Hello Class 1!

It was lovely to see so many of you over zoom last week. Thank you so much for your time.

Welcome to week 3 of Term 2. In week 2 children were very busy in class. They have learnt about Diwali, tried Dandiya dancing taking inspiration from a video of children dancing with sticks, and made paper Diva Lamps. Diwali is the 17th November. They have continued exploring the Hare and the Tortoise story. Children have used their perseverance (stickability) skills to make paper tortoises. The children are really enjoying school. Here are photos of them making their tortoises and playing in the home corner.

In week three we will be learning about a new ELLI animal – the cat. The story is Nothing and the author is Mick Inkpen. Children will be supported to explore curiosity and raise lots of questions. We will be learning new Nativity songs too. Please see below for more details of the week ahead.

Notices

Parents evenings 

It was really lovely to be able to talk to everyone at our Parents evenings last week. Thank you for your contributions. Amazingly the online system worked really well. If you have any other questions remember that we can be contacted on our class email addresses.

Friendship week

This week is our Friendship week and we will be thinking about how we can be good friends. On Monday we are taking part in odd sock day . Please  send your child to school in odd socks , the odder the better!

Evidence me 

Thank you to everyone who sent us observations of pattern making last week. It was wonderful to see so many different ideas. All your observations will be added to your childs Learning Profile ready for the next installment in February.

This weeks observation challenge is again linked to our Maths learning.  Later this week we will be learning about 3D shapes (cubes, cuboids, cylinders, spheres, prisms and pyramids). Please send us observations of your child spotting these shapes in the home or outside environment .

Remember that we would also love to have observations of WOW moments and Celebrations that we will share with the class.

Star of the Week 

This week the Reception children were involved in Celebration Assembly for the first time.

In Reception we choose our Stars of the Week by randomly taking a name out of a jar. The rest of the class (and the teachers) then think of all the nice things that we can say about that child and it is written on their Star of the Week certificate. Everyone will get a turn but this obviously takes a very long time!

Currently Mrs Fricker then holds a small very socially distanced assembly with the children chosen from each class. This is recorded and a link will be sent to the families of the children involved. 

Our Stars this week were:

Class 1 – Harry

Class 2 – James

Class 3 – James

This weeks learning

The full plans can be found here for anyone quarantining at home:

PSHE

This week is our whole school Friendship Week. We will be continuing our usual day-to-day emphasis on being kind, sharing and taking turns as well as our Jigsaw lesson on Making Friends as part of our Term 5 Celebrating Difference theme.

We will be doing one of the “Five to thrive” activities each day (Connect/ Take notice/ Get active/ Be curious/ Give) for our daily wellbeing input.

Communication and Language

This week we will be reading the story ‘Nothing’ by Mick Inkpen and using it to introduce the Elli animal ‘Curious Cat’. We will be focusing on asking relevant questions to find out new information. For example when talking about our ‘All about me’ photos or finding out about cats.

If you have a pet cat you could email us a photo and your child can tell the class all about him/her and everyone else can ask lots of questions!

We will continue to play games to develop our speaking and listening skills. Some children will do this in smaller groups.

We will also be devoting time to supporting the children in play tin order to extend their ideas and develop speaking and listening skills.

Physical

In our P.E lessons will explore static balances. We will also continue our Write dance, engaging with lots of gross  motor movements.

Literacy

This week we will use the story ‘Nothing’ by Mike Inkpen  to talk about the Elli cat and how it can help us to develop ‘curiosity.’

Phonics:

This week we will be recapping all the phonemes that we learnt so far and learning the new phonemes f (ff), l (ll) and ss 

We will use these phonemes to blend (read) and segment (spell) CVC words 

Tricky words:

We will also be learning the ‘Tricky’ words he and she that cannot be blended but need to be learnt by sight.

Reading:

We will be small group reading with the children this week and allocating them a home reading book from our online reading scheme. Can your child talk about what has happened in the story? Or think about what might happen next? 

Mathematics

This week we will be continuing to think about change within 5 focusing on counting back, finding 1 less and taking away. We will be recording this in different ways.

We will also be exploring 3D shapes. Using mathematical language to describe their properties, naming them and looking for them in the environment. (cube, cuboid, cylinder, pyramid, prism, sphere )

Our Observation challenge this week is for your child to spot some of the 3D shapes that we are learning about in the environment.

Understanding the World 

In People and Communities  we will continue to learn about the friends in our class through the All About Me photo’s. We will use CBEEBIES to explore Diwali further.

In the World we will be sharing what we know about cats.

In Technology we will continue to model exploring skills and uses through PurpleMash and Simple City.

RE

We will be learning about another festival to do with light – the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah, as we continue discussing special occasions celebrated by people of different faiths.

Expressive Arts

This week we will be making cats for our Elli displays. In music we will continue learning Nativity songs.