Shapes

This week we have had a very short week in school but have managed to do lots of fun things. We have welcomed another new friend into our class. Noa has joined us and has enjoyed exploring the corners in our classrooms! She has been very excited to meet all of the new animals in the farm and was even brave enough to ride the donkey- she had three turns and didn’t want to get off! Noa has enjoyed getting to know us and is even beginning to say some words to me in English.

Because we only had three days this week we have focused on the concept of shapes within all of our corner activities.  We have had lots of fun learning the names of the different 2D shapes and have become particularly confident to learn the names of the square, rectangle, circle, triangle and diamond. We have enjoyed creating the different shapes using a variety of materials. The children have particularly forming models of the shapes with straws, lollipop and cocktail sticks and have found very creative ways to join the materials together to form the different shapes. We also enjoyed creating shape pictures using the different shapes and the pictures looked very effective with all the different coloured shape stickers. The children enjoyed using different things in the classroom to create shapes in the plasticine and we discovered that most of the things we have in our creative colours are circular. Finally, the children enjoyed using the blocks in the construction area. They formed all of the shapes, using the blocks and we even started thinking about the names of the 3D shapes and how they were connected to the 2D shapes we were learning about.

In phonics this week, Sergi, Kai, Luke and Noa have continued to revising the first six sounds we have learnt- ‘s,a,t,p,i,n’. We have completed matching activities- matching the objects to the correct letter which they begin with. We have also had lots of opportunities to practise the letter formation of each letter and Sergi has been especially concentrated when trying to correctly form each of the letters. We have also started to learn about another new letter and the sound it makes- the ‘m’. We have done lots of fun activities to help us learn different words which start with this sound. The children have enjoyed using paint to create their own mountains within the letter ‘m’ shape and we worked together to create a large letter ‘m’ mountain to display in our phonics area. The children enjoyed using tinfoil and glitter when creating their own shiny moon and they learnt the skill of colour mixing when pouring all of the different coloured glitters into a tray. We practised the formation of the letter ‘m’ when writing the letter lots of time inside the moon shape and we had to think carefully about which colours were best to use so that we could see them well on the black card. We have also enjoyed learning about monsters and we used lots of things to try and create our own monster. However, the children found it tricky to think of ideas of how to make their monsters individual and scary so we will continue to work on this theme when revising the ‘m’ sound next week. 

Jordi and Amrita have continued to learn the set 1 sounds, using the sound- picture cards. Amrita has become particularly confident with recognising the letter ‘f’ and the sound it makes. She enjoyed creating flower pictures within the letter and was confident to show us how to form the sound with her lips. Amrita is now working hard to recognise the letter ‘l’ and enjoyed creating a picture of a leg and turning the flick of the ‘l’ into a foot. Jordi has also been working hard with the sound picture cards and is now confident to use the picture cues to recognise the ‘th’ sound and recognise some things which start with this sound. He is now working hard on the ‘ng’ sound and is thinking carefully about how to make the long sound, using his throat. He has enjoyed creating pictures of different ‘things on a string’ to help him remember this sound.

In maths this week, Judit and Sara have been working on addition and subtraction. Sara has been confident to use the grid method to add three digit numbers but she found the addition of decimal numbers more difficult due to not being confident as to the position of the numbers and the decimal point within the grid when adding the numbers together. When learning about subtraction, Sara found the grid method more difficult and became confused with how to carry the numbers across the grid so that she was able to subtract each of the numbers. Judit was very confident to add whole and decimal numbers, using the grid method and was very enthusiastic to explain the method she had used to work out the answer. When working through the subtraction problems Judit found it more difficult and was confused by which method she needed to use. This week, Sara and Judit also worked on word problems. Both girls found it difficult to select the information they needed from within the problem to allow them to be able to work out the answer. We will continue to work on word problems next week when further practising the concept of addition and subtraction.

In reading comprehension, this week, Judit and Sara have been working on playscripts. Sara enjoyed reading the play and was confident to explain the features of a playscript. She read the play well and developed good comprehension of the content of the play. She could explain the parts which each character played and is beginning to develop more inferential understanding of the events within the play. Judit found her playscript much more difficult. We worked again on Shakespeare and tried to decipher the vocabulary which he used. However, Judit found it very difficult to comprehend the meaning of the sentences and this made it difficult for her to answer the questions. We will continue to work on simple extracts from Shakespeare to help Judit extend her vocabulary and develop her comprehension skills when reading older English texts.

Within punctuation and grammar, Sara has been learning about capital letters and is becoming very confident to identify where to place capital letters within a sentence. She has also been focusing on singular and plural nouns and is confident to change a singular noun when the word has become plural. However, we need to do more work on irregular nouns as Sara found it difficult to recognise how to change the word so that it is written correctly in English. Judit has been working on common and proper nouns and she was very confident to identify when a word was a proper noun and thus needs to have a capital letter when written. Judit has also been working on the concept of commas. She worked really hard to identify where a comma needs to be placed for the sentence to have the correct meaning and she was very confident to explain her ideas. However, she found it more difficult to use commas to create a list. We will continue to work on this within our punctuation lessons next week.