This term:

In English

We are looking at the books:

• Whatever Next by Jill Murphy 
• The way back home by Oliver Jeffers
• How to catch a star by Oliver Jeffers
• There's no place like space by Tish Rabe 
• Look Inside: Space by Rob Lloyd Jones & Benedetta Giaufret & Enrica Rusina

This term, we are starting our Talk for writing project which is based on the story ‘Whatever Next’ by Jill Murphy. The children will learn to retell the story using actions and focus on using story language. We will sequence pictures from the story and build up to writing the beginning, middle and end, drawing on language from the book.

We will continue to follow the Sounds Write phonics programme. They will be learning some new sounds and working on their consolidation of the ones already learnt. We will also continue to blend and segment these sounds to read and write words. The children will really benefit from practising this skill at home by completing the fortnightly homework activity and regular reading. Weekly, children will be provided with opportunities for free and structured writing.

In Mathematics:

This term, the children will continue to build on their subsidising skills and begin to quickly see the subgroups in larger numbers using spatial language. This skill will help to deepen the children’s understanding of part–whole relations and allow them to further consider composition (the numbers within numbers). The children will continue to engage with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are and revisit the concept of cardinality – that the last number in the count tells us how many things there are ALTOGETHER. They will also continue to be provided with opportunities to hear, join in with and develop their knowledge of the counting sequence.

Look what we've been up to in Owls 

 

Week 1 -

We have had a great start to the new term. We have launched off our new topic on space by learning that the planet we live on is Earth! We are excited to learn about our Solar System and what planets make it up over the next few weeks. In Literacy, we have been using the sentence stem ‘my favourite present was’ to write about our favourite present for Christmas. In maths, we have been learning to subitise with our eyes, and matching the quantity to the correct numeral. We are getting better at recognising our numbers to 5. We have also been talking about and drawing people in our family for understanding the world. We also had something very excited new equipment that had been built. It has already been a boat, a secret hideaway and a house!

 

Week 2- 

This week in Owls Class we have been exploring the text ‘Whatever Next’ by Jill Murphy and looking at all things ‘Space’ related. In Literacy, children have had their introduction to the idea of story maps using the story map to recite the story ‘Whatever Next’. We have also learnt and created actions for it! In maths, we’ve been ordering numbers 1-5 and children have been learning to give their own rationale for their ideas. Our home corner has become a space station and the children have enjoyed dressing up as Baby Bear complete with colanders for space helmets. The cold weather has not stopped us from using our outdoor area and this week children have been ‘fishing’ from the new equipment!

Week 3 - 

We were so pleased to see that all our outside equipment was still in place when we arrived at school on Monday, and we had a weather ‘discussion’ and even learnt that storms are given names.

 In Literacy, we have been re-writing the story ‘Whatever Next’ using our story maps. We’ve been continuing to order numbers 1-5 in maths and have been practising ordering the numerals 1-5 by cutting the numbers out and making our own number tracks.

We have enjoyed landing spacecraft (Cheerios) on to landing pads (dried spaghetti) in our continuous provision and have also made our own playdough this week.

 

Week 4 - 

This week in Owls children have been learning how to take care of the outside environment. We went on an environmental walk around the school to see all the different ways we care about the outside. In Maths, we have been partitioning numbers into 2 parts. We have learnt that 6 is made of 5 and 1 more. We used the dice frames to help support our partitioning. Miss Butterfield was very proud of the children who challenged themselves and wrote the number sentence as well.

Week 5 -

This week in Owls all the children have been fantastic with showing both Miss Butterfield and I all of their maths knowledge. We had some children counting to 100! In Literacy, we have innovated the story by changing the character of Baby Bear to a character of our choice. We then wrote a sentence to describe our character sing adjectives, some children even used the conjunction ‘and’. We have loved doing our topic of Space this term and have finished it off with drawing and painting the solar system. We hope you all have a relaxing half term.