Headteacher: Anna Moss

0121 445 1622

Red Class Fanfare

Hello Red Class,

You’ve settled back into school beautifully and made a great start to our new topic, ‘Blackwell Bear Travels’. Thank you for collecting lots of items linked to Spain. We’ve looked at books, photos, a flamenco dress and many more fantastic items.

I’ve really enjoyed sharing ‘The Enormous Paella’ with you. This story is based on ‘The Enormous Turnip’. Rather than pulling out a turnip, we’ve been stirring a paella! We use the Pie Corbett style of storytelling to help the children to learn stories by heart. This approach also helps the children to build a bank of story language. We use story maps, sequencing cards and actions to retell the story. At the end of this topic, we will retell ‘The Enormous Paella’ as part of our Spanish showcase.

In Maths, we made numbers between 6 and 10 using egg boxes.  To do this quickly, we made 5 by filling one side of the egg box and then we added the rest of the cubes. So, we made 6 with 5 cubes and 1 more cube and 7 with 5 cubes and 2 more cubes. We also discovered how to subtract a number of cubes from an egg box to make a number. So, we made 9 by filling the egg box and subtracting 1. Later in the week, we used tally lines to represent a number to 4.

In Phonics, we recapped previously taught letter names and sounds. Please use your little sound book at home to practise your letter sounds and names, particularly b, h, n and u. We also spent the week generating, reading, matching and spelling rhyming words. When we teach keywords in school, we try to group rhyming words together so that we can begin to see letter patterns. You were very good at telling me that ‘no’ and ‘go’ were rhyming words because they both end with the same sound. Can you think of another word to rhyme with 'no' and 'go'?

You will find a pack of information, from our curriculum workshop, in your book bag. The pack should contain the following:

-Reading and writing PowerPoint slides

-Keyword games sheet

-Letter formation sheet

-Handwriting progression sheet from Reception to Year 4

-Maths PowerPoint slides

-Maths games sheet

-Reception mental maths objectives

The main messages from the meeting included:

1. Use pure sounds when reading. Try not to add  –er to the end of sounds.

2. When reading at home, walk through the book first. Talk about the story and orally rehearse the sentences in the story before asking your child to read. Walking through the book will help to build confidence and fluency.

3. We start formal letter formation in January. However, we’re helping the children to write their first name using cursive letter formation.  We use Write Dance, which is a music and movement scheme, to prepare the children for writing. We also practise spelling using magnetic letters, letter tiles and similar resources and we build sentences using word cards. 

4. Count backwards just as much as you count forwards.

If you would like to find out more about how we teach reading, writing and maths, please pop into school.

Rest, play and have a lovely weekend Red Class,

Mrs Webb, Mrs Reid, Mrs Cain and Miss Davis xxx