Communication and Language

The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children's language effectively. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, story-telling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures. 

Communication and Language 

ELG: Listening, Attention and Understanding Children at the expected level of development will: 

- Listen attentively and respond to what they hear with relevant questions, comments and actions when being read to and during whole class discussions and small group interactions.

- Make comments about what they have heard and ask questions to clarify their understanding.

- Hold conversation when engaged in back-and-forth exchanges with their teacher and peers. 

ELG: Speaking Children at the expected level of development will: 

- Participate in small group, class and one-to-one discussions, offering their own ideas, using recently introduced vocabulary.

- Offer explanations for why things might happen, making use of recently introduced vocabulary from stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems when appropriate.

- Express their ideas and feelings about their experiences using full sentences, including use of past, present and future tenses and making use of conjunctions, with modelling and support from their teacher. 

Holidays!

Our final role play is holidays and an ice-cream parlour.

Our role play is now a rocket

Star Words - rocket, astronauts, Earth, Space, planets, moon, NASA, satellites, Space Station

Our role play is now a bus

Star Words - bus, coach, driver, passenger, seat, double decker, upstairs, bus stop, bus station ticket, journey, destination.

Our role play is now a train. 

Star Words - 

 Locomotive: Engine that pulls the train

Railway: Tracks where trains run

Carriage: Individual passenger or freight compartments

Conductor: Person in charge of train operations

Platform: Area for boarding and alighting

Ticket: Document permitting train travel

Signal: Device regulating train movement

Caboose: Last car, sometimes for crew

Term 6 - Going Places - Transport

Our role play is now a pirate ship. Each week we will link the transport to the text we are reading. The children have learnt new vocabulary and used this to act out the stories.

Star Words - bow, stern, hull, coast, crow's nest, flag, cutlass, crew, galleon and gold coins -pieces of eight

Term 5 - Come Outside : Growing

Our role play is now a Garden Centre. The children are learning new vocabulary and how to plant and care for flowers and vegetables. We went outside and dug up the weeds, ready to plant some herbs. We have planted forget - me -nots, strawberry plants, rosemary and lemon balm.

A letter from Sir David Attenborough

Star Words - Sir, fascinated, habitat and curious 

We received a letter from Sir David Attenborough. We read it and learnt some new words. Then, we learnt the different between a statement and a question. Sir David wanted us to write a letter back. We wrote a fact about an animal we like and write a question for him to answer. Look at our Literacy to see our wonderful letters.

Term 4 - Amazing Animals

Our role play area is now a farm shop. The children are learning the names of the fruit, veg and food products and where they come from. The hens have even laid eggs!

The children are learning to share and take turns being the customer and shop keeper.

Our role play is now a Vets. The children are learning how to care for animals that are not well.

Our role play is now a pet shop. The children are learning how to care for animals and that we have to be caring and responsible when buying a pet .

Our role play is different habits for animals. This helps the children to act out different roles and use the new vocabulary taught each week through stories and fact finding lessons.

Rumble in the Jungle

Term 3 

Real Superheroes - Jobs

Our writing area has become a post office and the children dressed up in the role play area to act out the jobs they want to be when they grow up. 

Superhero Day

We had fun dressing up, writing and finding out facts with Dantastic. 

Superworm

We listened to the story and learnt some new vocabulary: disaster, mope, panic, grim, shriek and cunning plan.

Supertato

We acted out the story to help us write speech bubbles and captions.

Superheroes

The role play is a Superhero cave

Winter

The children have listened to fiction and non-fiction books to learn new vocabulary. The have been using these words when accessing the role play and continuous provision. 

Term 2 : Santa's Grotto

Elf and Christmas

The role play area has become a Christmas hot chocolate stand and the elf has arrived! He wrote a letter to say he is staying for the next three weeks to help us get ready for Christmas and wants us to think of a name for him. On Monday, he got stuck in our cube. Such fun!

Traditional Stories

We read stories to learn new vocabulary and talk about the different books. This encourages the children to act out characters in the role play area. This term it is a castle.

Jack & the Beanstalk

A magical beanstalk has grown over the weekend. Underneath the beanstalk, we found a letter from the Giant. He had written a letter to ask us to paint some pictures of giants so he had some friends to play with.  So we did...see our art work and writing in Literacy and EAD.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Cinderella

TERM 1 - All About Me

We read stories to learn new vocabulary.

Kippers Birthday

Star Words: birthday, invitation, party and celebrate

We had a party for Kipper in our role play area.

Funnybones

Star Words: body, skeleton, skull, heads, shoulders, knees and toes.

We read the story and sang 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes', song to learn about our bodies. 

Grandparents' Day

This week we are focusing on being an active listener. The children have listened to a story and have learnt our little saying, 

"Eyes looking, ears listening and our hands are in our basket." 

Then, we watched a clip to help us to become a 'Whole Body Listener!"   

https://youtu.be/pQ77Nr6TgZo?si=JUfm8GVHQgxluiGb

All the children had their photograph put on our Recognition Board to show good listening this week. Our treat was a walk around their new school on Friday during our social time and of course, Funky Friday! What a fantastic first week!

Listening

Circle Time