Welcome back to everyone and a special welcome to Dan who joins us full-time after coming for 2 days/week last half-term.
It was wonderful to see how happy the children were to be back in school today (and staff!) and the sun shone for playtime! Yay!
The new curriculum newsletters went home today 🙂 as you can see we have a very exciting term full of minibeasts and growing.
Progress against the spring term target sheets will be coming home on Friday along with new summer targets. We are really pleased with the progress pupils are making – so please congratulate them.
In the meantime, I couldn’t help but share this sweet Maisy Mouse Itty Bitty bug song.
All pupils now have an individual reading book which should be brought to school every day. These books are designed to be shared/read with support from an adult/older sibling.
All pupils will read/share their book with an adult in class every day. Books will be changed weekly.
Please complete the reading diary to comment that a book/page has been shared. It is much better to look at a single page for 5mins/day rather than to spend an hour trying to read/discuss the whole book.
Key points to notice – children need to identify the front cover, back cover, front page and more able, understand what is meant by author.
We are revising letter signs/phonemes (sounds) at pace and this week’s focus is ‘m’. We have been enjoying some ‘rap’ phoneme songs on youtube, this is the M letter song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiK7IL0kqd0 (it is American, and does mention mall as one of the m words, but is great for practising lots of ‘m’ sounding (lips pressed together) – and it’s fun!
In class, we use this finger-spelling sign the most for Monday (sign M followed by ‘day’ sign) and if someone’s first initial is M we sign M to identify them once we know their name. (The first time they are introduced it would be fingerspelt for someone who could not hear, or needed to know how to spell :).
What an exciting day – our trip to Cadburyworld! We walked through an Aztec jungle, looked at carvings of the cacao beans and of some ancient Aztecs, and saw a variety of multimedia displays explaining how chocolate is made and when it came to Britain. It was Oliver Cromwell (Tudor times) that brought it to our shores. There was lots of history.
We walked around the Bournville factory – and watched a huge vat of liquid chocolate being stirred to keep it silky-smooth, and followed the sweet scent of chocolate down to where it was moulded. Everyone enjoyed a small cup of liquid chocolate!
All the children enjoyed the Cadabra ride through the land of the little chocolate beans and played a few games along the way. Outside, we discovered the play area before setting off for a picnic and play at Cannonhill Park.
This week will be following up our visit with links to literacy (people who help us – food manufacturers), science (melting and freezing), history (the Aztecs) and Art/DT (chocolate dips).
We would be delighted to see you at our Mother’s day assembly on Friday 16th March in the school hall. Fathers, grandmothers are welcome too! It really makes a difference for every child to have someone there to share in their achievements. Read the rest of this entry »
We will be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday with lots of book-based fun activities including making our very own class book.
If your child has a favourite book or character – please let us know, and we can include it in our day’s activities.
Children will be coming home with a £1 gift voucher which can be exchanged for 1 of 8 books or used as part-payment against any book over £2.99.
In the interim, if you have not yet discovered http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk – it is a great site with lots of reading books for all abilities from non-readers to L3/4 readers. (Unfortunately, the site uses Flash, so is not iPad compatible at the moment).
Two days training and only three days back teaching and an Ofsted inspection, what an exhausting week!
In class 3 this week
Communication: We have been busy learning the c, and k sounds (as in cat and king), and accompanying Makaton signs. Would it help to have Makaton signs of the week on here?
Even if children can talk, signing has been proven to improve literacy and it’s great in a noisy place like a restaurant with the kids!
I know some parents are supporting signing at home and we really notice in class – thank you!
Some children are focusing on their listening and reading skills (comprehension).
Maths: In maths, we made a class bar chart of our heights – using the vocabulary tall and short. We continue to sing lots of number songs (5 little firemen and 10 in the bed today) and extend number experiences with quantities up to and over 100.
Science: We are reviewing our learning so far on life processes and children planted seeds – cress, peas and salad leaves which we are growing in window-greenhouse pockets :).
Have a very happy weekend – let’s hope we see some more sunshine – how wonderful to see crocuses peering through the grass already.
Try exploring some of these links for some online fun! Have a very happy half-term and see you on Wednesday 22nd February – Monday/Tuesday are INSET days.
Mrs Chapman
Literacy
Try viewing (and recognising/signing/sounding) the letters of the alphabet and the animals:
BBC schools KS1 site (some of these are for readers):
We have learnt the sounds/signs for s,a,t,i,p,n. Some of the children really enjoy ‘phonics with the funnies’, this link is for n, but you can search for the others:
Online stories (all abilities including readers/non-readers – choose by age):
Early counting fun: You need a small packet of little sweets or raisins etc. (that the child loves), a plate and a bowl. Place the sweets/fruit in a bowl, and demonstrate ‘put 1 on the plate’, say ‘yes’ and return to the bowl with the instruction ‘your turn’. When it is achieved, they get to ‘keep’ (probably eat :)) the sweet. Change the 1 to 2 and 3 and mix it up.
Adding: With two plates, place a sweet on one plate and another on the other plate. Use the language and (for add) and altogether – to encourage counting altogether, remembering to count left-to-right. So, ‘how many altogether’ – and demonstrate pointing and counting each sweet, followed by ‘yes’ and again get to keep when they get it right. Change the quantities as you get better, so 2+3 etc.
Topic – people who help us
5 little firemen song:
lots of fire/hazard interactive games on the Cheshire fire website: (choose games)
We had a very exciting day today. A visit from Nigel, our local firefighter schools coordinator, who spent an engaging morning talking to pupils in class 2 and 3 about fire safety. We learnt the matches poem:
Matches matches do not touch
They will hurt you very much.
He showed us a video of how quickly a bedroom could catch fire and explained what we should do to prevent a fire:
making sure all electrical appliances are switched off
never leaving candles unattended
making sure we have smoke alarms in our houses
shutting doors inside our homes to prevent fires spreading so quickly
he also explained what to do if we saw a fire – shout ‘Fire’ and get out as well as ring 999.
Then, the fire engine came to visit. Children got into the engine and sat where the firefighters sit, and the hose was connected to the delight of everyone – and the field got a good soaking!
Welcome back to everyone and a special welcome to Dan who joins us full-time after coming for 2 days/week last half-term. 
reynaldsclass3 