Welcome to Squirrels Class (EYFS Unit)

Teachers:     Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA): Learning Support Assistants:		Miss Oliver Miss Davis   Mrs Fitzgerald   Mrs Clarke Ms Gardener

Week beginning: 22nd April 2024

This week our theme is: Dear Zoo

Reading reminders - please ensure that you are reading with your child at least four times a week and signing the reading record. Reading little and often is best at this stage to build confidence and fluency for all children. We have some exciting initiatives in school to encourage all children to read at home and we would love for our new giant reading bear to visit our classroom!

This week we begin our new fiction unit - Dear Zoo. Our children have already been enthusiastically asking questions about animals that they want to find out more about - 

Arthur, John and Teddy would like to know more about turtles with Teddy asking “Do all turtles and tortoises retract their heads.” Connie and Hallie are interested in how monkeys swing and how far they can swing. Megan would like to know why some monkeys have longer tails than others and Ralph would like to know the name of the monkeys that have the longest tail. Oliver would like to investigate why camels have “two hills” on their backs.  Sam would like to know why sharks have fins.  Tilly wondered “how do hedgehogs make their burrows with prickles and little arms?” and both Frida and Tilly wondered how hedgehogs curl into a ball.  

Literacy

We begin our new fiction unit “Dear Zoo” written by Rod Campbell. Our first lesson will be our ‘hook’ lesson where we will play ‘Guess my animal’. This encourages the children to independently practise segmenting and writing for purpose. They write down the name of their animal and an adjective, hid their paper and their partner will ask questions to guess their animal. Can they do it in 10 questions or less?

In our next lesson we will tell the story of Dear Zoo, modelling prosody (expression and intonation) encouraging children to join in. We will also practise some “sound talk” practising our phonetic knowledge for key words e.g. l-o-ng. We will discuss the children’s reactions to the story including their own favourite animals. In our next lesson we discuss the story in more detail including the thoughts and feelings of the main character. We retell the story together using actions to embed the language orally. In our final lesson we will write our own letters to the zoo requesting the animal we would like. We will be encouraging the children to orally ‘talk’ their sentences before writing them, use segmenting fingers to identify the sounds in each word and use a sound mat. We will reminding children to use pinch and flick, finger spaces and capital letters in their writing. 

Maths

This week, the children will continue to develop their subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) in increasingly complex arrangements. Some arrangements are easier to subitise than others – e.g. a set of 6 dots arranged in a structured die pattern that exposes the double-3 pattern is easier to recognise than a random arrangement of 6 dots. A key focus this week is to use the children’s developing understanding of doubles to support their subitising skills. By moving away from counting for sets that can be subitised, the children will develop their abstract understanding of number, which will help to support future calculation strategies. This week’s sessions will also continue to encourage the children to consider when they can subitise and when they might need to use counting as a strategy. 

Another key focus this week is the ongoing development of visualising skills: encouraging the children to look carefully at structured arrangements, such as those shown on dice and 10-frames, and then to close their eyes and explain what they see. Using spatial language and hand gestures to describe sub-groups within these arrangements will deepen the children’s understanding of part–part–whole relations and allow them to further consider composition (the numbers within numbers).

UW

On Monday morning we have an exciting history morning planned with experiential learning to bring history to life. The children will be in groups with their reception peers and mix with children from Year 1 and Year 2 for the morning, benefitting from a range of activities and experiences to explore, find out and discuss historical communication changes and how people’s lives have changed over time.  

For RE this week the children will learn about the Spring Hindu celebration of Holi. Holi is a Hindu festival that celebrates Spring, love and new life. What other celebrations do we know? What is the same? What is different? We will connect our learning to our conversations about Christian celebrations of Christmas, Easter and Islamic Eid-al-Fitr. 

EAD

Using pictures of animals as a stimulus we will use paints and select and use printing methods independently to create animal pictures. Previously we have mixed our own paints to create new colours and we will be using this time to mix colours for purpose thinking about the colour we are trying to make to create our animal picture. Did it work out the way we were expecting it to? Do we like our pictures? We will show each other our pictures, celebrating our work, including differences and discussing what we did to make them. 
  

Our termly Class letter is viewable here