Few weeks ending 21st July 2017

We have had a very exciting final few weeks of term in Pink Class.We have been finishing off our topic, focusing on Journeys and Transport. We have learnt all about cars, trains and hot air balloons in a variety of ways. We shared non-fiction books about trains, finding out how they worked and why different types of trains are used for different purposes. The children also made up their own hot air balloon story. During our work about cars, the children loved designing, painting constructing their own cars. They selected their own design and colours and painted the body, wheels and steering wheels. Next, the children dextrously assembled them, attaching the wheels using split pins and carefully cutting out a seat for the driver. They all looked ready for Silverstone!They also produced some fabulous writing based on the Peppa Pig episode ‘George’s Racing Car’. Having watched a short clip, the children were able to come up with some great sentences to describe what happened in the episode. They then wrote them down, knitting the sentences together using words such as ‘then’, ‘next’ and ‘at last’ accurately. In our Maths, we have been recapping lots of the skills we have learnt throughout the year. This has included lots of addition and subtraction work, focusing on how to record subtraction and addition number sentences accurately. We have also been learning about how to apply the skills we have learnt to solve problems. The children have been so clever at working out doubling and halving problems independently. They also loved joining in with lots of their favourite number songs again. The

children were also given the opportunity to say which lessons they enjoyed the most from the year and a chance to revisit the capacity lesson where Mr Ratchford would turn into an animal (having drunk a magic potion) was a popular choice! Our phonics work has included a lot of important revisiting and consolidation. We have continued to practise all of the sounds we have learnt this year and how to apply them to our writing. The children are really flourishing. During our carpet work on ‘holding a sentence’, the children used all of their phonics skills. They worked out which words were ‘tricky’ irregular words, and remembered how to write these unusual spellings. They were able to count the number of sounds in regular words and record them in a phonetically plausible way. Finally, they put this all together to record our ‘hold a sentence’ accurately, recalling correct use of capital letters and full stops. They children also really enjoyed a sound hunt activity, where they found things in the classroom with all of the digraphs and trigraphs we have been learning. They have come on so much!We have been focusing heavily on tricky words too. One of the children’s favourite carpet sessions has been our tricky word bingo game where the children received their own bingo card with some tricky words on. They had to read them accurately and mark them off as they appeared on the Interactive Whiteboard and of course shout out bingo when they have a full house! They have been finding ‘tiny tricky words’ independently using magnifying glasses too and writing them down, during one of our many enhancements. The children also revelled in firing water pistols at tricky words in one of our Outdoor Area games. French Week was also a recent highlight. The children loved learning lots of French vocabulary, such as days of week and parts of the body through various songs, games and independent activities. We also looked at stories which were familiar to the children in French, for example, ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. The week included the famous ‘French Breakfast’,

where the children sampled a range of tasty culinary treats such as pain au chocolat and baguette. The children have also had a taste of some Philosophy to enhance their thinking skills. This involved children working in pairs to decide which animal/person they would rather be and providing reasoning to back up their choice. They then presented their arguments to the class and tried to persuade others to change their minds. Mr Ratchford, Mrs Horner and Mrs Pearce are so proud of all of the children and have had a wonderful time teaching them. We are certain that they will continue to flourish next year. Thank you to all of the parents, grandparents and carers for your fantastic support throughout the year.