Being Me in My World

Our focus for the first two weeks has been settling into school, both welcoming our new Reception and Year 1 children, and re-establishing ourselves for those returning as Year 1’s. We have explored our school grounds and introduced 'Learning Adventure Time', when the children explore our learning areas as they play and learn together. 

Our class texts included 'Our Class as a Family' by Shannon Olsen, 'My Magic Family' by Lotte Jeffs, 'All Kinds of People' by Emma Damon and 'Ruby’s Walk to School' by Katherine White. These have allowed us to engage in discussions as we learn about each other.

We have been reciting familiar and new rhymes, noticing rhyming words and patterns.

Phonics

Year 1 have been revising their Phase 3 and 4 Phonic sounds, ready to move onto Phase 5 shortly. We have been securing their letter formation skills and applying sentence rules to record dictated sentences this week.

Reception have been introduced to Phonics and begun to learn a new Phoneme each day, which we will continue. We practise pronouncing, recognising and reading the sound within CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and recording the sounds.

When writing, we ensure all the children are sitting with good posture and holding their pencil with an effective grip, where possible, to form their letters correctly.

Maths

Year 1 have been subitising within 5 and looking at the composition of numbers, understanding that the numbers 6-9 are made up of ‘5 and a bit’. They have been comparing numbers within 10 using this structure. We have also been securing our counting skills, counting forwards and backwards within 10, counting on from any number and recognising numbers as words.

Reception have been matching and sorting objects in groups and identifying sets, comparing size, mass and capacity and exploring simple patterns. 

Understanding the World – Geography, History and Science.

Using Google Earth, we located Chewton Mendip village, and the city of Wells as we scrolled in and out on the computer. We identified our classroom, outside area and swimming pool on the map as we zoomed in, and some children were able to talk about us living on an island as we zoomed out and could see the United Kingdom surrounded by water. It led to lots of interesting discussions about where we each live and how many of us have swimming lessons at Wells Leisure Centre (which we saw on the map!).

We identified parts of our body and read the book, The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald, before talking about our favourite body parts and how we use them, including our senses.

Computing

We talked about internet safety and what that looked like in our school and homes. The children were able to share their understanding about needing an adult to ‘keep an eye’ on what they were doing, and to check 'nothing flashes up’ on the screen. During 'Learning Adventure Time', lots of children made their own laptops and role-played themselves using the computers and asking if they can go on their favourite games and websites. 

Music

I’ve Got a Grumpy Face! – We learnt the song, focusing on the beat and pitch before making new words to create our own version. We added percussion instruments, exploring and matching the sounds to our feelings.

RE

Linked to our ‘Being Me in My World’ theme, we have thought about what makes each of us unique and how it is OK to have different beliefs and opinions.

We shared objects that are special to us and talked about why they are important to us, as well as people who are important to us and are good role models.