**Next week Mrs Lindley begins jury duty!
The lovely Mrs Hawkins will be covering her while she is serving. 

Here's hoping the sun stays with us for a while! It has been wonderful to be outside in the sunshine. 

Grateful for: my friends, animals, plants and trees!  
Learnt: About our school, looking at the Earth. 
Achieved: building hard words in Phonics, writing my sentence on my own. 
Delighted: looking at pictures of us learning and playing, playing with my friends. 

English: This week the children have begun our learning around the book, Here We Are. We started by exploring the cover and using Google Earth to find our school. We talked about all the places we could see. The children then looked at lots of photos of themselves playing and learning. They then chose a photo to write about. 

Maths: The children have enjoyed lots of recapping of making numbers to 10, number songs, making and spotting patterns around us.  

RE: We have introduced our Big Question for this term: Which stories are special and why? (World Faiths) We began by looking at some items inside a bag. Some looked more exciting than others! After talking and exploring the children decided that the items belonged to me! We thought back to the shoe boxes the children brought in when they started school. The items in the bag and the shoe boxes were special to the owner. We tried to think of what the word Special means - unique, important, valued. Next we learnt that some people have books that are special to them. We discussed some of our favourite stories. We looked at some of our class story books that we enjoy and talked about stories and books we have at home. We remembered that Christians have a special book called the Bible. 

PSHE This week the children have settled back to school life well -remembering rules and expectations during different times of the day. We have supported the children with extra reminders about trying the toilet and washing hands - some splashed water on to rush back to their activities! We have also offered support when talking through any upsets when having to take turns or share. 

Wishing everyone a peaceful weekend! 

Phonics 

We follow the Phonic scheme Sounds Write. 

If you wish to keep the book longer just let us know, you do not have to change them on Monday and Thursday!  Go at your child's pace, find a time of day that suits them, if a page is enough for one session that’s fine.
*Talk about the stories or books shared, can they spot any of the sounds they know, can they tell you about what has been read, have you met any new or interesting words, talk about word meanings, ask what might happen next, ask your child to think about a different ending. 
We have a limited amount of books within our reading scheme, so your child might get given the same book more than once. This is a great opportunity to boost word recognition and fluency when reading. It will also increase confidence as it is a 'known' book and your child might remember it. Feel free to do the activities mentioned above (*) to really explore and enjoy the book. 

Sounds covered: s, a, t, i, m, n, o, p, b, c, g, h, v, f, e, d, k, l, r, u, j, w, z, x, y, *ll, *ff, *ss, *zz
*Digraphs - 2 letters 1 sound. 

high frequency words: is, a, the, I, for, of, to, are

Sound spotting - with the sounds displayed the children are asked to spot the sound. They either have to point it out, highlight it, trace over the letter, or write it on their whiteboards. 

Word building – using sound cards children help identify the sounds needed to build a given word, working out one sound at a time, s-a-t ‘sat.'

Dictation - adults tell the children a simple sentence, containing 'tricky words' - words that do not follow phonetically decodable patterns, and decodable words (words they can sound out). The children are encouraged to use their Phonic knowledge to write the sentence. We also practise using finger spaces, capital letters and full stops.

Sound Swap - starting with a given word, change one sound to make a new word - cat, pat, pan, tan, tin, pin etc. 

The following link has some information for parents if you would like to have a look. 

 https://sounds-write.co.uk/support-for-parents-and-carers/ 
The correct pronunciation: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8ZMfYjdN-s 
It is important not to add sounds such as m=muh s= suh t=tuh 
Take the word: ‘mat’. If you sound it out as ’muh’ + aa +tuh’ and then blend them together you get ‘muhaaatuh’ a long way off from ‘mmmaat’ and then ‘mat’.
We do not use actions or Jolly Phonics songs. 

Dates of interest 

 Monday 12th May - Year 6 SATs week 
Mon 5th May - Bank Holiday  
Fri 16th May - Dance Show
Fri 23rd May - INSET day and end of term 

Mon 2nd June - INSET day
Tues 3rd June- Children back start of Term 6 
Mon 16th June - Class R trip 
Tue 22nd July - Last day of school. 

Reminders