Athens Class

I just wanted to let you all know that I will be on a course tomorrow so will not be in school. Mrs Smillie will be taking my class for the full day. Lots of other things happening this week too.....Miss Hulme, Mrs Ashby and I are taking choir to the Young Voices concert in Sheffield on Thursday afternoon so Mrs Rymer will be covering my class with Miss Fotopoulou. On Friday morning Miss Waddle and I are going to visit another school and look around their Foundation Stage. Miss Russell is on a trip that morning with Year 5, so my class will be covered by a supply teacher - I will obviously talk to the children about this before Friday!! So a busy week!!!

Long Long Ago

TOPIC

Our new topic for the rest of this half term is called Long, Long Ago and is all about Dinosaurs. On Friday we asked the children to answer the question "What do they already know about dinosaurs?". It was very interesting to listen to what the children were discussing and then they were asked "What they would like to find out about dinosaurs?". They came up with an array of questions and here are some of them:- "How do Dinosaurs talk and stomp?" "How big were they?" "Did they live in the 1900's?" "What colour were the eggs?".

Mrs Foster added in a good one too "Where are they now?"and Miss Skidmore wonders if they will visit your house any time soon?

We are now set on an adventure to answer our questions, paint, build and make clay dinosaurs; read facts about them and create our very own fact files.

We are setting up a small world role-play area, so if the children have any Dinosaurs they would like to bring in and share with the class and maybe have a 'Play for the day'. We would love to meet them. Of course they may have to share their Dinosaurs with other children in class, so do not bring in any precious or delicate items as accidents can happen!!

LITERACY

We are still concentrating on Traditional Tales as our literacy focus and this week we will be introducing the Three Little Pigs. We are changing our role-play area to become The three Little Pigs house to allow the children to role-play the story with masks and props. Outside we will be creating a construction site for the pigs to design and build their houses from sticks, straw and bricks. The children will be retelling the story into a recording device called a 'chatterbox' and listening back to their recounts.

PHONICS

In phonics we will be explaining that short vowels a-e-i-o-u can be found in the middle of a word (c-a-t, sh-o-p, s-u-ch) but in some words we will find Long vowels two letters that make one sound. We will be introducing Mr 'ai' this week and showing two ways of writing and reading the 'ai', 'ay' sound. The 'ai' sound is found in the middle of a word and the 'ay' sound is usually found at the end of a word (m-ai-d and p-ay). We will be sorting words into the correct families ay/ai and reading and writing the ai/ay sounds within words and as well as sentences.

NUMERACY

We will be continuing to use numicon as a visual prompt for the children to investigate different different ways of making a number within 10, concentrating on our number bonds to 10. We will use the numicon scales to balance the correct pieces that demonstrate how to make 10. The children will start to associate the number sentence that goes with the pieces that balance 3+7=10.

PHEW!! It all sounds like we are going to be having yet another full and exciting week... so get plenty of rest and we will see you all bright eyed and bushy tailed on Monday morning.

Thanks

The Reception Team

Let's reflect............. Christmas 2010!!!!

Well just downloaded these pictures how can I resist but post a few piccies on the blog!!

Dinner Today 20th Jan

Dinner today was chicken pie, green beans, sweetcorn and new potatoes.

Pudding was Fruit crumble and custard!

Dinner Today 19th January

Well we all went into the hall really well today and the children had burger, a range of seasonal vegetables (carrots, cabbage, suede) potatoes and gravy!! I hope Mrs Rymer can help with pudding as I was at the Post Office during my lunchtime.

Dinner Today 18/01/11

Today the children tucked into bolognese pasta, cheese, brocolli, cauliflower and/or salad. Followed by sponge pudding and custard.

Methley’s World Book Cup

Here goes the explanation of how you can earn points and rewards for your class in the World Book Cup! To earn points and qualify you must be reading at home and have your reading record signed by the person that you have read with.

If everybody (100% of the children) in the class has read to somebody at home then your class will be rewarded with a huge 10 points. If three quarters or more of the children (75% to 99%) have read then you will earn a great 5 points or if half of the children (50% 50 74%) of the children have read then your class will get 3 points BUT if less than half (49% or less) have read at home then your class will not earn any points that week!

So this means that you need to make sure that you are taking your books home as often as possible to read to somebody and earn those fabulous points!

Good luck!