Ready, steady write!
This term the children will gain confidence in their writing. All the children have learned enough phonemes to enable them to confidently write using their phonic knowledge. This term they will write stories, lists, poems, messages and letters, practise letter formation, good pencil control and when to use a capital letter and a full stop. It is important for children to know why we write. In the classroom children will see adults writing for a variety of purposes, for example, notes, cards, labels and instructions. Through such experiences children will come to realise the importance of writing and the pleasure that can be gained from it.
We will be using lots of ‘Modelled Writing’ in which we will explicitly demonstrate the process of writing by ‘thinking aloud’ as we write and talking through the process step-by-step to show children what to do. Children will see that writing is an interactive process and will be reassured that writers make mistakes.
Children will be taught that
– printed text is recorded speech.
– writing can be read to or by others.
– writing can be used for different purposes.
You can help your child at home by encouraging them to write shopping lists, greetings cards, messages and stories. Let your child see you writing and talk about what you are doing. Most importantly, their writing should have purpose, be relevant and interesting and remember to give lots of praise.
Please ask if you have any questions relating to your child’s learning.
Phonics
This term we will begin phase 4 of our phonics learning.
Phase 4 relates to the blending of adjacent consonants at the beginning and end of simple words where the single letter sounds are blended together in a left to right order.
Examples of the adjacent consonants found at the beginning of English words are ‘bl.., cl.., fl.., gl.., pl.., sl.., br.., dr.., fr.., gr.., pr.., tr.., sk.., sm.., sn.., sp.., st.., sw.., tw..’ in words like ‘blob, clap, flag, glad, plop, slip, bran, drip, frog, grab, pram, tram, skip, smell, snip, stop, swim, twig’. These are known as ccvc (consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant) words.
Examples of adjacent consonants found at the end of English words are ‘..mp, ..nd, ..nk, ..nt, ..st, ..ft, ..ld, ..lp, ..lt, ..sk’ in words like ‘jump, hand, bank, tent, lost, left, held, help, belt, ask’. These are known as cvcc words.
There are also some combinations of three adjacent consonants such as ‘spr.., str.., spl..’ as found in the words ‘spring, street, split’.
Children will learn to blend and segment these words in just the same way as cvc words.
Remember that some adjacent consonants e.g. ‘ch, sh, th‘ are not blended together in the above manner. They are the spellings of distinct English sounds (phonemes) in their own right, and their sound is different to the sounds of the two separate letters.
As always please ask about any aspect of your child’s learning.
Easter Excitement!
The first ever “Egg Olympics” took place at Moortown Primary School last Friday. The smell of eggs in the KS1 building was worth it just for the excitement of rolling eggs down the back playground. All of the eggs were decorated beautifully by the children and then they were rolled expertly without much breakage at all – one yolk escaped but all in all it worked really well.
There were three heats from each year group and then a year group final. Here are the lucky winners…
Thanks to all parents for supporting our “Egg Olympics” by boiling eggs and thanks to all those who helped at the bun sale along with everyone else for spending lots of money.
Have a great holiday. See you on Monday 16 April.
World Book Day
This week’s phonemes
This week, we’re learning the phonemes ow (as in cow) and oi (as in noise). The new ‘tricky’ word is they.
This half-term, we’re concentrating on letter formation. Please encourage your child to use our handwriting style.
Well Done!
Congratulations to Archie and Owen for being elected to represent Reception Class in the School Council. I am sure they will do a good job.
School Council Elections
Next week, we’ll be holding elections in school for new school councillors. Two children are elected from each class, including Reception. In the past, the school councillors have played an important role in major decision-making such as choosing our school charities, selecting playground equipment and choosing the colour of our uniform. Please talk to your child about the elections and encourage them to stand. They will need to be confident in speaking with older children and adults. If your child would like to stand, they need to tell us by Friday and be able to talk about what they would like to do for the school and its pupils if they were elected. They will deliver this speech early next week and the elections will be held on Thursday.
Learning to write
Now that your child knows lots of letter sounds, they are keen to use their phonic knowledge to write. The process of writing is not easy and research has shown that for some children, especially boys, holding a pencil can be physically painful if the muscles of the thumb and fingers are not strong enough.
Why not try some of the following activities at home to help develop the necessary muscles for writing:
- paint with fingers and with a variety of brushes
- use dough and plasticine to pound, roll, mould and pinch
- use scissors, hole punches and staplers
- pick up and sort collections of pulses, pasta and buttons
- let your child help prepare fruit and vegetables by cutting and pealing
- do up buttons and zips independently
Please encourage your child to write at home and hold the pencil correctly. However, remember that if your child’s muscles are not ready, forcing them to write at length may put them off. Practising a little every day and doing some of the above activities is far more beneficial than a longer period of writing practice.
This week’s phonemes
This week, the new phonemes are ai, ee, igh and oa.
Remember to say the letter names (‘ay’, not ‘ah’) and encourage your child to join up the letters when writing.
This week’s ‘tricky words’ are my and was.
This week’s phonics
This week the new sounds are sh, ch, th, th and ng. The ‘tricky words’ are me, we and be.
When referring to the individual letters in these sounds, the children should now be encouraged to use letter names as letters do not stand for sounds when they form part of two-letter and three-letter graphemes eg the sound ‘sh’ is written with the letters s ‘ess’ and h ‘aitch’ not ‘ssss’ and ‘h’.
We also teach the children to join up the letters to form these digraphs to make it easier for them to remember.