Dance at Allerton Grange
Recently, we went to Allerton Grange to hone our dancing skills. The session was led by a group of pupils from Allerton Grange who taught us a dance to a song from the Lion King. Check out our lion faces…
Talk time homework
The discussion we had about the talk time homework this week was fantastic. The children had loads of really interesting things to talk about and to show. Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated!
Topic baking
Last week, children baked and then decorated their own house-shaped biscuits. The children first designed their houses on the new laptops in The Space and then made the biscuits. The following day, they decorated their biscuits and used their design as a guide.
We also made a big gingerbread house which we gave as a gift to our visitors from Finland!
Phonics
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’.
Say: ‘A tall tin of tomatoes!’ ‘Tommy, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A lovely little lemon!’ This is called alliteration. Use names, for example, ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Milo makes music’, ‘Naheema’s nose’.
Teach them ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’ and other tongue twisters.
Find real objects around your home that have three phonemes (sounds) and practise ‘sound talk’. First, just let them listen, then see if they will join in.
- ‘I spy a p-e-g – peg.’
- ‘I spy a c-u-p – cup.’
- ‘Where’s your other s-o-ck – sock?’
- ‘Simon says – put your hands on your h-ea-d.’
- ‘Simon says – touch your ch-i-n.’
- ‘Simon says – pick up your b-a-g.
Have fun!
Let’s all go shopping!
Today, Year 2 were all rich and went on a big sweet shop in our maths lesson. We had to find out how much the items on our shopping list were and then find the correct coins we needed to be able to pay for them. We really enjoyed using the coins (but were very disappointed when we realised they were only plastic).
After talking as a class, we decided it would be really good practice to try our new skills out with real money when going to the shops. Why not ask us to find out how much something is and let us see if we can pick out the coins we need to pay for it?
Outdoor learning!
The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum emphasises the importance of the outdoor environment. As you know, we have enhanced our outdoor area to improve the quality of learning experiences for the children:
- Being outdoors has a positive impact on children’s sense of well-being and helps all aspects of children’s development.
- Being outdoors offers opportunities for doing things in different ways and on different scales than when indoors.
- It gives children first-hand contact with weather, seasons and the natural world.
- Outdoor environments give children freedom to explore, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant.
Doctor Doctor
A real doctor came to visit us at school today. She spoke to us about her job as a doctor and she told us how we can keep ourselves healthy. We were able to use her stethoscope – did you know that if you listen to your tummy with a stethoscope you can still hear your heartbeat as well? We discovered that our tummies make very strange noises! A few of us had our pulses checked, fortunately we were all very healthy!
“Wow!” said Miss Rushbrooke.
We have been looking at a number of different sentence skills as part of our narrative topic and today we focussed on speech. Working in pairs, we arranged our sentences so that the speech was punctuated correctly. We could then practise writing this as a sentence on our whiteboards, checking that we didn’t miss out any important punctuation.
New vocab!
Reporting clause : identifies the speaker. It can be found before, after or in the middle of speech.
- “Good morning, how are you all today?” said Miss Rushbrooke.
- Miss Rushbrooke said, “Good morning, how are you all today?”
- “Good morning,” said Miss Rushbrooke, “how are you all today?”
Child Friendly Leeds needs young reporters
- Are you in Year 5 or 6?
- Passionate and curious about your city?
- Do you ask a lot of questions?
If ‘yes’ then find out more about being a young reporter for Child Friendly Leeds.
Tuckshop 01.10.13
As there will be no tuck shop tomorrow, children who have prepaid for their portion(s) of fruit will be able to carry this over into the first week of the Spring term.