Reception have had another excellent week of learning this week. We have been hit with the cold, but that hasn’t stopped us.

Phonics:

The children have continued to practise Set 1 sounds- especially the trickier sounds, special friends. We practise writing our sounds, and also review other sounds in the lesson. Children are becoming more confident to fred talk green words, spotting if they have any special friends in them first. We then apply our reading skills to read alien words! These are nonsense words, but it means we get to show off our fred talking skills. We also continue to practise reading red words. These are words which cannot be fred talked- You Can’t Fred a Red!! We need to be able to recognise these words by sight eg I and the.

 Miss Gorham’s RWI group are continuing to learn Set 2 sounds. This week they have learned:

igh (igh – fly high) like in: night, light, bright

ow (ow – blow the snow) like in: show, glow, throw

If your child is in Miss Gorham’s group and would like to use a page in their sounds books for each of those sounds, that would be great!

 

Maths:

This week in maths, we have been learning about addition. We started the week by creating addition stories using pictures. For example

First, there were 6 cows in a field. Then, 2 more cows came to join them. There are now 8 cows altogether.

This introduced the concept of combining 2 groups together, using some addition vocabulary. Children could see that when we are adding, our answer was getting bigger. We moved on to using numicon pieces to add numbers together, and introduced the + and = symbols to explore what calculations look like.

After this, we added using pictures, which we had to then relate into a calculation using the + and = symbols. By the end of the week, we were able to read a calculation, show the 2 groups and add them altogether.

We have been amazed at how well the children have done this week with addition, and the children have shown some great independent addition during busy times too.

Next week our learning will move on to subtraction.

Topic:

 This week we started our new book Eliot Midnight Superhero. This is a story about an ordinary boy by day, who becomes a superhero at night. Different characters such as the Queen, the Mayor and the coast guard, call Eliot for his help. Their problems range from wild lions escaping the zoo and rampaging the streets, to the crown jewels being stolen. As a class, we thought of our own midnight superhero adventures Eliot could go on. We then had to choose an idea to create a storyboard. Team Aqua’s class idea was that David Attenborough called for Eliot’s help, as he was worried there was too much plastic in our oceans. Luckily, Eliot had invented a Super Sea Plastic Hoover! Once we had created a storyboard of our ideas, we acted it out with our talk partners. We had to discuss our storyboard ideas, so our partner knew the adventure, and decided who would play which part. We then used our ideas to create a cape for Eliot to wear.

We have been working hard to develop children’s communication skills, one way is through the use of talk partners on the carpet. We encourage active listening and taking turns in conversations. This is something we will be focussing on for the rest of the year, to become the best talk partners we can be.

 Important messages-

• Monday 31^st is non-school uniform for Red Romans for winning the house point competition! Well done!
• On Friday 4th February, we will be having our annual Number Day. Children are welcome to come dressed in anything number related!
• Please let your child’s class teacher know if you need any more home WOW moments.
• On Friday 11th February, children can come 'dressed to express'.
• At the end of this term, children in Reception will be learning about Lunar New Year. On Wednesday 9^th February, the children will have the opportunity to try some Chinese food. We are asking for a contribution of £1.75 per child to cover the cost of this. We are aware of allergies, but if you need to discuss anything further, please speak to your child's class teacher.

 

Many thanks for all of your support, from all of the EYFS Team!