We have finished the first full week of term 3, and the children have come back ready and eager to learn. 

Phonics

This week in RWI most groups have been practising set 1 sounds, with a focus on the special friends (2 letters which make 1 sound). These can be trickier to identify in words when reading, so we practise looking for special friends, fred talking then saying the word. Some children have begun to learn set 2 sounds. They will be learning a couple a week, whilst reviewing set 1 sounds inbetween. All set 2 sounds are special friends and have a rhyme to help us differentiate between sounds eg ay- ay may I play?

The children are practising reading in every session. We talk to the children about using the strategy of fred talking to help decode words, but once we have seen a word lots of times, we might be able to read without fred talk. The stepping stone to this is fred talking in our heads- fred in your head! This will also help with our fluency. We take this at the pace of the children’s understanding, and ensure we have lots of opportunities for practise.

Maths

For maths this week we have been practising counting out from a larger group. We read numerals, then counted out that number from a larger group. We used numicon and threading, counted conkers onto numbers on trees and counted marbles into the holes of numcion.

We are then moved on to estimating. We teach this as a clever guess. We show the children what 5 looks like, then encourage them to estimate a different amount.  We encourage children to use reasoning to help them estimate- eg there may be more than the first pile, so it won’t be a number less than 5. It is important not to focus on getting the answer ‘right’, as long as their estimation was reasonable. We then check by counting.

Next week we will be learning about the composition of numbers to 5.

Topic

In topic, we are continuing to learn about Nelson Mandela. We created art in the style of pointillism, using cotton buds and paint to create Nelson Mandela art. We explored how to be successful when creating art in this style, including making sure we use lots of little dots, and putting them close together. The children chose the colours they used to create their art from realistic, colours of the African flag or abstract colours. Later in the week we listened to the song Free Nelson Mandela and discussed how it made us feel and why. Although the song is about something serious and sad, it is upbeat and catchy. It makes you want to move! We moved to the music in different ways, listening to part of the song and moving in a happy way, then in a sad way. After listening to the words, we gave actions to the chorus of the song, and danced as a class.

In music, we explored African instruments, creating music with djembe and dundun drums. We discussed the sounds made and created different rhythms as a class.

Next week we will start our new Superheroes topic.  

Important Dates:

• Monday 16^th January – children to come in to school dressed in their Superhero costumes (please see Love to Learn task for more details).

• Thursday 9^th February – children will be tasting Chinese food. Please refer to the message sent out this week regarding paying for this. If you have any questions regarding this, please speak to your child’s class teacher. Many thanks!

Number Day

Number Day is back on Friday 3^rd February. The children are invited to dress in number themed clothing or as a Maths Superhero for a voluntary donation for the NSPCC charity. The children will undertake a range of creative maths challenges throughout the day. In addition, parents are invited to join their child for a problem-solving activity, in their classroom, at 2:30pm until the end of the day.

Have a fantastic weekend

From all of the EYFS team