Welcome to Class One (Preschool, Reception and Year One)
Our Staff
Class Teacher:
- Miss Corney
Class Teaching Assistants:
- Mrs Williams
- Mrs Banbury
Winter
Testing Materials, Whittling Sticks for Food, Natural Artwork and Delicious Toasted Marshmallows/Chocolate
Growth and Green Fingers
Shrove Tuesday
Word Book Day linked with Science
Amazing Animals Provision
World of Work Day
Knowsley Safari Park
The Wriggly Nativity
Letters posted to Father Christmas and some festive provision.
Provision in Autumn 2
Road Safety
Reception using clay to make Diva lamps for Diwali.
Autumn 2: Fire, Fire. Re-enacting The Great Fire of London to start off our history topic.
Provision Autumn 1: Animals
Owl drawing and sculpting for Year 1&2. Penguin drawing for Reception after observing their features at the zoo.
Blackpool Zoo as part of our animal topic.
A visit from Evie’s ponies to see how they are cared for as part of our animal topic.
Teddy Bears Picnic and Bear Hunt
When the lambs came to visit us.
In RE and Science we have been learning all about new life, observing plants and animals and seeing how they change as they grow. Oscar is a fabulous farmer and with the help of his Mum and Dad he was able to bring in his newly born lambs. The children were able to give them one of their 4 daily feeds.
Our Return to School March 2021
We were very excited to re-open school to all children. It was our priority to ensure that the children were eased back into the classroom and that they were given many opportunities to re-build relationships, learn the rules and routines of the classroom, be supported emotionally and fully enjoy being back at school learning.
We looked at many aspects of science out on the field, whittled sticks to create tipi’s and habitats for our woodland animals. We spent time within groups talking about our emotions and how we felt being back in school. The children used design and technology skills to prepare a pizza using safe cutting skills and thinking about where the food had come from. The children worked together to problem solve when building dens and creating tracks to enable a ball to travel across the tunnels.
2nd October 2020
We have been learning all about The Jolly Postman in class, from reading letters he’s delivered, taking on the role of characters in the story and creating our very own post office.
Alongside this, a space ship crashed in our outdoor area! Alan the Alien has difficultly communicating with us but he has a special computer that is able to send us letters. Whilst he awaits his rescue, he wants to learn all about Earth and most importantly Brindle! The children have been working hard to provide information for Alan to make the most of his unexpected visit. He’s read our guide to earth and was pleased that we could tell him our school address so that we could inform his family back in Mars if his whereabouts.
Whilst we have been researching Brindle, we came across some very old pictures from Brindle in the past. These have been very interesting to look at and compare to Brindle now. We explored some maps and recognised that there are much more houses and roads that there were in the past compared to now including a gargantuan motorway.
We finished off this week with a walk up Water Street, spotting the modern and updated buildings and in role as The Jolly Postman. When we returned back to school, we created fabulous story maps. We can’t wait to create our own version of The Jolly Postman! Watch this space... publishers in the making!
News Update 18/9/2020
What a fantastic few weeks we have had back in school. We have welcomed our new Reception children and the Year ones and two's have settled back into the school routine so well. They were so pleased to be able to spend time with their friends again.
We have really enjoyed coming together as a class community, recognising our place in the wider universe, caring for ourselves, other people and other living things. We have done this through the book 'Here We Are' by Oliver Jeffers.
In maths the Year 1 and 2 children have been working hard adding two numbers by counting on and adding and subtracting in 10's. We have also been working hard to form our numbers the correct way.
We have been digging in our garden and collecting all of the potatoes and carrots that have grown. Mrs Baldwin cooked them for us so we could have a taste and they were delicious.
In a Morning
The doors open at 8:40am and close for registration at 8:50am. During these 10mins children should hang their coat up and put their bag away. Preschool and Reception children are welcome to invite their parents into our classroom at the start of the school year, during which time they can share their learning, show them around the classroom and write their name on their own whiteboard. Year one children are encouraged to come into school and complete their morning routine independently.
Assembly
Each day we have a school assembly where we learn about different Christian stories and values, take part in peer massage and celebrate our successes.
