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Well what a week after the chaos of the snow and the storm! Nativity rehearsals started this week and the children are very excited. Please support your child to learn their lines and help them to learn their cue (who come before them). Reading parts of the script counts as a different type of reading and can be recorded in reading records too! Remember to discuss with them the difference between a stage direction and a line! Thank you. Monday-phonics, followed by Drawing Club (Willo the Wisp), followed by maths, followed by Nativity songs and independent learning and French. Marion continued her volunteering and the children had a great time. Remember you can book into her after school club if you wish! Tuesday- phonics, followed by Drawing Club and handwriting, followed by art, followed by PE then our first hall time rehearsal. Wednesday-Florence taught our class today and she continued with phonics and Drawing club, followed by a maths lesson about addition and subtraction followed by Science and the different food groups, followed by Nativity songs. On Thursday it was Mrs Ware teaching. Year one followed up on our phonics this week by reviewing the set 3 sounds 'aw', (yawn) 'are' (share) and 'ur' (turn). We also did some extended writing about the troll in Billy the Kid. Reception wondered what they would invent to get Moog out of the sky! In the afternoon we learnt about how people survive in places that are extremely hot or extremely cold. We also had some time to practise our Nativity - it's looking really promising even for the second run through. Friday was a day of phonics, drawing club, some independent learning and P.E. in the afternoon. We did some more nativity practise and are busy creating lovely decorations to sell at the Christmas Fayre on the 13th. Have a lovely weekend everybody. A busy week as we start looking forward to Christmas... As we have spent a lot of time on termly assessments, the blog will be a little more brief than normal this week Monday
This week has been another busy week in Chestnut Class. Monday (Armistice Day) Year one began their phonics lesson with their weekly spelling test and then we learnt our new set 3 sound for today which was o-e as in home, note and phone. We then read our new story for the first time 'Red Ken'. Reception children have begun to learn more sounds including those which are 'special friends' (sounds made from 2 letters like 'sh' , 'th' and 'qu'). At 11.00am today, the year one children took part in a minutes silence with the rest of the school and back in class we learnt a bit more about why and how we mark this special day. We had a special visit from The Bookery, the Crediton bookshop, who provided a special book fair for all children across the school each of whom received a free book. In the afternoon, our Geography lesson focussed on the features of hot and cold places and the children tried to identify and sort pictures showing hot and cold places. Marion came back to volunteer with Year 1and teach us some more French. The children really enjoyed this. We were all excited to start learning our songs for the Nativity 'A Bundle of Joy'. Words and music for these are on the link on this page for the children to practise at home. Tuesday Year one's new sound today was i-e as in like, nice and smile. In maths, year one tried to identify eight facts in a fact family - quite a challenge as this includes not only facts like 4+5=9 and 9-5=4 but also 5=9-4 and 9=5+4. Reception are continuing to practise their subitising skills as well as activities focussing on developing the skill of comparing. The children were encouraged to compare the number of objects in 2 sets by matching them 1:1. Seeing that objects in some sets can be matched without any being left over will draw the children’s attention to instances when the quantities of objects are equal. Language is a key focus and we reinforced the language of ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘an equal number’ to describe how many objects there are in each set. In our computing lesson in the afternoon, year one used 'Paintzapp' on Chromebooks to have a go at reproducing a Mondrian style painting with great success!! Reception children were also inspired by Mondrian to use rulers to draw squares and lines and paint in primary colours. Wednesday On Wednesday we continued with phonics, learning the sound u-e in huge, brute, cute and applying it. We then continued with our phonics story about Red Ken. After this we took part in maths where we learnt about subtraction by telling a story about how many are left (first there were 10 apples on a tree, 5 fell down in the wind, 5 were left). After lunch we took part in art where we turned our maps from last week into 3D relief maps using different resources such as paper, card, tissue paper, string. After art we carried on with our Christmas singing for our performance, 'A Bundle of Joy. Thursday On Thursday Year 1 reviewed the sounds learnt this week and then spent a lot of time focusing on the story of Red Ken and writing sentences about it. Reception continued learning special friends. In maths Year 1 continued with