help, asking us to write to his friends and relatives to emphasise just how upset he was so that they would help him to retrieve his ball. The children suggested the sentence ‘Dan feels sad.’, but Dan felt that ‘sad’ was simply not a strong enough word to describe how he was feeling. We therefore explored language including: miserable, distraught, heartbroken, glum, unhappy, frustrated, worried and used this language in our sentences. On Wednesday, we were, at last, able to read the whole story, ‘The Something’ by Rebecca Cobb. We then explored some of the vocabulary from the text (including underneath, peered, doorway, disappeared, guarding), clarifying the meaning of each word, orally putting these words into sentences, and matching them to images. Finally, we labelled the creatures on the front cover of the story. Throughout the week, it has been wonderful to listen to children using this new language within other contexts, including in the provision! Our new story has also inspired lots of superb learning in the provision, including: making models of animals at the playdough station; painting woodland scenes; using construction materials and the junk modelling station to create inventions to help Dan to retrieve his ball.
In Spanish, Mrs McAree launched our new unit: ‘Colours and Numbers’. This week, we were introduced to five colours: rojo = red; amarillo = yellow; azul = blue; verde = green; gris = grey. Throughout the week, we have then said colours in Spanish whilst signing in Makaton, to help us to remember both the Spanish colour names and Makaton colour signs.
In Forest School, we hunted for minibeasts. Mr Simmons provided us with some tips for finding minibeast habitats, talking to us about common locations and why. We then found several minibeasts, perhaps feeling most excited about the worms and ladybirds!
Excitingly, our PE lesson had a dinosaur theme! In our warm up, when we heard ‘dinosaurs’, we moved around like our favourite dinosaurs; when we heard ‘lava’, we imagined that the floor was hot and we were jumping over lava; when we heard ‘T-Rex’, we froze (perhaps challenging ourselves to balance on one leg) whilst Miss Witham the T-Rex moved around, checking that everybody was very still! We then worked in partners for the remainder of the lesson through three different activities. The first activity was entitled ‘Caves’: one partner stood with their legs apart to make a cave, whilst the other partner was trying to kick the ball into the cave, using the inside of their foot. We knew that we could change the challenge level by changing the size of the ‘cave’ and the distance between the partners. Our second activity was entitled ‘Volcanoes’: we used a foam brick as a ‘volcano’ positioned in between each pair and our aim was to try and kick the volcano over, working on our aiming skills. Finally, we set two ‘volcanoes’ up with one partner being the ‘goalkeeper’ in between the bricks and the other partner attempting to knock one of the bricks down. We even tried to trick the goalkeeper, looking at one brick whilst aiming for the other! Our goalkeepers were excellent at moving quickly between the two bricks. Reception were simply amazing during this lesson and we all had lots of fun!
On Friday morning, we started the morning with a lovely reading for pleasure session. We simply loved sharing our favourite stories with our friends in Reception, as well as some of the older children. We enjoy sharing and promoting our genuine love of reading here at Brereton!
Our music session focused on the songs that we shall share with you in next week’s Mothering Sunday service at St Oswald’s Church…we shall keep these a secret for now!
We really have ‘hit the ground running’ this week; our Reception class are simply amazing! Another wonderful week beckons, with highlights including World Book Day and Mothering Sunday. We shall look forward to welcoming many of you to our Reception and Key Stage One Mothering Sunday service which shall take place in St Oswald’s Church, next Friday at 10am. More details about both World Book Day and Mothering Sunday can be found in recent newsletters and emails.
I that hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend, and we shall look forward to seeing you all next week.
Miss Witham
