Reception class news

Reception class, we have completed another amazing week of learning, whether you have been at home or in provision in the classroom. It has been lovely to hear you say good morning to each other on our group greeting post each day and hear what you have been enjoying in your learning.

I am so proud of each and everyone of you for how you engaged with your learning, followed the learning videos and clips I have made for you, responded with your own little videos and clips of your learning outcomes, pictures of your finished work and lovely messages of support and thanks.

It has also been lovely to catch up with all of you by telephone and check that you are all well and coping with how our learning has changed over the past few weeks. Again, thank you for all the kind messages of thanks and support, it truly shows we are a class family and pull together in difficult times.

In our learning this week we have continued with our theme of pirates and in our Literacy development we wrote from a characters perspective, building upon last week's learning of understanding characters and their roles in stories. Our character was the moon, if we look through the book he gazes down and observes what is happening in different parts of the story. To prepare ourselves for writing we drew a storyboard of the different sights that he saw. Then we added spoken sentences with Makaton actions to aid our memory for writing. We then used this to structure our sentences, counting out the number of words needed and then sounded out our words, writing the sounds we could hear. Once secure in our sentence writing we changed character at the end of the week and wrote what we would do if we were Tom the pirate.

In our Mathematical Development we have counted to 9 and 10 and used the ten frame to scaffold our counting. When counting we focused on 1:1 correspondence of spoken word to object, stable order and cardinality: the last number said in a count representing the total number of objects. We made beautiful button birthday cards for family members, counting out the buttons that we creatively made into people, pets, balloons or flowers.

When using a ten frame, we understood that it can be used vertically or horizontally and the number represented is the same. We explored different representations of 9 and 10 and how to count 10 from a larger group.

In our Understanding of the World Development we have continued to explore habitats and understand what makes a good habitat. Some of us used cardboard boxes or shoe boxes to create a habitat for a chosen animal, some of us were very inventive with bowls of water and even living room cushions! Mr Dale who helped set the task was very impressed with our efforts and couldn't believe how inventive we have been.

In our Physical Development we travelled in different ways on a colour hunt around our homes and garden to find as many different colours as we could, exploring which room was the most colourful and which colour we could find the most of.

We have also explored maps this week and how they are used by people to navigate their way around an area or to and from a place. as we explored where we see maps in everyday life, we found maps in story some of our story books, a leaflet and on the computer. Using simple drawings we drew a map of our bedroom and even managed to add a X for some treasure for someone in our house to find.

Mr Dale also set us another coding challenge of alien drawing or Lego building. We had to make a small barrier so our partner couldn't see what we were doing and then we had to give them a set of clear instructions to copy what we were constructing. Once finished we took away the small barrier to see if the two structures were the same. I'll be honest, there were varying degrees of success!! Giving very clear instructions is trickier than it sounds!

During the week we also took time to have a well being afternoon, where we relaxed, listened to music, concentrated on our breathing, went for a walk, enjoyed some colouring, even a early bubble bath and hot chocolate drink!

Enjoy your well earned rest and we look forward to next week.

Mrs Ward, Alex and Rachael.