Holly Class w/b 21st November 2022

We have continued with our theme of fairy tales this week in Holly Class and enjoyed sharing the story of The Three Little Pigs. The children have shown great imagination in their retellings of the story, some choosing to use masks from a story sack, others making their own masks and creating their own straw, wood and (lego!) brick houses. We have even had the cosy fire spotted in the story re-created outside! The year 1 children then extended their learning further in our reading lesson and were focussing on their explanation skills this week, explaining the problems with the houses and why the final brick house was the best. 

The children have used the journey sticks they made on their walk around the village last week to make maps showing the route we took. All of the children did a brilliant job of creating their map and then drawing on the route we took. The Reception children have been using their phonics knowledge to label some of the places we went with the sounds they can hear in the words. The Year 1 children also labelled up their maps and then wrote a recount to help anyone who would want to complete a similar walk, they worked hard to extend their sentences using 'and' and remember to use correct punctuation. 

In phonics lessons this week, the Reception children have learnt the phonemes f, ff, l, ll, ss, as well as tricky word 'I'. I have been particularly impressed by how they have worked really hard to use the correct terminology (we use some very big words in phonics!), remembering that two letters together that make one sound is called a digraph.  The Year 1 children have been learning the alternative graphemes for the phoneme 'ur' - ir, er and ear. They have also learnt how to read and spell the high frequency words Thursday, Saturday, thirty and thirteen. 

In maths lessons this week, the Reception children have continued to work on finding 'more' and 'fewer', they have started to explore this with bigger numbers, as well as using these words correctly to describe things in and about the classroom. We discovered that many of our toys didn't understand these words when we 'asked' them and so the children have been 'teaching' them and leading their own little lessons. We will have some teddies and a toy gruffalo who will be excelling in maths before we know it!! The Year 1 children have been learning how to subtract using a number line this week and have shown great concentration when practising this new skill, hoping backwards to find their answers, they were even able to use the number line to solve some tricky problems, very impressive! 

Following on from the visit of the ambulance last week, the Year 1 children have been making comparisons between an ambulance in the 1900's, when Florence Nightingale was nursing, and the ambulance today. Everyone agreed that improvements have been made and they thought that the ambulances now could go much faster to reach the poorly people. We have also been busy outside planting up our flower beds this week. Our Remembrance Day poppies have been replaced with some tulip and crocus bulbs that we hope to be able to watch grow in the Spring. 

As I'm sure you are aware, our nativity rehearsals are now in full swing, and the children are enthusiastically singing songs and learning what they need to do to put on a good show...more on this next week! 

Have a lovely weekend!