Hello!

I’m writing this just after England’s defeat to South Africa in the rugby world cup final.  Commiserations to any of the English supporters and congratulations to any South African supporters!

Back to what’s important (!) and this week Oak Class have had to become detectives, since there has been a mystery to solve. Luckily enough our role play area changed into a police station over half term  and the children have embraced their duties, particularly enjoying using the torches and magnifying glasses to help solve the mystery.

Mystery fingerprints have been discovered in numerous locations around our classroom – on the door, the walls and even the computer. Teams of Oak Class detectives have been out and about around the school, with Mrs Mooney,  collecting fingerprints from adults in our school. We have all recorded our own finger prints – working out whether we have whorl, arch or loop. We are going to use our magnifying glasses to match our mystery prints to those we collect. Once we’ve narrowed down some suspects, the interviews will begin!

Oak Class Police Station

Our sounds this week have included ‘u’ ‘e’ and ‘r’. The children are ALL working so hard to recognise, write and remember each sound. This week you should also have received a tricky word pot. This is full of those words that just won’t sound out – such as ‘ to’ ‘ no’ ‘ he’ ‘she’ and so on. Unfortunately these words just have to be learnt so any exposure is great exposure! Choose a tricky word from the pot and ask your child to spot it while your reading to them. Play snap or a memory game with the words in your pot. Tricky words are usually occur quite often in text and will need to be able to be recognised and by the end of the year, hopefully written.

Investigating a tricky word problem…

The classroom has been a hive of activity as usual including a small world police town from which some excellent stories have evolved.

To assist our number work we have had locks and keys … matching a numbered lock to a key with an amount of spots on has proved a popular yet tricky way to discover that particular amounts match particular numbers…

Disguising the baddies has also been a popular choice!

The Oak Class Detectives ready to start their police work.

And of course another successful number bag of the week

I hope you all had a good half term. The children have returned raring to go and are loving learning through their play! Next week we are concentrating on black history, along with getting ready for Remembrance Day.

Signing off with the mystery print – all to be revealed next week once investigations have come to a conclusion!  Have a great week!