Our Learning
Communication and Language:
The children will build on their listening skills and understanding why listening is important. They will have opportunities to develop confidence in speaking in front of their classmates by sharing topics that are important to them and performing songs. They will also gently introduced into reciting taught facts by standing upright without fidgeting and speaking clearly when answering questions such as what are the three primary colours? what colours make orange/green/purple? what is todays date? what house number do you live at? when is your birthday? when do we celebrate Christmas?
Personal, Social and Emotional Development:
During this first half term, there will be a focus on the children seeing themselves as responsible members of their school community and continue to build constructive and respectful relationships. They will be introduced to the school's virtues: charity and humility, as well as consolidate last half term's focus on prudence. These concepts will be taught through stories and circle time as well as natural, ad hoc moments that may arise during the school day.
Physical Development:
During this first half term, the children will further develop their fine motor skills so that they can use a range of tools competently, safely and confidently. Some children will continue to develop their pencil grip where appropriate and others may be working on forming letters accurately. Some children will continue to master writing their first name accurately and independently.
Mrs Tooth will continue to teach gross motor, balance and movement skills within P.E sessions.
Literacy:
Phonics: The children will be remian in their groups for phonics and each group will have a 10-20 minute teacher-led session each day.
Phase 2: Children will continue to learn the remaining grapheme phoneme correspondence (letters and their sounds) and develop their reading of consonant-vowel-consonant words by sounding out the individual letters and blending the sounds.
The graphemes introduced this half term will be: c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
Phase 3: Children will continue to develop their knowledge of digraphs (two letters which make up one sound) as well as trigraphs (three letters which make one sound) and practice their reading and writing of simple words with these digraphs and trigraphs in by sounding out the graphemes and blending the sounds.
The graphemes introduced this half term will be: igh as in light, oa as in boat, oo as in moon and oo as in look, ar as in farm, or as in short, ur as in hurt, ow as in down, oi as in coin
Mathematics: Children have daily session of Calendar Time where their number sense will continue to build in skills such as finding one more of numbers past 35, crossing tens and using sticks to mark days in school and the place value of these 2-digit numbers as tens + ones. Number bonds to ten will also be explored by calculating how many more days in school until the next 'ten' as well as a focus on the value/purpose of zero in 2-digit numbers. They will also develop their sense of time by using language such as yesterday was, today is, tomorrow will be, and ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc), names of months. They will also practise their formation of single digit numbers using formation rhymes to support them.
Our learning is centred around the theme of: bears
Understanding the World:
We will look at different species of bears and look at where in the world you might find them with an introduction to world maps. We will also be focusing on the polar regions when we explore polar bears.
Expressive Arts and Design:
The children will be given the opportunity to make imaginative and complex small worlds when they create homes for their bears.
They will also be remembering and singing entire songs as we rehearse for our Christmas performance.
Children will begin the day with Worship and learning a prayer to start our day
What we are reading this half term:
Fiction:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Three snow bears By Jan Brett
Snow bears by Tony Mitton
Snow bears by Martin Waddell
We’re going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen.
Non-fiction:
Learn about Bears
All things Bears
Nursery Rhymes:
Christmas performance songs
Useful Information
- PE day: every Tuesday (please send your child in their full PE kit on this day each week)
- Library books due in: every Thursday
Tuesday 28th November: coffee morning with headteachers @9 a.m.
Wednesday 29th November: stay-and-play and 'meet the teacher' session for Potter and Milne Class parents @9-10 a.m.
Saturday 2nd December: Christmas in the Village - Gornal Together event. The winner of the poster competition will have a special invitation to join the VIPs to switch the Christmas lights on.
Thursday 7th December: School Christmas Service @9 a.m. and Awards Assembly with students being awarded virtue and milestone certificates.
Tuesday 12th December: whole school experience - visit from The Falconry Centre.
Wednesday 13th December: School Christmas lunch for children and staff.
Thursday 14th December: Christmas performances @9 a.m. Children must be collected by 12 p.m. on this day.
Friday 15th December: INSET day for staff (school CLOSED to students)
Please see the main Parent Portal page for any school closure dates
- Please ensure all uniform is clearly labelled with your child's name.
- PE pumps and horticulture kits need to be kept at school at all times.
