We continued with independent literacy tasks focused around ‘The tiger who came to tea‘. Children created their own plates of food and labelled them. They were also challenged to sequence pictures of the story and write labels and captions to go with them, completely independently. We have also explored a new idea this week in the form of helicopter stories. Following a story map model of ‘The tiger who came to tea’ and a session with the children acting it out, we considered how stories have a beginning, middle and end and with the adults acting as a scribe we became the authors of our own stories. The marked out stage allowed us to act out our creations. We are looking forward to developing our narrative writing in year one!

The addition challenge continues in maths, with further reinforcement of fact families for given numbers, finding number bonds using part whole models, and attempting to work systematically to Find as many ways as possible. As discussed with many of you at parents evening, a lot of the curriculum is based around the depth of learning in maths, rather than just working with bigger numbers. Children’s  ability to articulate reasons and problem-solve using methods and facts they know remains a focus. Try asking your child questions such as “How do you know?’ Or “Can you use a part whole model or number line to prove it?“ when they calculate. I have added a part whole model template to the resources on our class page for you to use.  I would also recommend the 'top marks website' for maths games.  This one on fact families is particularly good https://www.topmarks.co.uk/number-facts/number-fact-families. 

I was astounded by the lovely homework some children had prepared for black history month. They did some excellent reading and read aloud with super clear voices too. We found out about lots of Wonderful inspirational and resilient people. Thank you for supporting them with this.