A handout that explains the C of ELs in more detail:

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Just a reminder that the last day of term is Wednesday 21st December.  Please note: pick up is earlier than usual at 2pm.  Many thanks. 

It is hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner but the amount of glitter on the classroom floor is certainly a tell-tale sign!  This week, the children had a great time at their Christmas party; playing traditional party games and enjoying their party tea. A huge thank you to all the parents and carers for their food contributions and offers of help. Photos to follow…

Back in the classroom, we have been getting ready for the end of term, finishing off our Christmas cards and other Christmas creations ready to bring home on the last day of term next week (hence the amount of glitter on the classroom floor!).  We have been thinking about the true meaning of Christmas during assemblies with Mrs Warner and Mr Quinn and we have been reading the Christmas story during our carpet times. These lovely versions of the nativity story can both be found in our local Raynes Park library if you would like to share them again at home:

In our phonics lessons, we have been busy practising blending sounds together to make words.  The children are now very good at identifying individual sounds, but many of them find it difficult to blend the sounds together in the right order.  A particularly fun way to practise blending is through the game ‘buried treasure’ which we played on our interactive whiteboard in class.  This game also asks the children to decide whether the word they have read is a real word or a made-up word.  This is quite a challenge for the children but a very good skill to start developing as they will do lots of more of this in Year 1.

If you would like to have a go at playing this game at home, you can find it here along with several other games that support the learning of phase 2 phonics.

We would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Christmas holiday full of hope, peace, joy and love!

What an exciting week we have had!  The children performed their “Christmas Recipe” show not once, not twice, but three times this week! Many thanks to all the parents, carers and other family members who came along to support the children (…I wonder if you received an invitation in the post by any chance?!).  The Reception staff are all very proud of just how hard the children worked to make the show such a success!

Here are some of the photos taken backstage before the second (of the three) performances:

Despite such a busy and exciting week, we also found time to learn the final two sounds on the phase 2 sound mat.  They are the digraphs ‘ll’ and ‘ss’.  Actually, we have already learnt the sounds that these digraphs make, as they are exactly the same as the sounds made by ‘l’ and ‘s’.  The actions are also the same (licking a lolly for ‘ll’ and moving a hand like a snake for ‘ss’) and, don’t forget, we like to use our digraph action (linking our hands together with our thumbs) to show we have spotted a digraph (in other words, two letters that hold hands to make one sound).

As we have now learnt all of the phase 2 sounds, please find some time to have a look at the phase 2 sound mat with your child.  This was sent home at parents’ evening but if you need another copy please just ask!  Encourage your child to tell you the sounds and actions they know and practise the ones they are not so sure about.  Thank you.

In our maths lessons this week, we thought about the idea of ‘one more’.  Benji and Sam, who are our class pets, love to gobble up delicious dog biscuits but however many we gave Sam (the little brother), he always wanted ‘one more’!

Finally, we have a particularly special area in our classroom at the moment.  Inspired by the ending of our ‘Christmas Recipe’ show, our cosy book corner has become a stable for baby Jesus who is happily sleeping in his manger.  It looks like the three kings may have visited too!

It is that time of year again when we ask everyone to please help us stop the spread of norovirus (otherwise known as the winter vomiting bug) around our school.

Norovirus is the most common cause of stomach bugs in the UK and it spreads very easily in schools.  It spreads even more easily in Early Years Units (Reception and Nursery classes) because the children are still learning to manage their own personal hygiene and they touch more surfaces and toys than the older children.

How you can help:

Please keep your child off school for a full 48 hours after the last bout of vomiting or diarrhoea.

If your child returns sooner than this, they are likely to spread the virus to other children and staff, even though their symptoms have passed.

Please check out the NHS guidance page which explains more about how the virus spreads and how the 48 hour rule works:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Norovirus/Pages/Introduction.aspx

If you are unsure about whether your child can return to school, please phone the school office for advice.  Do not bring your child to school and then check with us, as we would really like to avoid situations where we have to ask you to take your child home again!

Finally, please be aware of just how quickly and easily this virus can spread.  Occasionally, schools are forced to close for deep cleans if too many staff and children get sick!

http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/west-london-news/suspected-outbreak-norovirus-leads-hounslow-10704537

So please stick to the 48 hour rule and help to reduce the spread of this nasty virus.

Many thanks for your help and understanding!

It has been such a busy week in Reception with Christmas rehearsals now in full swing and the dress rehearsal just around the corner (this coming Monday).  We finished off the week with a mufti day to support our Christmas Fair which is being organised by our fantastic PTA (and takes place on Friday 9th) and, as you can see, some of the Reception team are already feeling very Christmassy!

Yesterday, we found time to take a walk out of school to a nearby postbox where we each posted a letter to our parents.  We carefully checked our envelopes to make sure they all had an address and a stamp on them before taking turns to pop them in the postbox.  I won’t spoil the surprise by revealing the contents as everyone’s envelope should be arriving home very soon!  Please look out for the letter and let your child know when it arrives to encourage their understanding of the journey a letter takes from a postbox to a house.

As we were waiting to post our letters we met a real-live postman who was busy delivering to the nearby houses.  He even stopped to have a chat with us and find out what we were doing. He thought we were probably posting letters to Santa but the children soon set him straight!  Many of them thought he was Postman Pat and he was kind enough to go along with this, even chatting away about his cat Jess!

Here’s what he actually looked like!

During our phonics lessons this week, we learnt three new sounds as usual; 2 single letter sounds (f and l) and another digraph (ff).

‘F’ and ‘ff’ make the same sound and have the same action.  We imagined trying to deflate an inflatable toy by slowly squeezing it together between our hands.  As we did the action, we said ‘fffff’ making sure our top teeth gently touched our lower lips as the air came out between our lips.

