In literacy, we have continued progressing through our phonics programme, building our confidence with sounds and blending. We also explored the features of leaflets, learning how they are used to inform and persuade. Using this knowledge, we planned and wrote our own leaflets on Almond Valley.

In numeracy, we have been consolidating our understanding of numbers up to 100, ensuring we can count, read, and write them confidently. We also learned how to compare numbers using the terms greater than, less than, and equal to, and practised using the symbols >, <, and = correctly. 

In outdoor learning, we took part in fun scavenger hunts that helped us explore nature while building teamwork skills. We also used sticks to make letters and words, helping us practise our spelling sounds in a creative, hands-on way. To finish off, we enjoyed a trip to the park where we combined learning with play. 

In literacy, we’ve been continuing to learn our new sounds and using them to help us read and write. We’ve been working hard on blending sounds to read new words and enjoying our reading books. We’ve also been learning about adjectives—describing words—and had fun using them to make our sentences more interesting. In writing, we learned how to sequence and describe a life cycle. We used our knowledge of living things to write about the life cycle of a frog, describing each stage from tiny eggs to tadpoles and finally to adult frogs.

We’ve been working hard in maths and having lots of fun revising some important skills. We’ve been practising the days of the week and telling the time to the hour using o’clock. We enjoyed using clocks to show different times and playing games to help us remember the order of the days. We’ve also been learning about numbers, focusing on finding 1 and 10 more or less. We used number lines and 100 squares to help us understand, and we’re getting really good at spotting patterns in numbers! 

Sports Day

We had a fantastic time at Sports Day and really enjoyed taking part in all the activities. During the potted sports, we worked hard as a team and earned lots of points for showing our school values like teamwork, respect, and perseverance. Everyone gave their best effort and encouraged each other throughout. One of the highlights was taking part in our running race—we were so excited to line up, give it our all, and hear our classmates cheering us on. It was a fun and active day that made us feel proud of what we achieved together!

We have been working on building our confidence and independence in writing by using our phonics knowledge to help with spelling. We've also been learning about nouns and verbs, practising how to recognise and use them in our sentences. In reading, we’ve been continuing to develop our comprehension skills through our reading books and Bug Club activities. We are also really enjoying our class novel, Charlotte’s Web, which links perfectly to our new farming topic! 

In maths, we are continuing to strengthen our mental maths skills through our daily Daily 10 game, where we practise quick recall of number facts, helping us become faster and more confident with addition and subtraction. We have been building on our learning about money, recognising coins, adding amounts together, and have now started to explore the idea of giving change in simple shopping situations. We have also been learning about ordinal numbers, using them to describe positions and order events. Alongside this, we have been moving on from skip counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s to begin investigating the concept of multiplication as repeated addition, using arrays and number patterns to help us understand.

We have started our new topic on farming and have been learning about the different types of farms, including arable, dairy, and livestock farms. As part of our learning, we’ve taken on the responsibility of caring for a toy chick, which we imagined hatched from an egg on Mr Zuckerman’s farm from Charlotte’s Web. Our job is to keep the chick safe and healthy so it can grow into an adult chicken. This links to some of our UNCRC rights, such as the right to be cared for and protected (Article 3) and the right to learn and develop (Article 29), just like our chick! 

We are continuing to learn our RWI phonics sounds. We have been practicing to read and write our green words linked to our weekly sounds.

We have learned about sentence openers, including instructional openers, and have used them in our recount writing to make our sentences more engaging. 

This month we revisited our number bonds and doubling. We are trying to improve our fluency of these number facts. We had great fun making number bond paper chains.

We have also started to look at 3D shapes. We have been learning the names for these shapes and have been identifying these shapes in our environments.

We have started our new topic "Keeping ourselves safe and healthy. We had a fantastic visit from the police who spoke to us about road safety before letting us try on their uniform and look inside the van. 

Next we looked at emergency situations and tried out some role play 999 calls. We now know when we may need to call and what information we will need to pass over. 

We completed our Christmas story books "When Santa got stuck up the chimney" and enjoyed sharing our learning with our adults. A great amount of hard work has went into these from learning the model text to being innovative and creating our own story.

We had great fun learning our Christmas songs for our Nativity. We hope you enjoyed watching us perform.

We have been learning about place value, focusing on how tens and ones work in numbers. This helps us understand how numbers are made up and how to break them down into smaller parts. 

This month we have been creating our Christmas Books. We learned the story of the Enormous Turnip. Then we used our innovation skills to adapt this story to create our own individual "Santa got stuck up the chimney" story.

Our numeracy focus this month has been shape. We have been learning to identify 2D shapes and there properties. We introduced pentagon, hexagon and octagon.

We took the time to refresh our class charter. We discussed our Children's Rights and which ones were the most important to us as a class. We then came up with what we need to do in order to achieve these.