subtraction, learning how to write subtraction sentences. During the afternoon all the children took part in science and we investigated the effect exercise has on our bodies. We did some physical activities and then sorted activities into ones that raised our hearts rates and ones that didn't. After Science, we carried on with our Christmas singing for our performance. Friday Our day started with phonics where we continued to review the sounds and spent the morning writing about Red Ken. As it was Children in Need, we had some fun Pudsey style activities planned including painting our own Pudseys, and adding spots to his bandana. We learnt about why we raise money for this charity and why it is so important. We learnt about some of the fundraising activities famous people are doing to raise money. Thank you all for your support so far this half term. Miss Ruby and Mrs Ware Welcome back to what is probably the busiest half term of the year. Hope you all managed to have a restful break over half term. Phonics and English This week we regrouped all our children into their new phonic groups following our assessments at the end of last half term. The children have adapted quickly to these new groups and are all continuing to make progress. As part of their lesson, we are focussing on handwriting and letter formation. We ensure that the children are sitting correctly to write and are using the correct tripod pencil grip. It is important that the children form their letters correctly and don't get into bad habits - we have attached the guidance for letter formation on this page and will also send via Dojo so that you can practice and ensure children apply this to their writing at home. Reception children have had their phonics lessons and also have had drawing club linked to the story A Dark, Dark Tale. The children are becoming very creative with their ideas and very clear with their drawings. Wow! In maths... Reception children have been engaged with activities that underline the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are altogether. They practised their 1:1 correspondence skill, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging objects. A key focus this week is deepening their understanding of 5 as a quantity by linking the number itself to the 5 fingers on one hand. Year one children have been exploring odd and even numbers and recognising that even numbers are made from pairs. We watched a Numberblocks episode which describe them as odd tops and even tops. Year one have also been learning to add more to a number and represent this using a number sentence. They have found 'part's' of a number using part whole models and began to look at subtraction too. Wider Curriculum Year one have begun their first Geography topic which is all about hot and cold places around the world. We started this unit by remembering the continents of the world and then went on to learn about climate zones across the world. the key bit of knowledge in this lesson was that the countries closest to the equator are the hottest and the countries furthest away are the coldest. Both Reception and Year one children learnt a little about Diwali this week which was celebrated last weekend. We learnt that during this celebration Hindus (and people from other religions too) welcome the Goddess, Lakshmi, to their homes by making colourful Rangoli patterns. The children had a go at making Rangoli patterns with various materials including chalk on the playground outside the classroom. We also used various mediums to create firework pictures on Tuesday including paint, chalk, colouring pens and even used technology in our computing lesson to create firework pictures on 'Paintzapp'. In Art the children have begun their new art topic called 'Map it Out'. The first part of this involved the children drawing a map of a memorable journey. We read the book, "Martha Maps it Out" and designed our maps in a similar style. In Science the children also started their new topic, 'Human Lifestyles'. During this lesson we discussed the human skeleton, muscles and important internal body parts. The children then used their learning to cut and stick body parts in the correct places. Both Reception and Year 1 learnt about the story of Guy Fawkes! They learnt about why we remember this event, how we celebrate it and firework safety. We have also begun to think ahead to Christmas and our music has been focused on singing the songs to our Nativity, "A Bundle of Joy"...more details will follow. A busy first week back at school! Enjoy your weekend! Half term is here! Can you believe we have been back to school for almost 8 full weeks? We can't... but we can tell everyone is ready for a nice autumn break! The children have all done well settling into their new routines. These have become well established and the children know the expectations, routines and rules. Our learning this week has been focused on bringing our various topics to an end. In History, the children drew and wrote about their favourite scientist/engineer. In DT, the children evaluated their moving monster design. In Science, the children recapped their learning all about light. in R.E, we took part in our Harvest Festival. In P.E