Reception Class News

Summer 1: Week 4

It has been another brilliant week in Reception where I have been really impressed by everyone’s attitude to learning. The children have enjoyed the warmer weather with lots of playing in the outside area, in particular the water tray!

Caterpillars

Over the bank holiday weekend our caterpillars made their chrysalises and we moved them into the butterfly tent. We placed some sugar water in there and we are eagerly awaiting the emergence of the butterflies!

Poetry Picnic

This week’s poem is A Little Shell and the children have enjoyed discussing times they have encountered snails in the garden or the park!

Writing

We have been looking at the book Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andraea and David Wojtowycz. We have been learning about tropical rainforests and the animals that live there. Have a look at this BBC video that we watched in class. On Thursday we wrote some superb sentences all about rainforest animals.

Maths

In Maths this week we have been looking at number 10 and all the different ways to make it. We watched the Numberblocks episode ‘Ten again’ which is a great way to remember these number bonds to ten. We played a game where a pair had 10 counters and they would take it turns to hide some while the other worked out how many were missing.

Help at home by discussing how ten is made and by playing the game we played in Maths this week.

Finally, I would like to thank all the children for coping so well with the transition from Mrs Wood to Miss Lowry, who starts full time next week. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Reception and I am sure they will enjoy their last few weeks of their first year at school with Miss Lowry.

Summer 1: Week 3

This has been a very different week for everyone in Reception and the children have dealt with it marvellously. On Monday and Tuesday, Miss Lowry was in class teaching and getting to know everybody. Then for the rest of the week, Mr McGriffiths was teaching. It has been a great week and I have been very impressed by not only the children’s learning but also their attitude.

Caterpillars

Our caterpillars continue to grow and are becoming very big now! We will be looking closely over the next week to see if they start to form their chrysalis.

Writing

This week we have been reading Walking through the jungle by Julie Lacome. We made story maps on Tuesday and then we wrote about what we might see if we went exploring through the jungle. There were some great ideas and I was very impressed by everybody’s writing!

Maths

This week in maths we have been learning about numbers bigger than 5. We have been learning to recognise these numbers by using the ‘5 and a bit’ structure. We started with 6 which is made from 5 and 1 and worked all the way up to 9. This will help us to subitise these numbers in the future.

Help at home by giving some objects for your child to count. Can they make a pattern of 5 first then see how many more? Encourage them to subitise in this way rather than count one by one.

PE 

We continued to play Hulk Smash and even started to compete in pairs which will help us when we play larger games higher up the school.

Poetry Picnic

This week the poem was the classic nursery rhyme, Sing a song of sixpence. We have been watching this video to help us remember it.

The final thing to say I have had a fantastic week in Reception and I have been really impressed by the children’s maturity, attitude and respectfulness. I can’t wait to get back on Tuesday for another week here!

Summer 1: Week 2

Caterpillars
This week, we’ve been observing our caterpillars daily to see how much the they’ve grown.
We’ve also been talking about the life cycle of a butterfly.
Help at home: Can your child remember the four stages? Draw a picture of the life cycle.

We are super writers!
This week, we’ve been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. On Monday, we made our own story maps.

After reading and retelling the story, we used our imagination to write our own versions of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We changed the main character and the food.

The Very Hungry Cat
The Very Hungry Spider
The Very Hungry Tiger
The Very Hungry Ladybird

PE
On Tuesday, they enjoyed their first session of PE with Mr McGriffiths. This half-term, they’ll play a game called Hulk Smash to develop their balls skills.

Maths
This week, we continued to develop our subitising skills. We used our understanding of doubles to support our subitising skills when looking at different arrangements. We created arrangements of 6 using different objects. We thought carefully about how we can arrangement the objects so it’s easier to subitise– e.g. 2 groups of 3. We then played a game called Odd One Out. We had to spot an arrangement that was not 6.

Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called Under a Stone.

Thank you and goodbye Reception!
Reception, I’ve loved teaching you this year. From starting school to going on your first school trip, we’ve shared many amazing memories together. You’ve made tremendous progress and I’ve no doubt you’ll continue to shine and make your new teacher proud.

Finally, keep reading and enjoy the rest of your time in Reception! I look forward popping back into school to see you all with Baby Wood.

Summer term after-school clubs

Summer 1: Week 1

Welcome back! We hope you all had a happy and healthy break.

This half-term our topic is called Life on Earth.  Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be learning more about life cycles. We’ll closely observe caterpillars to help us understand the different stages of a life cycle.

Yesterday morning, a parcel arrived at school… It was 5 tiny caterpillars!
DT
On Wednesday morning, we used hand drills to make a bug hotel. We also used saws, hammers and screwdrivers. After that, the creative area has been really busy. They’ve really enjoyed making lots and lots of holes with the hand drills.