English Including Communication and Language
During this time children will share stories, texts and poetry. They will learn how to spell words and write sentences and as they progress into Key Stage One, they will begin to write for a variety of different purposes including traditional tales, poetry with alliteration and information booklets. The children will also spend time doing guided reading where they read the story and take about what has happened, what might happen next and recalling key facts.
Morning Break - 10:15
Phonics
Children learn how to say the sounds that a letter(s) make use this knowledge to help them read and write. Please see our phonic page for more information.
One to One Reading
Children read to Miss Corney, Mrs Williams or Mrs Banbury each week on a 1:1 basis. During this time we will check how well they are recognising words and ask them questions to check they have a good understanding of what they have read. The other children have milk whilst listening to story.
Mathematics
Preschool, Reception and Year One.
Lunch Time
Lunch is served in the dinner hall with the option of packed lunches or hot dinners. Either Miss Corney, Mrs Morley or Mrs Williams support our Preschool and Reception which is really reassuring for children when they start school as there is always a familiar face around.
Topic
In the afternoons we spend time learning about our current topic which will have links with geography, history and science. Children also use the ipads during computing, take part in PE in the school hall or playground and enjoy learning about music, PSHE and RE.
Handwriting
Children are taught how to form their letters making sure that letters with tails hang below the line and tall letters stand up high.
Continuous Provision
Along side this, Preschool and Reception children have access to the continuous provision both indoors and outdoors. This includes a role play, books, small world, water, sand, creative, ICT, construction, bikes and much more! Year one children also have the opportunity to use the provision, however to focus them there are challenges around the room which they are encouraged to complete to extend their learning.
Home Time - 3:30
Home Reading
As part of their regular homework in class one, your child will bring home up to two reading books and a 'Reading Journal' which is designed to help them get the most out of their home reading experience. These books will be aimed at developing their phonics and comprehension skills. Your child should be spending around 10 minutes at least 4 times a week on reading activities. This will normally mean reading their home reading book and talking about what they have read with an adult. Please sign and date the reading journal when your child has read and discussed their reading with you. Reading books are usually changed each Friday.
Phonics
Please see your child's 'Busy Book' (Reception) or Phonics homework book (Year 1) to see what your child is learning in Phonics. There will be words and spellings to practise at home.
Maths
Year One will be sent home an online game through Active Learn. This will build upon their learning in class.
Other activities may be sent home when appropriate. These may include topic research or science investigations.
PE Kits
Just a reminder that your child should have a full PE kit in school every day. Whilst we have specific timetabled slots for PE on Tuesday and Thursday, the lessons are never exclusively held on these days and are dependant on the weather.
If you require any further information or advice, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Covid-19 Specific
Resources to boost your child's wellbeing during the Covid-19 lockdown from Partnership for Children.
Being in lockdown can effect everyone differently. Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services have put together a website of resources to support mental health and well being.
The Scared Gang Stay at Home - A lovely little story to share together about why we are staying at home at the moment.
Worship
At this time more than ever, pausing for a little moment is very important for our mental health. School Assemblies have produced a series of short video clips which share with you some thoughts from the Bible, life at it is at the moment as well as helping us realise we are all very lucky - even at the moment.
They only take a moment and will give you a chance to sit and reflect. There is a new one produced each day. Perhaps you could add this into your daily routine.
PE
Lancashire School Games
Over the past couple of weeks the Lancashire School Games Organisers team, Active Lancashire and the Lancashire PE team have been developing a PE, school sport and physical activity resource/timetable.
The resource is centred around 4 key themes:
- Move - Resources that help children to achieve 60 active minutes.
- Learn - Skill and sports skill development. A FMS skill activity for KS1 and a KS2 sport skill activity adapted from the Lancashire PE SOW for a weekly PE activity for children to undertake.
- Challenge - A weekly personal best challenge linked to the weekly PE learn activity along with a current /trending challenge or other type challenge.
- Play - Providing ideas and resources for children to be active through play.
Alternative Lesson Ideas
You'll find daily lessons for homeschooling in Maths and English for every year group, as well as regular lessons in Science, History, Geography and more.