the children came to the end of learning how to use the space in the playground and evade a member of the opposing team by playing chasing games. In English we all took part in reading 'Room on the Broom', designing new broomsticks and new animals to ride on it. In maths we all continued with counting, subitising numbers and using a system to work out number bonds! Thank you for the kind donations for the Harvest Festival and for the FONTS Christmas Hampers. Also a huge thank you to those of you who managed to pop in and share the children's learning by looking at books but also joining in with Rockstars Day! The children were excellent in the Church on Thursday and I was really impressed with their behaviour. Well done Chestnut Class. We will be in touch soon, with next half term's topics/learning as we enter; perhaps one of the busiest and exciting times of the year! The countdown to Christmas and all that comes with it! Happy Half Term everyone. Rest up, get some autumn sunshine, and enjoy some slower, cosy mornings together! Hello Chestnut families! This week has been another busy week of learning in our class. Phonics/Drawing Club- Our English focus this week has been on our phonic assessments, where we have been checking on the children's progress. We did have a couple of lessons reading and learning about The Enormous Turnip for both Year1 and Reception and the children loved acting the story out, learning new words and writing about it. We were very impressed with their enthusiasm! Maths- Reception- the children have been comparing numbers using the words greater and less than. They have been looking at 1 more and 1 less by using puppets to play games! Year 1-The children have begun to explore and understand addition in a more formal way by using the + and = symbols, using part whole models, bar models, addition stories and finally understanding fact families. This week's home learning will be based around this, as well as an activity at our TTRS Rockstars morning where you are invited to attend until 9.30am! When you come along to our open afternoon next Thursday, please take a look in books and feel free to ask any questions you may have. Wider Curriculum Science- In Science this week we have been investigating shadows and how they form, how and what they change position and shape. The children were introduced to opaque and transparent and what this means! They sorted things into these categories and then identified shadows. We discussed sun dials and how they work and what happens to shadows at different times of the day. History- In history, the children learnt about Stephen Hawking, his achievements and why he is famous for his work on black holes and the big bang! We also heard a little bit about another space scientist, Maggie Aderin-Pocock. We were able to see the diversity of our successful scientists throughout history. Computing - The children are getting better at using the trackpad on our Chromebooks to draw and this week also practised using the keyboard to write their names on the computer. DT- In DT this week we finally combined all our previous lessons together by actually making our moving monsters! The children really enjoyed this activity and had a great time practising their skills to create a linkage system that made their toy move! We have some wonderful photos! RE- This week we read a story about Allah and discussed what type of leader Muslims think he might be. The story involved kindness, thoughtfulness and respect. PSHE- This week we discussed emotions again and how they make our bodies feel. We then picked scenarios out of a bag and discussed what we might do to help/solve the problem in the scenario. PE- This weeks lesson have been been focusing on core skills such as listening, using the space well and moving. The children enjoyed themselves and we had lots of smiles! EYFS Curriculum In the lead up to Harvest the children have had lots of activities linked to this theme. They have made mini scarecrows with split pins, created Harvest pictures using shapes, have role played with the farm and we have discussed the importance of Harvest, especially for us as a rural, farming community. Next week we will have our annual Harvest Festival. Good afternoon, We hope this weekly blog finds everyone well. Here is a round up of our week in Chestnut Class for Reception and Year 1, as usual it has been as busy as ever! Phonics- In phonics this week Reception have continued learning their new set 1 sounds. This weeks sounds are j, v, y, x, w and z. They have been practising saying and writing them. With the other sounds they know, the children are using magnetic letters to create cvc words and are blending the sounds together to read the word. The children have brought their next sound blending book home to read. Please support them by sharing this every night. This makes such a difference. For most of the children in Year 1, they have moved onto learning Set 3 sounds. This week our focus has been ea (tea), oi (spoil) and a-e (called a split digraph like in make and name). Next week all children will be assessed on their phonic knowledge which may result in a change in the groupings and teacher taking the group. For all