Reception class news

Reception Class, thank you for another fantastic week of learning, whether you have joined us remotely or in class.

This week we have read 'Tiddler' by Julia Donaldson as a stimulus for our literacy development. We listened to Julia read it with the aid of her puppets and were very excited by the special guest appearance of Axel Scheffler, the books illustrator, who drew Tiddler dreaming of being back in class with his friends again. From this we thought about what we were looking forward to and drew this in a dream bubble. Tiddler comes up with some great excuses for being late to school so we thought if we could be creative and come up with our own reasons for being late too: Sorry I'm late Mrs Ward....I got swallowed by a shark and it wouldn't let me out in time!!

If Tiddler goes to school everyday, we wondered what lessons he might take part in? We came up with swimming, learning about what he could and couldn't eat, habitats so he could avoid predators, diving and many more exciting lessons. We enjoyed watching a video of the world's largest aquarium and thought about words we would use to describe what we had seen. It was so calming mesmerising to watch all the different sea creatures swimming alongside each other, we imagined that's what it must be like for Tiddler too!

In our Mathematical Development we explored the concept of combining two groups to find the whole number. Building upon our previous knowledge of using the part whole model, when we used it to explore number bonds to five last term, we explored addition to 10.
To help us in our understanding of how the part-whole model works we looked at misconceptions and identified that no matter which way the model was orientated we could always identify the two parts and the whole number. Using practical concrete objects and pictorial number representations used number stories (Stem sentences) to explain the compositions of the two parts and the whole number.

In our Understanding the World development we discovered what animals live under the sea with Miss Hughes. We listened to her read a story about 'Fidgety Fish' and discussed the different creatures that live in the sea. To complete our activity we created a sensory underwater bottle! This involved adding water, blue food colouring to represent the reflection of the sky, oil and small glittery object to represent fish and sea life. I must admit they look absolutely brilliant, and we are using ours as calm jars in class on the tables whilst we work.

For our coding activity we hade to think guiding Fuzz through the maze using direction arrows. We certainly had to know our left from our right to complete this one!

Our focus for our Physical Development was Gymnastics. We followed the steps about making our bodies into different shapes, making sure we had enough space around us in case we got a bit wobbly! After we had finished we had a look at what Ziggy got up to when he visited a Gymnastics club in 'Lazy Town Extra.'

One of our main focuses this week has been wellbeing as part of Children's Mental Health week. Did you know, no two people have the same fingerprint?! Your finger is completely unique to you. This led us to think about other things that makes us unique, special and different and drew in a fingerprint template
We also enjoyed expressing ourselves through dance, playing music that makes us happy and spend some time dancing.

To finish of our week of wellbeing we spent Friday off timetable and joined a virtual tour of Chester Zoo, where we saw penguins, giraffes, red pandas , tiger and fish. This was very exciting as Rachael's daughter was the live host for the giraffe session. What a great job she did and we were all excited for Rachael to see her.

Mrs Ward, Alex and Rachael.