Author: Mrs Wood

Parental partnership

Please continue to let us know what your child’s current interests are and those moments that make you proud.

This information really helps us to assess your child and lets us know what they are interested in.

For instance, you have told us which children have been practising their writing at home, learning to fasten their coats and reading to their younger brothers and sisters.

Thank you!

[email protected]

 

Phonics

We have begun phase 3 of the ‘Letters and Sounds’ phonics programme.

The purpose of this phase is to:

  • teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat
  • practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light
  • learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly
  • read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them
  • read and write words in phrases and sentences

Here are some examples of words your children will be reading: tail, week, right, soap, food, park, burn, cord, town, soil

Tricky words
During phase 3 the children will learn more ‘tricky words’: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, said.

In addition, during this phase children will be expected to begin to write sentences independently.

Our next phonics mornings will be held in February.

Happy holidays!

We have reached the last week of the children’s first term at Moortown. What a busy term it has been! The children have settled really well and it has been great to get to know them and see them learn and grow in confidence.

We hope you have a great Christmas and Happy New Year!

  

Charities

This week, we focus on identity, diversity and community in our Who do you think you are? themed week.  As part of this week, children will think about our school charity.  Currently, we support Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Leeds Mind.  A previous School Council selected these because they wanted to help people, support a mental health charity and wanted to help local and regional charities.  They were chosen because pupils passed on to School Councillors very clear and strong arguments.

We’ve helped these charities for two years now, so it’s time for a change. We need you to have a discussion at home about which charity would be best for us to support. We will now support one charity for a year.  Each class will then discuss this and then the councillors will bring the views and ideas together to decide on the charities.

Once your child has decided on a charity, make sure they have clear, powerful reasons to support their views.

You might want to discuss whether we support…

  • a local charity
  • a children’s charity
  • a charity which helps a vulnerable group in our community
Other things to talk about could include…
  • should we ensure the new charities are very different to the current ones or previous ones?
  • should we need to have charities at all?
  • if your child was to set up a new charity, what would (s)he choose, and (as always) why?

Marvellous maths

Thank you for attending the Early Years Maths workshop last week.

Here are the key points from the workshop:

  • It’s important to be positive about maths
  • Don’t tell your child you’re not good at maths
  • Everyone can be good at maths
  • Being numerate is arguably more important than being literate
  • Your support and encouragement is vital to your child’s success
  • Everyone can learn maths to the highest level
  • Mistakes are valuable
  • Questions are really useful
  • Maths is about creativity and making sense
  • Maths is about connections and communicating
  • Maths is about learning, not performing
  • Depth is more important than speed

There are 4 key aspects to counting:

  1. Number names: There are many words to learn, they need to be in the right order and you need to be able to say them in sequence forwards and backwards.
  2. One number for each item: Children need to be able to match one number name to each item in turn, making sure they don’t miss any out or count any twice.
  3. Cardinality: Children need to know that the last number in the count gives you the answer to the question, ‘How many are there?’
  4. Conservation: Children need to learn that the number of items in a group remains the same even if we rearrange them or count them in a different order.

Support your child at home:

  • Lots of counting as part of everyday life- both rhymes and counting objects
  • Sorting objects and making patterns
  • Spotting numbers and using the language of number
  • Playing with construction toys (girls and boys)
  • Playing simple board games
  • Baking
  • Solve problems; work out how many altogether, how many more…
  • Watch Numberblocks on CBeebies
  • Have fun!