Author: Mrs Wood

Dinosaur eggs have been found in the playground!

 

 

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” (John Ruskin)

   

Phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words, both tricky and decodable, is the ultimate goal!  We’ve begun Phase 3 of our 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 and float
• practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC (consonant – vowel – consonant) 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.

The following phonemes will be taught during Phase 3.

1. v, w
2. x, y, z, zz, qu
3. sh, ch, th, ng
4. ai, ee, igh, oa
5. oo, oo, or, ar
6. er, oi, ir, ur
7. air, ear, ure

 

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

The number of tricky words is growing.  This term we will learn: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all.

How you can help at home

• Sing an alphabet song together.
• Play ‘I spy’, using letter names as well as sounds.
• Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some of the two grapheme (letter) combinations:

r-ai-n = rain blending for reading | rain = r-ai-n – segmenting for spelling

b-oa-t = boat blending for reading | boat = b-oa-t – segmenting for spelling

h-ur-t = hurt blending for reading | hurt = h-ur-t – segmenting for spelling

• Praise your child for trying out words.
• Set a timer; call out one word at a time and get your child to spell it on a magic board or a small whiteboard, against the timer – remember, they can use magnetic letters.
• Play ‘Pairs’, turning over two words at a time trying to find a matching pair – this is especially helpful with the tricky words: the the, to to no no, go go.  Don’t worry if they get some wrong! These are hard to remember – they need plenty of practice.

 

We have reached the end of the children’s first, very busy, exciting term at Moortown Primary School!  All of the children are settled and happy and are making excellent progress in all areas of their learning and development.

These are just some of the ways the children have impressed us this term:

• Isaac, Manpreet, Noorpreet and Sachpreet are blending and reading brilliantly
• Dylan and Isaiah have been keen to learn by always listening and trying
• Kai, Pia, Grace and Gabby have made excellent choices all term and shown they know how to learn
• Filip has impressed us by overcoming his shyness to communicate more confidently with children and adults
• Ishaan, Farai, Josh and Ismail have been constructing amazing buildings and models
• Nicky and Lori have taught us a lot about trucks
• Thomas, Albert and Ethan have shown great imagination in their play and story-telling
• Lewis and Phoebe have shown amazing creativity with their pattern-making and drawings
• Alex and Ripley have wowed us with their maths
• Ben, Martha, Humairah and Mia have been great members of the class by being kind and helpful to adults and other children
• Karam has been polite and caring
• Theo has made us laugh with his great sense of humour.

    

We hope all the children are back to full strength and ready to enjoy the last week of term and the Christmas party.

Have a great break and see you next year!

 

There was great excitement this week when our new building blocks arrived. We definitely have some budding engineers in our class! Take a look at some of the fantastic construction that went on.

Block play is beneficial in Reception for a variety of reasons including:

• exploring mathematical concepts such as shape, size, length, weight and symmetry.
• investigating science concepts, including gravity, balance, stability and cause and effect.
• language and vocabulary are increased.
• children’s confidence in decision making is enhanced.
• coordination develops so eyes and hands and small and large muscles work together. This prepares children for success in reading and writing.

And of course, it’s fun!

   

The children spend a lot of time learning outside in Reception.

The following information about the importance of being outside is taken from the revised curriculum for the Foundation Stage:

• Being outdoors has a positive impact on children’s sense of well-being and this has an impact on all aspects of children’s development.
• Being outdoors offers opportunities for doing things differently and on a different scale than when learning indoors.
• It gives children first hand contact with weather, seasons and the natural world.
• Outdoor environments offer children freedom to explore, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant.

Look at some of the things we have been doing outside.

       

We’ll be outside all winter, so please ensure your child has suitable clothing. Wellington boots are a good idea!

The children are learning their letters and sounds quickly. They are beginning to blend them together to read and segment  to spell.

This week we will be introducing ‘tricky words’.

These are everyday words that have tricky spellings and can’t be read by blending. Imagine trying to read the word said or does by blending each letter! These words just have to be learned by sight and flashcard-type games are a good way to practise these. We will be sending these tricky words home to learn.

Remember to say the sounds correctly

This is really important when you are helping your child to learn their letter sounds. Just remember not to add an uh to the end of the consonant sounds – so say mmm not muh, lll not luh, etc.

Go to www.oxfordowl.co.uk to see videos of all the sounds being pronounced. This website also contains games and ideas to help your child with their reading and free eBooks to download.

We are very proud to have won the cup this week.

All the staff in school give Cool Class Tokens to children for such things as manners, behaviour and effort. These tokens are collected and counted at the end of  each week. The class with the most tokens wins the cup which is awarded in our Good Work Assembly on Friday.

In Reception we are continuing to learn letters and sounds. As they learn each letter, the children will be shown how to write the ‘grapheme’ (a way of writing down a sound or phoneme; graphemes can be made up of one letter like ‘p’ and ‘s’, two letters like ‘sh’ and ‘th’, three letters like ‘tch’ in a word like ‘catch’ or four letters like ‘ough’ in ‘dough’ or ‘cough’, where the same grapheme is used to represent two different sounds). You can download a guide to how we form our letters in the Help Your Child section on this website.

Remember that children need lots of practice with different activities to develop the muscles necessary for writing. When the muscles of the hand are weak, or when the fingers have not learnt to work together well, the child often compensates by using a poor or faulty pencil grip.

Here are some fun things to try at home to help your child develop these essential muscles:

Using an egg box, have your child hold 6-10 beans in their hand, and place them into the container one by one.  Write a number inside each hole and ask your child to add the correct number of beans.  This is also a great way to reinforce the concept of number. You could also have a race to see who can put five beans into each hole in the fastest time! The important thing is to do it one bean at a time.

Give your child a few coins to hold and ask them to push them one at a time through the slot in a money box. Make sure the coins are placed with the tips of the fingers, not the sides of the fingers.

Using  Play Dough is great exercise for the fingers – try squashing, rolling, pounding and moulding with the hands, without using any cutters or other traditional Play Dough toys.

Other activities may include cutting with scissors, doing up buttons, tearing paper and picking up the pieces. Let your child help with the washing up and wring out the dishcloth!