PLEASE SEE THE ‘HOME LEARNING’ PAGE TO SEE MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT YOUR CHILD AT HOME
This term our enquiry question is ‘How do stories help us learn?’
It is an exciting theme to explore because the children love talking about and sharing their favourite stories with us. We will be learning and re telling well-known stories in our own words. We will also be discussing what makes a story exciting and how stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Here are some of the well-known stories we will be exploring with the children this term.
- The Three Little Pigs
- The Gingerbread Man
- Jack and The Beanstalk
- The Bristol Giants
- The little Red Hen
As Part of this topic the children will be planting their own beans and learning about what they need to grow. They will be making gingerbread and carry out scientific experiments to find out what type of liquid the gingerbread will last the longest in.
What an exciting half term it is going to be!
At Stoke Bishop we follow a programme called Mastering number. The children really enjoy the materials that we use to teach the programme, especially the number blocks aspect.
Mastering Number starts by building on the children previous experiences of number from home and Pre School.
During Term 5 there is a focus on:
- Counting objects that cannot be seen. Counting larger sets of objects up to 20 with a focus on careful counting strategies, such as, touching each object and saying one number in sequence and stopping at the last object and knowing that is total amount.
- Subitising (seeing the quantity without counting) to 6, including in structured arrangements such as doubles on a tens frame.
- Exploring the composition of numbers 6 to 9 using the ‘5 and a bit’ structure. Children will use their fingers and loose parts to represent different quantities. Children will also be able to explain the composition of the number using the sentence stems ‘ ….. is made of ….. and ……’ and ‘….. and …… make …..’
- Exploring the composition of 10 using two parts. Children will also be able to recall number facts to 10 using the sentence stems ‘ 10 is made of ….. and ……’ and ‘….. and …… make 10’
- Comparing numbers linked to ordinality: considering where numbers to 10 are in relation to each other. Children will reason about numbers and think carefully about which is more or less.
Every other week, the children will engage in a maths afternoon where they can explore and embed their newly taught maths skills and knowledge through fun and engaging maths learning activities.
In addition, continuous provision is available for the children during independent up and busy time. This is where the children can develop their mathematical skills independently through their play. For example playing games, solving maths problems and exploring capacity, weight and time in the outside garden.
In Term 3 and 4 the children will be completing Phase 3 Mastery. Phase 3 Mastery gives all children the opportunity to develop a deep understanding and competence in the phase. Revisiting GPCs taught in this phase and asking children to retrieve previously taught knowledge will support their retention of sounds and common exception words. Phase 3 Mastery also further builds the children’s understanding, allows teachers to address any common misconceptions and further develops children’s fluency and automaticity when using these sounds.
We will be revisiting the GPCs in the same order as phase 3, so please refer to the previous videos and Phase 3 sound mat to support at home. With home learning this term, we will be focusing on reading words with digraphs and trigraphs in and writing words.
The format of the weekly lessons will continue to follow the same pattern as last terms. See below for the progression.
j v w x me
y z zz qu we be
ch sh th ng he she
ai ee igh oa was you
oo ar or ur they all
Reading books
As part of the phonic programme, we use regular assessment to help children keep up with the pace and provide additional support where necessary. Through this regular assessment we send home books that are matched to your child’s phonic ability.
Useful documents to help your child with their reading and writing.
More information about our phonic scheme can be found on the website under curriculum – phonics.
As always if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
Forest School
This term we will be beginning Forest School sessions on Friday mornings! These will include hunting for birds and mini-beasts, making magic potions and mini-dens for small creatures and natural craft activities as well as storytelling and singing. These will be short sessions (30-40 minutes) and the children will be wearing their waterproofs but please do ensure that they are wearing appropriate layers for cold weather. The sessions will begin on Friday 17th January.