Phonics
This week, we’ve started Phase 4. In this phase children will use the phonemes learnt in Phase 2 and Phase 3 to read and spell words with four or more phonemes and words ending in suffixes:
–ing, –ed /t/, –ed /id/ /ed/, –est

Here are some examples:
CVCC words: tent, damp, toast
For example, in the word ‘damp’, d = consonant, a = vowel,  m = consonant,  p = consonant

CCVC words: swim, plum, spoon
For example, in the word ‘plum’, p = consonant, l = consonant, u = vowel, m = consonant

CCVCC words: stamp, crept, twist
For example, in the word ‘stamp’, s = consonant, t = consonant, a = vowel, m = consonant, p = consonant

CCCVC words: strap scrub strong
For example, in the word, ‘strap’, s = consonant, t = consonant, r = consonant, a = vowel, p = consonant

CCCVCC words: strand strict sprint
For example, in the word, ‘sprint’, s = consonant, p = consonant, r = consonant, i = vowel, n = consonant, t = consonant 

They’ll also learn to read and write 18 new tricky words.

Help at home: Practise reading and writing this week’s tricky words.
said    so    have    like

Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called Pitter Patter.

Some more fantastic learning…

Spring 2: Week 6

I can’t believe we’re at the end of our second term in Reception! The children have made tremendous progress in all areas of the Early Years curriculum.

Summer 1
Next half-term, we will be learning about bugs and going on lots of bug hunts for bugs. We will learning about the life cycle of a butterfly and hopefully set some butterflies free! We will use hand drills to build a bug hotel for our outdoor area.

Linked to Geography, we will find out where our favourite animals come from. We will locate countries on a map, look at different environments, and compare them to the UK.

As artists, we will mix colours to create camouflage patterns. We will also create landscapes for various animals using our small world resources in the classroom, and create scenarios and storylines for our play.

Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called The Tiny Seed.  Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about what plants need to grow. Can your child remember what plants need?

Reminders and upcoming dates

• Don’t forget to keep reading your Collins eBooks over the holidays.
• Monday 06 May – Bank holiday
• Monday 24 May – Training day: school closed

As always, I hope you all have a happy and healthy half-term break. Don’t forget to email me any pictures of what you get up to in the holidays. moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 15 April.

Big Walk and Wheel final position

After the two week Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge, we now have the final results.

In our category of small primary schools, we finished in 20th place out of 459 schools with an average of 89.81% active journeys to school. We achieved the highest national (20th) and Northern England (3rd) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.

With a total of 1655 active journeys across the two weeks, this is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.

Help at home: By walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.

Spring 2: Week 5

This week, we’ve seen lots of super independent learning!

We used watercolours to do observational paintings of daffodils.

We explored printing natural objects into clay.

We looked carefully at seeds and sorted them into groups. Our word of the week was miniscule. We used this word to describe the seeds.

We’ve been observing our beans to see if they’ve changed. This morning, we noticed a shoot!

This week, we used our perceptual subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) to build on our understanding of equal amounts. We used dice patterns and fingers to explore doubling quantities to 10.   We used this generalised statement when talking about doubles.

… is made of … and …, double … is ….

We noticed that not all numbers are made of doubles. Can your child remember why? 

Help at home: Explore making double patterns with different objects at home.

Reminder!
Don’t forget to attend one of the learning journey drop ins next week. You’ll also get to meet Miss Lowry. We look forward to talking about your child’s amazing learning.

Big walk and wheel update

We’ve had a great start to the Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge this week.

After the first five days, we are currently in 19th place (out of 549 schools) in the small primary category with an average of 84.76% of our journeys to school being active. This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.

To keep up with the leader board for the rest of the challenge, it can be viewed here.

The Big Walk and Wheel challenge continues until Friday 22nd March so we look forward to seeing our progress over the upcoming week.

Help at home: By walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.

Spring 2: Week 4

Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading the traditional tale Jack and the Beanstalk. We planted our own beans and talked about what a bean needs in order to grow. After planting our beans, we wrote a set of instructions about how to plant a bean.

Yesterday, we introduced the children to life cycles and talked about what a life cycle is.

What is a life cycle?

EB – small to big
BT – Something is a baby then turns into an adult.
RN – Baby chicks grow into a mummy and daddy.
SW – When babies are small they keep growing.
AG – Bugs start off as an egg and they get bigger and bigger.
RZ – They grow and grow and grow!

We watched a video about the life cycle of a bean and talked about the 4 stages.

Help at home: Can your child remember the life cycle of a bean?

Maths
This week, we consolidated our understanding of the composition of numbers by investigating the numbers within 7. We investigated the whole number using the part–part–whole model, e.g. 5 is a part. 2 is a part. 7 is the whole.  We used cubes to show that 7 can be made by combining parts in different ways. We also played a game called Missing parts. Mrs Wood hid some cubes (a part) behind her back and we had to think about the missing part. This is something called partitioning (splitting the whole it into parts).

Help at home: Practise partitioning numbers up to 7 into two parts. You could use your toys, fruit or pencils.

Phonics
This week, we continued to read and write longer words including words ending in -ing.Help at home: Practise writing these words: looking, marching, farming, waiting, morning, winking, singing. Don’t forget to use your phoneme fingers to segment!

What else have we been up to?
This week, our chilli challenges were linked to our focus story.

Poetry Picnic
Click here to watch this week’s poem.

Finally…
Thank you to all the parents/carers who came to watch our class assembly on Wednesday. We were blown away by how many of you turned up! We hope you enjoyed it.

REMINDER!

• Learning journey drop ins – Tuesday 26th & Thursday 28th March
  9-9.30 & 3.15-3.45
  Please return your sign up slip by Friday 22nd March.