First Full Week!

Routines!

This week was an introduction into how our week will generally look and the children coped expertly with it. 

Brain Blasts

When the children come in to class, they self register and select their dinner choice on the interactive whiteboard before beggining Brain Blasts. These are short, 10/15 minute activities that the learners complete independently in groups I have decided. I did ask the children to choose 3 children they would like to have in their group and ensured that atleast one of those other children were in their group. 

Numeracy: Place Value

We start every year with place value as our focus because it is a fundamental foundation for so many mathematical concepts. By giving the learners a secure knowledge of place value, it will make other, more challenging concepts seem much less daunting. 

This week we started with the physical resources (dienes) to represent numbers. It is so beneficial for learners to physically make the number and be able to visualise what it looks like, rather than being an abstract idea. We then moved on to representing numbers pictorially to further support this visualisation process. 

Finally, we then looked at the value of digits within a number. We started as a whole class, with randomly generating numbers and highlighting one to find the value of. We started off small but ended up with a 12-digit number! The learners were so chuffed with their progress within this one lesson, I was so pleased. 

The next day, the children worked indepedently and chose their own level of challenge. I was again so impressed wth the application, with many learners really pushing themselves and challenging themselves when given the opportunity. We talked beforehand that we won't learn from doing something we already know we can do. In order to make progress we have to try levels that are more challenging than what we can do! 

Literacy: Guided Reading

It is the Year of Reading!

So this week we focused on introducing the children to our guided reading sessions and how they would work. Learners have been split into 5 groups that will rotate around 5 different activities linked to reading over the course of the week. Many of these activities will remain the same to build independence and key reading skills, such as comprehension and the 8 Reading Behaviours. 

We again utilised the book Beegu to talk about empathy. I was blown away by the children's responses, as they made links that I hadn't noticed. Being able to link learning opportunities to real life experiences is crucial in embedding learning. 

Expressive Arts

The learners created their own friends for Beegu. They had to draw what their friend will look like, give it a name, think about it’s personality, its hobbies/interests and why they would be a good friend to Beegu. 

I can already tell that this is going to be a very creative class, and a strength that I will seek to utilise to support other areas of learning. 

Outdoor Learning

A massive thank you to Mrs Morgan and Mrs Conibeer, who will be covering my Outdoor Learning slot this year. 

This week I left the children the challenge of creating self portraits using the natural resources. All worked extremely hard and the end results were great! Pictures to follow soon! 

Well done to everyone who brought their outdoor learning kit. Please remember to bring it with you on a Thursday, as we will not be able to take children out without kit as part of health and safety and our risk assessment, especially as we head into Autumn and Winter. 

Highlight of the Week!

This week we have been considering the value and importance of our names. We read the book My name is a gift as a discussion starter. We considered how our name is probably the first gift we receive. At the end of the book, the character invites us to tell her all about our names.

The learners had to write their name phonetically to help with pronunciation e.g. Lil-ee, Loo-nar, Tom-us

The learners also had to list their nicknames, find the origin of their name and what their name meant. They were all keen to find out where their names originated, particularly what language it derived from. 

The learners were also able to say if they were named after anyone. For example, all my children have middle names that are after someone esle in the family. 

Everyone's favourite part though was using pixel art on excel to write our names. The children had to show perseverance with some of the tricker letters, such as 's', but all were very happy with their end results. So much so, that they wanted to do their surnames too in many instances. 

Week 2 Done! 

I am not sure about the children, but I was shattered by the end of the week. I hope you all have a great weekend full of rest. It is unlikely for me with 4 children at home but here's hoping! 

See you on Monday for another week of excellent learning!