new sounds, we will send home practice sheets and videos to watch. Please take the time to read them and have a go together! Small steps lead to big progress. Thank you. Literacy Tree/Drawing Club- In Literacy Tree this week, the Year 1 children have focused on inventing their own stories based on Stanley's Stick. Their new story is 'Cassidy's Cup' and they have spent the week, really working hard on their independent writing skills to create a story that makes sense. In Drawing Club the Reception Children have been reading and learning about the Little Red Hen. We have seen tractors, houses and all sorts of new characters. Maths Reception- Reception have been focusing on comparison this week. Comparing numbers using the language of more than and fewer than. We have been comparing sets of objects, comparing fingers on hands and worked together to explain what we can see. Maths Year 1- Year 1 have started a new unit this week called 'addition and subtraction'. This unit runs for the rest of half term and the following few weeks. We have started by looking at part whole models and basic addition sentences. This weeks homework will be based around this, so please support your child to have a go at home. Wider Curriculum History - October is Black history month where we learn and celebrate about the achievements of people of colour throughout history. This week we learnt about Mary Seacole, a nurse of mixed race, who funded her own travel to the Crimea during the Crimean war when the English government refused to send her. She built a 'hotel' for injured soldiers and used the skills taught to her by her Jamaican mother to treat them. The year one children wrote about the story of Mary Seacole while the reception children used role play to apply bandages and treat each other with our role play toys. In computing, the year one children are learning to log in to a Chromebook using a username and password finding the letters on the keyboard and how to type a capital letter. They then practised using the mousepad/trackpad by using an app called Paintz to try and draw on a computer. DT- this week the children designed the head of their monster for their moving toy. They had to design two heads, label them, draw the moving parts of the mechanism and then they voted on their favourite design before choosing which one to make next week. PSHE- this week we continued with our focus on emotions. We shared a story about a little boy who breaks something at his Grandparents house. We shared all the emotions we could find in the story, and then we freeze framed how these emotions might look on our faces and our bodies. Science- we continue our focus on reflection and wrote a conclusion to our experiment. Due to the time of year and the darker nights we extended this to talk about road safety during dark times, in particular, things we can wear to help us be seen! P.E- This week in our sessions with SAINTS we played lots of games to get our hearts pumping! These included different types of chasing games and balancing activities. Dates for your diaries: 16th October: Reception parents/carers information evening (RWI/Tapestry/School Readiness) 24th October: Harvest Festival followed by open afternoon to come and share children's work. 25th October: Rockstar day- dress up as a rock star for a day full of maths fun. Parents will be welcome for a fun activity! Time for parents to be confirmed. Week beginning Monday 11th November- parent/carer consultations. More information to follow. We have had another busy week in Chestnut Class. We are very pleased that the children are feeling settled and safe in their new classroom and are getting used to the routines of our mixed age class. English As well as their daily phonics lessons, the children had the following text based lessons this week: Year one have started planning and writing our own story based on Stanley's Stick this week. In our lessons, we have been learning about nouns, adjectives and verbs and have been using them in our writing. Reception children based their drawing club activities on the story of Farmer Duck. This fed into other areas of their learning such as making lego farms, playing with the farm set, making playdough animals with cutters and utensils and floating rubbers ducks down the guttering in the water trays! Maths Reception children have been exploring how numbers can be composed of 1s and began investigating the composition of 3 and 4. Composing and de-composing numbers involves children investigating part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 3 can be composed of 1 and 2. The children learnt from practical experience that a ‘whole’ is made up of smaller parts and is, therefore, bigger than its parts. Year one have come to the end of the unit on place value in which the children have learned to count on from any number, find one more and one less and to compare and order numbers. They also practised using number lines! Big ones in the playground and smaller ones in their books! Next week we will begin our second unit which is all about addition and subtraction. Wider Curriculum We learnt about Mary Anning in history this week. She was a scientist and palaeontologist who is famous