It's Christmas!!!

What a busy and exhausting last week of term it has been! The children have continued to work hard and in Literacy they have described what they can see in a nativity scene setting. In Maths the children ordered strips of green paper from shortest to longest, which when stuck down they realised resembled a Christmas tree! In readiness for the Christmas party to finish off the term, the children also made party hats. Their art this week involved making Christmas tree decorations by winding wool around cardboard triangles and then adding and threading on adornments - they looked lovely and very effective!

The children had a lovely last day which included a Christmas sing-song with the whole school. At this, they had the opportunity to stand and sing to everyone; they sang The Brussel Sprout Blues, which was a great hit with the rest of the school! They sat beautifully and joined in with the songs that they knew and were a real credit to the Reception teaching team. On returning to class, the children all listened to a live broadcast from Santa at The North Pole, who read the children T'was The Night Before Christmas. The day concluded with the class Christmas Parties, which included party games in the classrooms followed by party food, which we ate altogether in the dining hall. Thank you so much for all of your kind donations of food. For your information any party food that was left over, was donated to charity, so I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that nothing went to waste. The afternoon was finished off with a very exciting visit by Santa, who delivered Christmas presents to the children as they have been so good!

Congratulations to everyone who was awarded with a well-done or who celebrated a birthday. 

The first topic for the Spring Term is going to be Dinosaurs. A copy of our curriculum map has been attached below for your information, so you can see some of the activities and learning that will be taking place. This is a working document and so likely to change and evolve, but you should hopefully find it useful. For Show and Tell on the first Tuesday back next term (07.01.20), we would like the children to learn a dinosaur fact that they can share with their class. 

Dinosaurs
File Size:	623 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---

By now, I am sure that many of your children will have told you that they may be moving Read, Write Inc. groups. This is because we have spent the last couple weeks assessing each of them and then reorganising the groups so that they are all working in groups of the same ability. The results have been most pleasing with virtually every child making progress. We now have one group of children working in a Ditty group, which means that these children will now be bringing home a reading book linked to the phonics that they are learning in school. For the rest of the children, they will continue to work on phonemes and in particular blending, as this is the one skill that they must have to be able to move into a Ditty group e.g. Fred Talking (sounding out), for example, c-a-t and then blending to say 'cat'. For those children not in a Ditty group, they should continue to practice with the cards that they have been so far given and using these to compose words which they should then try to Fred Talk, blend and read. New cards will not be reissued, as the next half term will be revision of the sounds they have been taught so far but with a focus on Fred Talk and blending skills. 

Finally, thank you so much for your continued support. It's terrifying to realise that we are already one third of the way through the academic year! We hope you all have a happy, healthy and restful Christmas holiday and we look forward to seeing you in a new decade!