Curriculum Overview

Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you all the best for 2020.

RE

Our RE topics this half term are Celebrating and Gathering. We will work on how children celebrate different events in their lives, and how the parish community gathers to celebrate together. Children will discuss how they feel when they come together with friends and family, and learn how the church community gathers to celebrate Mass.

English

This half term in literacy, we will be doing shared reading and activities around our big books – The Meanies, Look for me in this ABC, and It’s the weekend. Please continue to help your child to use their word packs regularly. Children will be given a bookmark of 10 words to learn in a couple of weeks. This will support them in learning their focus words from our big books, and their tricky words.

We will continue doing individual reading sessions, in which the children will be encouraged to talk about the pictures, characters and sequence of events. Please don’t forget to write in your child’s reading record on a regular basis.

We will be commencing Letters and Sounds Phase 3, and will have fun phonic activities every day. Phase 3 teaches children about sounds that are made up of more than one letter. We will be segmenting and blending words with new sounds learnt to help us with our reading and writing. We will also continue to practise our Phase 2 sounds. Please encourage and support your child to use their phonics when reading and writing at home, in order to consolidate what they have learnt at school. The sounds we have learnt are on our windows.

The children have lots of opportunities to write and draw. We encourage children to form their letters correctly when writing. Please continue to support children in forming their letters correctly at home, according to the school’s handwriting policy.  We are also working on the correct use of capital letters, full stops and finger spaces when writing.

Communication and Language

All the children will be encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas with their classmates. Children will be supported to speak in full sentences and use as much interesting vocabulary as possible. Our talk topics for this half term are: Getting on and falling out, and Keeping safe and well.

Mathematics

Every day we have problem solving, reasoning and numeracy activities. We are continuing to teach the children to recognise, order and use numbers to 20. We will be exploring mathematical vocabulary such as more and less, tall and short, before and next etc. We will learn to copy and make repeating patterns, make sets of different objects and discuss the methods used. We will also be exploring and talking about 2D shapes and their properties.

We have also begun basic practical adding and taking away, and have started to record our answer. Please take any opportunity to reinforce number recognition, counting and basic practical adding and taking away.

Understanding of the World

Our topic this half term is Growth and Ourselves. We will be doing lots of fun and creative activities linked to themes on growing and our bodies. We will be talking about differences as we grow, naming main external body parts, learning about our 5 senses and playing lots of practical scientific games.

The children will continue to use ICT to support their literacy and numeracy skills, as well as creative work. Children have enjoyed learning from websites such as BusyThings, topmarks, phonicsplay and cbbc.

We try to cook or bake with the children every Friday, and would appreciate a weekly contribution of 50p to go towards the cost of ingredients. This can be placed in ‘the postbox’ money box on the left shelf as you come in to the classroom. We have cooked lots of delicious treats, including jelly, biscuits, cupcakes, fruit kebabs and much more.

Expressive Arts and Design

As part of our ‘Ourselves’ topic we will be doing lots of creative artwork like making skeletons with straws and painting self-portraits.  We will also continue to enjoy messy play with playdough and shaving foam, and will also be doing some junk modelling. We love using a variety of materials, textures and colours on our creative table, so old magazines, clean bottles and boxes are always appreciated.

Physical Development

In PE we are focusing on gym and dance. Children will learn to balance and travel on apparatus, as well as moving expressively to music. Our PE days are Monday and Thursday. Please support your child in learning to put their jumpers, cardigans and coats on.

We will be encouraging children to further develop their fine motor skills through tactile activities, with shaving foam and playdough, as well as through tasks involving threading and using tweezers. The children will be given lots of opportunities to write and draw, and we shall be encouraging them to form all the letters correctly. If you would like to help your child with letter formation please refer to the pre-school booklet you were given. Those children who are not quite ready for writing will practise fine motor control and mark making in a variety of media.

Please feel free talk to us after school if you have any questions or queries, or arrange an appointment at your convenience.