for finding fossils in Lyme Regis where she lived including the first ever ichthyosaur skeleton. But perhaps her most important find, from a scientific point of view, was her discovery of the first plesiosaur. In music on Monday we began singing our harvest song The Dingle Dangle Scarecrow and on Tuesday we had our PE session with our Saints coach. Year one also learnt about the parts of a computer and we are learning how to log in to an account on a Chromebook. On Wednesday we continued with our D.T. project making a mechanism for our moving monster. All Year 1 children made a linkage system using levers and pivots and had the best time whilst making them. It was quite a fiddly task, but all persevered and really enjoyed the task! Afterwards, we continued our PSHE lessons talking about our emotions and recognising how we might behave when we feel certain emotions such as butterflies in our tummies when we are nervous or laughing when we are happy. On Thursday we had an afternoon of golden time and Karen came to say hello! The weather was glorious so we all made the most out of our outside area, playing in the sand, with the water, the dolls house, the farm shop and the construction materials. It was so nice to see them playing so beautifully together! On Friday we continued with our SAINTs PE session and had a go at our science lesson, learning about reflection. We used a torch to shine onto objects to see which ones 'reflected' the light the best. The objects we used included a mirror, a spoon, a plastic bowl, a dark blanket and a teddy bear. Reception- please remember to have a go at the phonics links posted onto dojo today and to have a go at your flashcards and your sound blending books! Year 1- well done on the fantastic efforts with your spellings and your homework! Remember to keep this up as it really makes a difference.  Year one started a new unit in Literacy on Monday. This unit explores the story Stanley's Stick by John Hegley. Stanley's stick is not just a stick. With a stick in hand, Stanley's options are endless - he flies to the moon, writes in the sand, goes fishing, plays a whistle and rides a dinosaur - and his imagination takes over and the magic begins. Inspired by Stanley, we went out to find a stick to use our imagination and make our stick be whatever we wanted it to be! After reading the story as a class and writing their own alternative ending, children have worked in groups to sequence key events in the story and retell key scenes by creating picture captions. Finally, children will go on to plan and write their own version of Stanley’s Stick in past tense using their own object. Reception had fun in Drawing Club with the old cartoon favourite Trapdoor. They explored the vocabulary and created their own versions of the characters and settings before drawing their own monsters that might come out of the trapdoor! Year one have continued learning about place value in maths this week focussing on more and fewer and greater than and less than, and comparing numbers. We have spent most of the week introducing and getting to know the greater, less than and equal symbols and we are pleased to say that by today they were really getting in the swing of it. A good way to remember what symbol means what, is the greedy crocodile eats the greater number...meaning the greater number goes at the bigger/open end of the symbol and the number that is less goes to the smallest point of the symbol. Lots of photos in books and a pic collage here! Wider curriculum On Monday afternoon we learnt about Marie Curie in history another great scientist from the past. The children learnt how she discovered a treatment for serious illnesses which helped people all over the world. We also learnt that her work led to the development of X-Rays and the children were keen to share if they or someone they know, had had an X-Ray. Year one went on to draw and describe what they would like to discover to help the world. On Tuesday the children enjoyed their sessions with our Saints' coach. Their outdoor sessions are focussed on multi-skills. On Wednesday afternoon in D.T we learnt about mechanisms, levers, linkages and pivots. We found them in everyday objects such as door handles, scissors, toy cars and staplers and then we found them in pictures. After this we looks at a special moving monster the children are going to create with pivots and levers and had a go at designing one. We then spent time as a whole class discussing listening. What makes a good listener, how can we show we are listening, and what happens if we don't listen. On Thursday afternoon in Science we all learnt about day and night and why this happens. We watched a video clip, looked at some pictures and then experimented with blow up globes and our own torches. We then drew our own diagrams and our own day and night pictures. We learnt it takes 24 hours for the Earth to spin in one rotation, making one whole day! After this we then continued to learn about the Muslim faith of Islam. We reminded ourselves about Allah and then watched a video about a young girl telling us about the five pillars of Islam. We discussed how pillars are strong and what happens if they weren't there and then