Reading detectives
Many mythical creatures were made up of different animals combined to make one beast. In our reading lessons, we have been using our inference skills to work out which animals were combined to make up these mythical beasts.
First, we listened to and read the description and tried to draw the beast.
The Sphinx was a female monster with the body of a lion, the breast and head of a woman, eagle’s wings and a serpent-headed tail.
Triton was a fish-tailed sea god, the son of Poseidon, king of the seas. He is blowing a conch-shell trumpet. In his other hand, he holds a staff.
Pegasus was an immortal, winged horse which sprang forth from the neck of Medusa.
Then, we matched the images to the description – the monsters were easy to match because the text gave us key information (tail, wings, horse).
The Three Little Pigs
This week, we’ve started our first focus story for this half-term.
Today, Foundation practised retelling the story using actions.
Check out our amazing story telling here!
Story Maps
The F2 children drew their own story maps and were really good at remembering the structure of the story.
Parental Partnership Presentation
Click on this link to view the Parental Partnership Presentation.
If you have any questions after reading the presentation, please email or chat to me on the gate.
stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Christian Value: Friendship
This half term, our Christian Value has been friendship.
We have thought about how we can be a good friend and what we can learn from the Bible about friendship. We learned that Jesus teaches us to be a good friend to all – he told a story about how the good samaritan was a friend to someone who was supposed to be his enemy.
In our reflection areas, we had two challenges: a friendship flower and how to be a good friend.
For our friendship flower, we thought about who was a good friend or someone we were thankful for and wrote or drew a short thank you thought or prayer for them.
We took the friendship finger challenge and thought about all the things that make a good friend. We thought about how we could be a better friend.
Foundation stage have also been learning all about our Christian value of friendship. They’ve created a friendship tree and friendship stones whilst thinking about the qualities they would like in a friend.
Look out for next half term’s Christian value: perseverance.
Living and Learning – mental health
We have been looking at mental health over the last few weeks. Using mindfulness techniques (we like some of the Go Noodle ones) and talking about our feelings, moods and emotions is important. The SMILERS 7 steps to wellbeing is also a simple self-help guide.
Living and Learning: I recognise mental health is important
This week, our Living and Learning statement was “I recognise mental health is important”. At school, we understand how important our mental health is which is why the first question we asked at parents evening was about how each child has coped since coming back to school and the changes due to covid.
To support this learning, we have been looking at the different emotions that the children could have been/ have been experiencing and how this can impact their mental health and what mental health is.
We looked at different emotions, when we might feel them and how we could react to those emotions and feelings.
Together, we created a feelings wall – it showed us that all feelings are acceptable and we talked about the different strategies that we could use to overcome/deal with any negative feelings.
Our Living and Learning lesson involved using some resources from the Anna Freud website and it has lots of advice and links for children and families if they need support around mental health.
Phonics – sound mats
At the recent parent-teacher consultations, a few parents asked about the sound mats we use in school. Children have been talking about ‘orange’ and ‘green’ sounds at home – which is great!
Here are the sound mats and below is a link demonstrating how each phoneme (sound) is pronounced.
Listen to the orange sounds here.
Home – Link Challenge
Here’s the home learning moments sheet for the half-term home-link challenge.
You can either print it off and fill it in or send the home learning moments electronically.
Potion Commotion
As always, Foundation have had another fantastic week!
This week, we entered into a wonderful world of wizards and witches.
At the writing table, the children created their very own potions. Some of the children had a go at writing a list of ingredients.
In Literacy, we’ve been reading Potion Commotion by Peter Bentley. When reading the story, the children were great at listening for the rhyming words – it is a book full of rhyming words! The book is about a little witch called Betty. She ends up making a big mess when putting just about everything into her cauldron to make a potion. Betty’s potion grows and grows and spreads all over the town!
Talk to your child about the story and see if they can remember what happened at the end.
Linking to the potion theme, we decided to be scientists and make our very own hubble and bubble potions.
We did four experiments using five ingredients: oil, water, bicarbonate soda, energy tablets and vinegar – the classroom spelt lovely!
The children observed what happened and recorded their findings.
Ronan – “It’s bubbling.”
Connor – “It’s fizzing.”
Daisy – “It looks like a tornado.”
Beau – “It’s not bubbling.”
We talked about what a chemical reaction is and that bubbling is a sign of a chemical reaction.
In phonics, we’ve learnt more sounds: m, d and g.
Here’s a link to the Jolly Phonics songs.
The children are doing really well in phonics and love doing the drum roll before I show them the new sound – it creates a lot of excitement! Some of the children are starting to segment and blend cvc words, for example, sat, mad and pin.
The children went on a sound hunt around the classroom. They were encouraged to say the sounds when they found them.
F2 – Please remember to practise the sounds in their sound book and their words in their word passports.
In maths, we’ve continued looking at number 2. On Thursday, I dropped all of the counting bears all over the floor – silly Miss Marsden! The children had to collect two bears and put them on their ten frame. The children moved the bears around on their ten frames and checked that it still showed two. After half term, we will finalise our number 2 learning and move onto number three.
F1
The F1 children have also continued with their phase one phonics activities. On Tuesday, they had to watch carefully to different body sounds and pass it around the circle.
On Wednesday, the children went on a musical instrument hunt around the outdoor area. When a child found an instrument, they talked about its sound and compared it to the other instruments.
What else have we been up to?
We made playdough spiders.
In the sensory area, the children enjoyed melting the frozen hands!
Next half-term, we will become story tellers and look at some traditional tales. The children will come up with actions to help them retell the stories. We’ve chosen traditional tales because they usually follow a typical structure and include lots of repeated phrases. Here’s a clue to help you guess one of the books we will be looking at… It will help with our number three learning.
Here are some pictures of the displays in our classroom…
Foundation Parents
A Parental Partnership presentation will be uploaded onto the class news page on Monday 2nd November.
I hope you all have a lovely half-term break!
Home-Link Challenge
Zooming
Today, Miss Beatson taught the class via Zoom. It worked really well and we had a great maths lesson. Miss Beatson enjoyed seeing everyone and was impressed by how hard everyone was learning.
