Reception Class are now in the last half term before they transition into Year 1.   They have had a wonderful start to their school life and this half term will continue on their learning journey with ‘Amazing Animals’ as their topic.  They will be learning about different animals and their habitats.  We will have a story book focus each week, starting with ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ by Judith Kerr to begin.
Wonderful Story Writing
The children listened to the story of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ and then each created a story map to show the beginning of the story.  They then used these to re-write the beginning themselves which they were all brilliant at doing.  They then created a story map for the middle and the end with their own idea; innovating the story.  They then wrote this to finish their stories off.  Take a look below at some of these…

Written by Ted

Written by Willow

Written by Ellice
Each child will be bringing their story home to share with their families.
Our new topic for the first half term is ‘Ourselves’ where we will be learning more about our bodies and how to keep healthy.  We will also be comparing the similarities and differences with others and thinking about what makes us unique.  The focus for each week is detailed below:
Week 1: My Body
Week 2: My Family
Week 3: My Senses
Week 4: My Emotions
The children came back to school ready to learn and we began our new topic thinking about our bodies and keeping healthy.  Some of the children made handprints using playdough and then compared the size of their hands with their friends.
Oscar and Mark spent time investigating whose hand was the largest and decided that Mark’s hand was after comparing their hand prints and holding their hands up against one another.
Katie found out that Layla’s hand was bigger than hers.
Mia found out that Olive’s hand was smaller than hers.
Jai made his handprint and told us that his hand was small and Miss Taylor’s hand was big.

Sports Day
The children were all fantastic during our Sports Day! They participated in different events including the sprint race, baton relay, long jump, the fun race and the long distance race too.  There were lots of stickers and smiles!  Thank you to all the parents that came to watch and support the class.  All your teachers were proud of you all.  Wonderful!

Multi-Skills Morning
We visited Blessed Edwards school on Thursday 2nd May to join other Catholic schools in a multi-skills morning.  The young leaders there ran the event which was enjoyed by all the children.  They got to practise different skills in a range of rotation activities including balancing, travelling, jumping and ball skills.  They were all responsible children and represented our school brilliantly.

Phonics
We have finished Phase 3 of the Letters and Sounds phonics programme and will now be starting Phase 4.  The purpose of this phase is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words.
Words containing adjacent consonants are either CVCC words, for example tent, or CCVC words, for example clap.  This  builds on the current knowledge of CVC words and introduces words using four sounds.
Pollysyllabic words are words that contain more than one syllable, whcih the children have to break down into smaller chunks to enable them to read or write them, for example football or melting.
Children will have daily phonics sessions and further opportunities in the classroom to practise reading and writing CVCC and CCVC words.  They will also have homework to support them further, which will be added to their phonics packs.