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.
Celebration certificates
It’s Friday again… another learning-packed week. The children are now able to choose a library book to take home on a Friday. We enjoyed reading and sharing our books outside today.
As we can’t have our usual celebration assembly on a Friday at the moment, I will be posting the certificate winners on here each week.
For great learning…
Teddy – for being an active learner. You often have your hand up and like to contribute in lessons. Well done!
For living and learning…
Honey – for being polite. You know that manners are important.
Phonics and the phonics screening check
The phonics screening check determines how well a child can use the phonics skills they have learned in year 1, ensuring that they are on track to become fluent readers.
Next half term, the phonics screening check will be taken by all children in year 2. Year 2 pupils who do not meet the expected standard in the autumn check will take the statutory check in June 2021, alongside year 1 pupils.
The phonics screening check contains 40 words divided into two sections. Both sections contain a mixture of real words and alien words.
The children are encouraged to add sound buttons or use phoneme fingers to read a word. Here is a video showing how we do this.
You can help your child at home by reading anything and everything!
Celebration certificates
We’ve had another great week. I have seen fantastic progress in reading, handwriting and maths in just a few weeks. Keep up all the hard work year 1 and year 2! As we can’t have our usual celebration assembly on a Friday at the moment, I will be posting the certificate winners on here each week.
For great learning…
Liam – for great learning in all lessons this week, showing good concentration.
For sport and physical activity…
Ralph – Your attitude in PE and WUSU is fantastic. Well done!
For living and learning…
Lilly – for recognising how others are feeling.
Bagel Bar
Our bagel bar has been open for a few weeks now and the children have really enjoyed eating breakfast with their friends and it’s been a positive start to their day. The doors open at 8.30am each morning and all children from Reception to Year 6 are welcome.
Words, words, words
I have been spending lots of time teaching reading: story time, reading together (reading fluency), daily phonics lessons, vocabulary lessons, RIC (comprehension), individual reading, discussing books we have read, giving star ratings and lots more!
Being able to read and write the year 1 and year 2 common exception words is important to develop fluency. These words do not follow the usual spelling rules and so are sometimes tricky to read or write. They need to be learnt as whole words and just remembered.
We try to make learning them fun – singing the phase 3 tricky words song and phase 4 tricky words song for example! (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
Living and Learning: Mental health (I can talk about my feelings)
We have begun a topic on mental health in our Living and Learning lessons. This week, we have talked about our feelings. They change all the time and don’t last forever.
Can you guess the emotions that the children were showing?
Celebration certificates
We’ve had another great week. The children have learned about micro-habitats (very small, specialised habitats) so there will be some visitors in the topic area on Monday…
As we can’t have our usual celebration assembly on a Friday at the moment, I will be posting the certificate winners on here each week.
For great learning…
Leo – for great learning in phonics, showing good concentration. Well done!
For sport and physical activity…
Summer – for showing enthusiasm in PE this week.
For living and learning…
Christian – for listening to, sharing with and including others.
Place value – representing numbers in different ways
As part of our place value learning in maths, we have been using a range of models to represent numbers up to 20.
We use real life examples to demonstrate how 10s and 1s can be used. Here are 12 pens made up of one pack of 10 and two ones.
By seeing and making a range of representations, children are able to secure a deep understanding of numbers.
Most of the following representations focus on partitioning (splitting up a number into parts) a number into tens and ones.
The middle box on the bottom row shows 12 being made by cubes. The second picture in that box is to show how the cubes can be drawn. Children find it far quicker and easier to draw a long line to represent a ten than drawing a rectangle that is divided into ten squares.
Try using these at home to support your child’s learning.
Celebration certificates
We’ve had another great week with lots of learning, being active and having fun with our friends.
As we can’t have our usual celebration assembly on a Friday at the moment, I will be posting the certificate winners on here each week.
For great learning…
Tia – for super work in phonics. Your blending knocked my socks off!
For sport and physical activity…
Emily – for amazing resilience learning how to skip.
For living and learning…
Jayden – for being a responsible learner and an excellent year 2 role model.