Welcome back to term 2! After a very long and busy first term we hope that everyone has had a lovely break and a good rest ready for an exciting term ahead! The children settled so well last term, we are looking forward to welcoming everyone back and settling into the now familiar school routines.
This term our topic work continues to use stories about the Elli animals as starting points to thinking about how we learn. The first animal is the tortoise who teaches us to have ‘stickability.’ This is the ability to keep on trying when things are hard, a skill that we all need to have!
Notices
Home reading
During the last week of term 1 we assessed each child’s phonics skills and enjoyed reading their first reading book with them. Following this we allocated everyone a book(s) on our online reading scheme ’ActiveLearn’ which uses the same books.
Each child was given a small purple reading log book and inside there was a note with details of how to log in and your child’s individual username and password.
We can see that so far only a few of you have logged on and read the books. Please try to do this asap and let us know if there is a problem by emailing our class email.
Your child should be able to blend the words in these first books quite easily, please re read the same book daily so your child begins to develop confidence and read without needing to blend every word.
From now on we will be assessing phonic skills and reading with your child every week, either individually or in a small group. We will then be able to allocate new books to your child to support their progress.
Evidence Me – Online Learning Profile
There are still a few families who have not confirmed their acceptance of the Evidence me Learning Profile contact email. If you need this resending or wish to change your email address please contact your class teacher via the class email.
We will be emailing the Learning Profiles to you at the end of this week so that you can look at them with your child before Parents Evenings next week.
Parents Evenings
These will take place on Tuesday 10th and `Thursday 12th November. They will be held online using the school parents evening booking system. You should have received information about how to book your slot. Please let us know if you have any problem doing this.
This weeks learning
The full plans can be found here for anyone quarantining at home
PSHE
Elli animals – This week we will be using the story ‘The hare and the Tortoise’ to learn about the tortoise and how it helps us to have stickability.
This term the Jigsaw PSED focus for the whole school is ‘Celebrating Difference’ This links very well with sharing our All about me photographs. This week we will be thinking about things that we are good at and learning that we are all good at different things.
Communication and Language
This week we will continue playing word games to develop our speaking and listening skills and support our phonics learning. We will read the story ‘The `Hare and the Tortoise’ by Brian Wildsmith and learn the meaning of any new vocabulary.
Physical
In class we will continue to focus on developing the children’s fine motor and pencil skills by developing the muscles in their hands and fingers through finger rhymes, Write Dance and the provision of activities such as lego, meccano, threading, playdough and tracing patterns.
We will practising the letter formation of the phonemes that we are learning: o e u and writing our names.
( see letter formation sheet here for correct formation)
In our PE lessons we will be working with a partner and taking turns. We will be learning to jump safely bending our knees when we jump and when we land.
Literacy
This week we will be using the story ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ by Brian Wildsmith to talk about the Elli tortoise and how it can help us to develop’ stickability.’
Listen to the story here: The Hare and the Tortoise
Phonics:
This week we will be recapping all the phonemes that we learnt last term s a t p I n m d g c,k,ck and learning the new phonemes o e u
We will use these phonemes to blend (read) and segment (spell) CVC words
Tricky words:
We will also be learning the ‘Tricky’ words the and to that cannot be blended but need to be learnt by sight.
Reading:
We will be reading individually with each child and allocating them a home reading book from our online reading scheme.
Please read the information about home reading above.
Mathematics
This week we will continue learning about the numbers 1 – 5 representing them in different ways and using songs and rhymes to find one more and one less within 5.
We will practise using tens frames and the ‘Part part whole ‘ recording format to show how the numbers can be partioned in different ways.
The children will then record a spoken number story in their own chosen way.
Understanding the World
People and communities:
Ongoing – Thank you to everyone that has already sent us ‘All about Me’ photos. If you have not done this yet it is not too late.
We will also be thinking about how we celebrate Bonfire Night.
The World:
We will be using books and the internet to find out some facts about tortoises.
Technology
We will be using iPads to introduce Todo maths and 2 new mathematics apps: bond builder and matching pairs. We will introduce the learning Resource Purple Mask on the computer.
RE
This terms module is ‘All about me’ which links to our PSED work on ‘Celebrating Difference.’ We will continue to share our ‘All about me’ photos and will be thinking about whether we feel happy or sad at different times.
Expressive Arts
This week we will be uing our stickability to make collage tortoises for our Elli displays. We will be singing number rhymes (outside) and using Write dance to practise our mark making skills.