added an action to each pillar to remind our selves. On Friday afternoon we had our next P.E session with our SAINTs coach. After P.E we had a bit of independent learning time for being so focused all week. Reception parents- phonics sheets in book bags and links to sounds learnt this week on Class Dojo. Year 1 parents- maths homework, spelling and reading due in on Monday. Thank you Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby Literacy Tree (Year 1) We explored the themes in the book Here We Are this week. We agreed that the author (Oliver Jeffers) wants us to: Be kind, Be happy, Be caring, Be an explorer and Be a hero We thought that you can be a hero with really small acts like picking up a piece of litter or turning the light off. We have begun making leaflets inspired by this book which has a subtitle of Notes for living on Planet Earth. We are focussing on 3 ideas which are: Looking after our planet; looking after ourselves and looking after each other. Drawing Club (Reception) Drawing club was taught through a traditional story this week - The 3 Billy Goats Gruff. The children enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains in the story and explored the story more through continuous provision for example seeing if the could make rafts to get the goats across the river instead of using the bridge! Maths In maths this week we continue our learning about place value in Year 1. This week we have covered the following small steps: Count on from any number; 1 more; Count backwards within 10; 1 less; Compare groups by matching. We have covered these concepts through practical work, through images and through written work supported by these in their books. They have done exceptionally well with their transition to this more abstract work. Reception have also begun some short more focussed maths sessions based on research from the NCETM (National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics). This week we the children have been encouraged to quantify sets of objects by subitising, rather than counting. When subitising, children can say how many there are in a small group of objects by ‘just seeing’ and knowing straightaway without needing to count. Their learning is also developed through our continuous provision where they have begun practising number formation, counting and creating repeating patterns. Wider Curriculum Year 1 and Reception. In History, we continued to learn about important scientists and engineers by finding out about the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. We investigated making bridges with paper and testing the strength with pennies. We folded the paper and found that it was stronger. Ellie suggested "the more layers the stronger the bridge" - great scientific thinking! While Reception then explored making bridges with blocks, Year one learnt more about Brunel's amazing structures including the Albert Bridge which is the bridge that crosses the Tamar on the Devon/Cornwall border and Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. He also built ships including the SS Great Britain. Year one designed their own bridges inspired by these. Year one were asked in their computing lesson on Tuesday - "What is technology". We learnt that technology is anything made by a human that helps us. The children showed their understanding of this concept by doing a technology hunt in the classroom and returned with: a hole punch, glue sticks, pencils, scissors and an iPad! In Science this week we focused on the question 'How do we see objects?'. Within this lesson we found out how light travels in straight lines from a light source, bounces off an object and enters our eyes via our pupils. We investigated how light travels in straight lines by making slit boxes and placing a torch inside to watch how the light travels out the other side. The children did so well at remembering this and we excellent at drawing diagrams about it. Well done! In D.T this week we began our focus 'Making a monster' by investigating and making sliders and levers. We linked this to the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff for Reception and to bridges for Year 1, by creating a character to cross a bridge using a slider. In R.E we continued asking questions about the Muslim faith and the religion Islam, by learning about the 99 names of Allah. We played games with our own names, names we give each other and I've tasked the children to find out the meaning of their own name! Our PE sessions were lead by our SAINTS coaches again and we did gymnastics in the hall today. Our PSHE lessons continued with getting to know each other, our school rules and expectations. It's been another incredibly busy week again! Well done everyone! Reception parents...please remember to support your children by sharing phonics flashcards, having a go at the phonics sheet and watching the phonics videos together posted on dojo. Year 1 parents...please remember to read with your child every night and record it in the book, support them with their Year 1 maths homework linked to our maths learning this week and also spelling practise. Thank you, Mrs Ware and Miss Ruby |
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