When learning the digraph ‘ff’, we read the story of The Little Pigs and we all knew exactly what the Big Bad Wolf says when he tries to blow down the houses!

Weekend challenge: Can you spot the digraph ‘ff’ on the page above? How many times can you spot it? Can you have a go at writing the words ‘huff’ and ‘puff’?  Listen carefully for the three sounds in the words and write them down.  You can do it!

Finally, we pretended to lick delicious lollipops as we learnt the sound ‘l’.  This is such a tricky sound because the action encourages us to stick our tongues out when actually your tongue should stay in your mouth and touch your top teeth.  Try to think of it as ‘ull’ rather than ‘luh’.

Christmas Shows:

There will be two performances in the School hall next week.

TUESDAY 6^th DECEMBER at 2.00pm – This will be for Afternoon Nursery and Year 1 parents.

WEDNESDAY 7^TH DECEMBER at 9.30 am – This is for Morning nursery, Reception and Year 2 parents.

Please be on time for the show as late comers are not usually admitted because it can be very disruptive for the ‘performers’.

After the performance on Tuesday, the children will come home in their costumes.  Please send them into school in their costumes on Wednesday morning.  We will keep their uniforms at school so they can change after the show.

Christmas Party:

The FSU Christmas party will take place during the afternoon of Thursday 15^th December.  Nearer the time there will be a board outside for you to sign up for your contributions to our party tea. Please remember our ‘nuts and seeds’ policy!

Once again thank you so much for your help and support at this busy time of year!

Tricky word pots will be sent home in book bags from this week.

Please look out for them and use them to support your child’s learning at home.

Here is a copy of the handout (that you’ll find in the book bag) which explains more about the pots and what to do with them: word pots

Many thanks!

The excitement has been starting to build in Reception this week as we have begun our Christmas show rehearsals in earnest!  The show itself will take place on Tuesday 6th December at 2pm and then again on Wednesday 7th December at 9.30am.  Year 1, year 2 and nursery children are also involved in the performance and, therefore, parents and carers are invited to attend one performance only so as to ensure everyone can actually fit in the hall!  In our case, Reception parents are invited to attend the Wednesday morning performance.

Although we have been very busy with our rehearsals, we also found time to practise the sounds we have learnt so far and to learn three new ones.  First, we pulled ‘r’ out of the sound bag.  The action for ‘r’ is to pretend to be an animal playing and growling.  This can be a bit tricky, as it is easy to let the sound become a ‘grrr’ from the throat, rather than a ‘rrrrr’ from the front of the mouth.  Try practising both to see the difference!

Next, we pulled ‘h’ out of the sound bag.  We imagined we had been running around the oak tree in our playground ten times before we had to stop, huffing and puffing because we were out of breath!  The action for ‘h’ is to put your hand in front of your mouth and feel the puffs of air as you say ‘h’, ‘h’, ‘h’ and pretend to catch your breath.

The third sound to come out of the sound bag this week was ‘b’.  We all pretended to bounce a ball to help us learn and remember this sound.  Please note, the jolly phonics action for ‘b’ is to pretend to hit a ball with a bat, which is pretty similar to our bouncing ball action.  We decided to use a bounce instead of a bat and ball to keep our action smaller, and therefore a bit safer for each other, when sitting altogether on the carpet!

We also learnt two new tricky words this week; ‘no’ and ‘into’.  We have now learnt all of the phase 2 tricky words and we will move onto the phase 3 ones next week.  Please look out for a tricky word pot in your book bag over the coming week or so.

Finally, it has also been a busy week in the castle of course! The resident princesses have been getting ready for their next banquet while the brave knights have been protecting the castle from all manner of scary beasts!

And here you can see the workers were not afraid to get their hands dirty when painting the drawbridge!

The dressing-up clothes have been a huge hit with the children since the start of the year, and several of them can often be found pretend-playing as knights, kings and queens. So, when it came to deciding what our new role-play area should be, the obvious choice was a medieval castle complete with banquet hall and open fire!  The children have been busy putting their castle together; carefully sponge painting the stone walls, upholstering the thrones with shiny, gold material and sticking material together to create tapestries which are hanging on either side of the roaring fire.  We have just finished painting the drawbridge which we will add next week.  Here’s what our castle looks like so far!

While medieval castles would have had narrow, rectangular shaped windows, our castle is a little bit different.  What do you notice about the shapes of the windows?

We have been thinking about all the different people who would have lived in a castle which is helping us to develop our understanding of community (one of the themes within our current ‘Who am I’? topic).

We have also been busy pulling three new sounds out of the sound bag and learning two new tricky words (‘I’ and ‘the’).  The first sound was ‘ck’ which, as you can see, is actually two letters.  Even though this sound is made up of two letters, it only makes one sound, not two.  We call these types of sounds digraphs or holding hands sounds and we link our thumbs together, as if holding hands, when we see them.

The sound that ‘ck’ makes is exactly the same as the sounds ‘c’ and ‘k’ that we learnt last week.  The action (pretending to play castanets) is also the same.

Weekend challenge: can you read the word duck, using your robot arms?  Can you think of any other ‘ck’ words? Can you write them?

Next, we pulled the sound ‘e’ out of the bag.  We imagined that we were mixing up the ingredients to make a cake and carefully broke an egg into the bowl saying ‘e, e, e’.

It is very easy to muddle up the vowel sounds, especially e and i.  Try to remember e is for e-lephant, while i is for i-gloo.

The final sound of the week was ‘u’.  We have had quite a bit of rain this week, so it was easy to imagine that we would need our umbrellas to keep us dry.