Week 2-11.11.22

Annnnnd breathe!

We have had a great start to our new groups for RWI this week. Your child may have been able to tell you what they have been working on in their group.

Group A have gone back to the start and we are re-teaching the sounds to develop a greater level of retention. This week Group A have been re-taught m and a and have had time to work on phase 1 phonics games developing their ability to hear initial sounds through eye spy games.

Group B have been re-taught p and g this week with lots of opportunity for magnet blending and Fred talk games.

Group C have moved on from magnet blending to blending with green words using their Fred fingers.

Ditty Group have read their first Ditty and written their very first sentences! Mrs Johnson was very impressed! 

 In our maths learning we have been teaching the children the staircase effect with numbers. We used the numberblocks and  and created a numberline to 5. We then worked hard to order the numicon numbers  - it is a visual way for the children to see that with numicon, the numbers also go up in steps to demonstrate that as numbers continue along a line, they get bigger and become ‘more’. We could easily see that when we counted to 5, each number is 1 more than the number before it. When we counted backwards we could see that each number was 1 less than the one before it.  We practised physically jumping forwards on the numberline to work out what is 1 more than 3, 1 more than 2 etc and then jumping backwards to work out what is 1 less than 1, 1 less than 3 etc. Outside we have been playing the bean bag game with a partner and creating a tally of the amount of times our bean bag landed in a bucket. We each had 3 beanbags and after we had to look at our partners tally and explain using our key vocabulary if our partner had got fewer/less bean bags, if we had more or if we had the same/equal amount to our partner.  Alongside this we have been developing our subitising skills as part of our mastering number programme and using the number blocks to create our focus numbers in different shapes.

Many parents have enquired what equipment would help aid their children’s mathematical development – we use Numicon for all of our maths activities alongside number blocks and number link cubes – these are all great ideas for stocking presents as the children love using them and they really help to develop number confidence.

Our topic work this week has centred around Remembrance Day. As Compassionate Citizens, we who can help to look after our community and care for the environment, know some  reasons why we celebrate certain events and have an awareness of other people’s cultures and beliefs. As part of this, it is important that we learnt about Remembrance Daya and the reasons why our community may be having parades to mark this occassion and why people in our community are giving out poppy's in exchange for money. We enjoyed watching the cbeebies story of Remembrance Day:  ( https://youtu.be/pv_ub7Be7oA ) .You may like to watch this with your child and use some questions to gage their understanding of why we wear poppies? This video is a sensitive way of introducing the idea of remembrance to the children and why we should always think about those people who lost their lives to help protect others. Our key vocabulary this week has been parade, peace, soldier and war. 

The children really enjoyed creating Poppies within the classroom and enjoyed telling us how they were ‘remembering people’ as they created transient art and created their own peace poppies. We learnt that red poppies are a symbol to remember those soldiers who died or suffered during WW2, the white poppy is a symbol of peace and anti-war, the black poppy is a symbol to remember BAME soldiers and the purple poppy is to remember the animals such as the horses who are involved in war through no choice of their own. We created some lovely art work to replicate the fields of Poppy's using watercolour and made a collaborative wreath to show that we will have a hand in remembering those who helped to keep our families in the past safe and those soldiers who continue to do so today.

 Later in the week, Pear class were finding out about the 'rock and roll' style of dance in P.E and had great fun performing 'The Wheels on the Bus' in this genre! The children added twists and turns and moved in a happy way! First however they thought back to last week's dance style being ballet and compared the two types of dances. Emotional awareness is very important to us and we have been encouraging our children to identify various emotions. Therefore before we danced in a rock and roll style we asked the children if they could dance in a shy way and an excited way. Each week we will explore feelings and representing them through dance as well as the different genres of dance taught.
 
Our children are Exceptional Explorers who show curiosity about the world around them.This week we have been recapping some of our learning from last half term about seasonal changes, Autumn and seed dispersal and talking about the changes that Autumn brings with it. This half term our focus will be on light, dark, day and night and we started this topic by thinking about the things we do in the day and the things we do at night. Pear class enjoyed sorting pictures into 'day' categories and into 'night' categories. There was some interesting points of discussion for example we brush our teeth twice a day and so teeth brushing is a day activity and a night activity! We learn in a hands on, interactive way and so the children enjoyed exploring various materials in the investigation area with torches and finding out if the light shone all the way through, some of the way through or not through at all. As the half term progresses, children will become familiar with the terms transparent, translucent and opaque
 
Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind and Fire was our focus song in our Charanga session this week. We explored high and low pitches, played copycat rhythm games and enjoyed performing 'The Grand Old Duke of York' to the beat!
 
We all know that we are individual and unique and our Jigsaw session this week was centered around this- I’m special, I’m me! We explored that it is OK to be different and do different things to the people around us and that it doesn't it matter if your friend likes something you don’t. Pears then made a brilliant class 'celebrating difference' paper chain where they all drew a picture of themselves in the middle and then drew things that make them unique and special  for example a football or a favourite book.
 
We've definitely had another fun filled, busy week in Pear class! We must end this week's blog by saying how proud we were of Pear class this morning during our silence for remembrance day. A huge well done to all our perfect pears.
 
Have a great weekend,

 

The Pear Class Team

 
 
Compassionate Citizens!
Mastering Mathematicians!
Brilliant Bookworms!