Curriculum Overview

Welcome back everyone. We hope you had a restful half term break and are ready for the exciting weeks ahead.

RE

Our RE topics this half term are Welcome and Birthdays. As part of our welcoming topic, we will be learning about Baptism and will be visiting St Peter’s Church to participate in the Baptism of our class dolly with Father Sean. We also have Advent to look forward to this half term as the countdown to Christmas begins.

English

This half term in English we will be doing shared reading and lots of fun and creative activities around our big books ‘The Jigaree’, ‘The Monster’s Party’ and ‘Smarty Pants’. We will also continue individual reading sessions, in which the children will be encouraged to talk about the pictures, characters and sequence of events.

Children will be given a word pack with some focus words from our big book in the next few weeks. Please help your child to make sentences with their word packs. Please also support your child in reading at home every day, and write a short comment in their reading diary.

We have just started sound work on Letters and Sounds Phase two, and have fun phonic activities every day. We are practising segmenting and blending our words to help us with our reading and writing. The sounds we have learnt are on our windows.

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: All saints, Remembrance day, Solving problems, Anti-bullying, Advent, Children’s choice and The meaning of Christmas.

Mathematics

Every day we will be doing problem solving, reasoning and numeracy activities. This will include encouraging the children to; recognise, say and use numbers in the correct order, copy and make their own repeating patterns, make sets of different objects and discuss the methods that they have used. We will also explore and talk about 2D shapes and their properties. Please practise number recognition, counting and basic practical adding and taking away with your child at home.

Understanding of the World

We love celebrating diversity and learning about different cultures, festivals and traditions. We have lots of exciting events happening in the next few weeks such as Halloween, Bonfire Night and Remembrance Sunday.

The children have lots of opportunities to use computing to support their literacy and numeracy skills, as well as creative work. Children will learn through the use of fun educational websites such as topmarks, BusyThings, 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.

Expressive Arts and Design

Our topic for this half term is Colour. We will be doing lots of fun and creative activities linked to colour themes, such as colour mixing. We will use different techniques to explore colour such as bubble painting and painting colour wheels.

Physical Development

Our PE days are Mondays and Thursdays. Please provide your child with PE shoes in a PE bag to be left on their peg. Please remember to clearly label all your child’s uniform (especially jumpers and cardigans) and PE shoes with their name. Please also support your child in learning to put their jumpers, cardigans and coats on, especially now as winter nears.

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.

Personal, Social and Emotional

We are very pleased with how well the children have settled in to school. They have familiarised with the rules and routines of the classroom and have made lots of new friendships. The children are provided with fresh fruit as a mid-morning snack. Please help us to encourage them to eat this. We like the children to have constant access to water. Please refill your child’s water bottle daily and make sure they remember to bring it to school.

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