Author: Mrs Wood

 

 

 

 

 

We had a fantastic day hunting for the Gruffalo and his friends at Nell Bank. All the children were enthusiastic and engaged in the activities, despite the odd shower!

 

 

Explaining to young children what a sentence is can be difficult. Through reading, children quickly learn that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. They are told that a sentence makes sense on its own and is complete; that it makes sense in some way such as consisting of an idea.  Helping children to recognise when they have written a sentence is more difficult.

How you can help at home:

• When reading with your child, point out the sentences and punctuation in the book
• Encourage your child to think of the whole sentence (an idea) and say it aloud before they begin to write
• Get them into the habit of rereading and checking their writing
• Read a sentence aloud and ask your child to count the words
• Model speaking in sentences and give your child lots of opportunity to construct sentences orally

Congratulations to Evie and Poppy who were elected as the school councillors for Reception Class.

Well done to all the other candidates as well. We were really impressed with how confidently and clearly everyone spoke.

This week in Maths, children will be learning about multiplication and counting in 2s.

Multiplication is often seen as repeat addition, but it differs from addition in that the sets of objects you are totalling are made up of the same number of items. In Reception, children’s experience of multiplication as counting equal groups is done through pairing and counting feet, eyes, socks, gloves and pairs of shoes!

Counting two objects as one unit is an important multiplication skill.

How you can help at home

Give your child lots of practical experiences. Let your child help to put socks in pairs and count how many there are.

It is important that children also see multiplication as an arrangement of rows and columns. Examples of this around the home include

• egg boxes
• egg and bun trays
• squares in a large chocolate bar
• some of the buttons on most remote controls

We are reaching the end of the children’s first term in Reception.  It has been a delight to see how the children have changed and developed over the last few months.

Well done Nayaab, Enas, Aisha and Kirsten for  their increased confidence and to Zara for finally gaining the confidence to speak to adults.

Well done, Daniel, for always making good choices.

Jacob, Ben, Zakariya and Musa have  improved their learning behaviour and are listening more attentively on the carpet.

William and Charlie have kept us amused with their great sense of humour and Rabiya, Kismat, Gurnoor and Tasha have shown concern and care for their friends.

We are all impressed with Sam’s perseverance in holding his pencil to write his name and Ahmed’s speed in learning and using English.

Well done to Byron, Alexander and Evie for great learning in maths and Eve, and to Alexandra, Eliza, Eleni and Poppy for their progress in reading.

Everyone has been impressed with Arundeep and Zidaan for their great manners and Maggie and Finlay for their creativity and model making.

Have a great holiday and happy new year from everyone in Reception!

Reception children are writing everywhere!

 

The children are progressing quickly with their phonics learning and reading. Alongside blending to read, the children also need to segment words to spell. Children often find this harder and lack confidence in their ability to write.

In Reception, the children take part in shared writing activities where they can ‘have a go’ on whiteboards with the support of adults. We then encourage independent writing in all the areas of provision. This includes writing a label for their model, writing a shopping list in the role-play shop or writing a letter to a friend. We value all the children’s attempts at writing and model writing (and making mistakes) to them.

You can help at home by:

• Providing plenty of different types of pens and pencils and encouraging your child to use a correct grip
• Encouraging them to use the school’s handwriting style and to use lower case letters; we teach that a capital letter is required for the first letter in a name and at the beginning of a sentence
• Spelling is harder than reading words – praise, don’t criticise. Little whiteboards and pens are a good way for children to try out spellings and practise their handwriting
• Remember that at this stage children’s phonetic attempts are valued. They will learn the correct spellings of words later.  We want the children to become confident writers by ‘having a go’ and using their phonetic knowledge independently.
• To be able to write, children need to be well co-ordinated through their whole body, not just their hands and fingers. Games that help co-ordination include throwing balls at a target, under-arm and over-arm, and bouncing balls – also skipping on the spot, throwing a Frisbee, picking up pebbles from the beach and throwing them into the sea.

Have fun!

 

 

Reception are loving their topic on arachnids. They even made their own web!

 

We have begun phase 2 of our phonics programme, ‘Letters and Sounds’.

In this phase children will continue practising what they have learned from phase 1, including ‘sound-talk’. They will also be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, ll as in b-e-ll. We use Jolly Phonics actions to help children remember these phonemes. Each week the children will bring a set of letters home to learn. Please practise these every day and keep them in their book bag for us to add to.

Your child will be taught how to pronounce the phonemes correctly to make blending easier.

Sounds should be sustained where possible (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be reduced as far as possible (e.g. try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’).

VC and CVC words

C and V are abbreviations for ‘consonant’ and ‘vowel’. VC words are words consisting of a vowel then a consonant (e.g. am, at, it) and CVC words are words consisting of a consonant then a vowel then a consonant (e.g. cat, rug, sun). Words such as tick and bell also count as CVC words – although they have four letters, they have only three sounds. For example, in the word bell, b = consonant, e = vowel, ll = consonant.

Now the children will be seeing letters and words, as well as hearing them. They will be shown how to make whole words by pushing magnetic or wooden letters together to form little words, reading words and breaking up words into individual sounds, which will help their spelling. These will be simple words made up of two phonemes, for example, am, at, it, or three phonemes, for example, cat, rug, sun, tick, bell.

How you can help at home:

Magnetic letters

Remember to make it fun!

 

We are busy learning to identify alliteration and rhyme which will pave the way for the systematic learning of phonics.

The children are taking part in lots of activities where they listen attentively to sounds around them, such as sounds in the environment and to sounds in spoken language. Singing a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and reading books to and with the children helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.

We are also learning to ‘sound talk’. The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word: d-o-g = dog. This merging together is called blending and is a vital skill for reading.

Children will also learn to do this the other way around: cat = c-a-t. The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds (phonemes) in order, all through the word. This is called segmenting and is a vital skill for spelling.

This is all oral (spoken). Your child will not be expected to match the letter to the sound at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds.

Ways you can support your child at home:

Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.