The homeschooling lessons have been created with teachers and other educational experts and feature a mix of videos, animations, practice activities, quizzes and games.
Check back every weekday for brand new lessons.
Oak National Academy
LPDS TV - (Lancs Professional Development Service)
Online Safety
As a school we have adopted ‘Super Sonic Phonics Friends’, to support us with the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. This ensures a consistent approach across early years and Key Stage 1. ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends’ is based on the well-recognised ‘Letters and Sounds’. Super Supersonic Phonic Friends is an enchanted adventure of phonics where along the way children will meet several friendly woodland characters who represent each literacy skill involved. Supported by the children's new 'Supersonic friends' and rhyming captions and phrases, this approach will ensure children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing. Meet the characters, explore the benefits and have a look at the links and videos below to find out more about our phonics scheme.
Meet the Characters
- Cheeky Sneaky Sid: Sid is funny, cute and sneaky... not to mention a little bit cheeky!
- Jazzy Jack and Magic Mack: Jack and Mack help us to hear more than 3 sounds in a word, they bring the sound to life so it can be heard.
- Listening Len and See it Sam: Listening Len helps us hear the sounds in the words that we speak and See it Sam helps us see and remember the spellings each and every week.
- Seb, Bill and Ben: Meet the three musketeers, Segmenting Seb, Building Bill and Blending Ben, who help you pick up a book and a pen!
- The Twins - Rex and Ron: Introducing our twins Reading Rex and Writing Ron who are so bright. They help us to read and write!
- Suze and Mitch: Choose to use Suze and switch it to Mitch are so very cool, they help us switch the spell sound and the choose to use rule!
- Tricky Tess and Nonsense Nan: Let us introduce you to Nan and Tess, they help us read those silly words which make no sense and make reading the tricky words fun and immense.
How We Teach Phonics
In phonics, we teach children that the letters of the alphabet represent a different sound, that these can be used in a variety of combinations and are put together to make words. The children learn to recognise all of the different sounds and combinations that they might see when they are reading or writing.
Our phonics teaching starts in Preschool and follows a very specific sequence that allows our children to build on their previous phonic knowledge and master specific phonic strategies as they move through school. The focus is on listening and identifying the different sounds we hear in our environment and in songs, stories and rhymes. Once children can hear and differentiate between sounds they are ready to begin exploring how words are made up of sounds and start playing games like I spy.
The Preschool phonics’ curriculum is split up into 7 aspects.
During the Reception year children are introduced to phonemes and their corresponding graphemes. We begin to look at single letter sounds and the representing spelling for this. Children then begin to read and write three letter words; matching the grapheme to the sound they can hear.
As they become confident and fluent readers and writers of CVC words children are then introduced to digraphs; where two letters make one sound. Throughout the whole of the reception year our phonic teaching relies on the firm foundations of orally blending and segmenting and is deep rooted in rhythm and rhyme. By the end of EYFS children should be fluent with all 44 sounds; including one way to represent them.
In Year 1 children develop their ability to hear and remember more than three sounds in a row and explore adjacent consonants to read CVCC and CCVC words such as ‘think, coast and blink’. They also become fluent at recognising and applying alternative sounds for the 44 graphemes they learnt in Reception and are introduced to alternative ways to make each of the digraphs they have previously learnt. Through the use of the characters 'Switch it Mitch' and 'Choose to Use Suze' they recognise spelling patterns and rules to identify which spelling they need to represent the sound. By the end of Year 1 children will have had access to over 100 spellings to make the 44 sounds.
Children are also introduced to 'Nonsense Nan' who will guide them through how to read alien and real words in preparation for the Year 1 Phonic Screening Check at the end of their time in Year 1. Children are also introduced to more tricky and high frequency words.
From Year 2, we continue to explore grapheme phoneme correspondence and learn spelling rules to support our reading and writing development. Supersonic Phonic Friends allows us access to a tailored programme of spelling rules for both children in Year 1 and Year 2.
All lessons are delivered using a consistent set of slides provided by the phonic scheme. Lessons last 30 minutes and follow the structure of:
Review and Revisit
During this part of the session, children recap on the sounds previously taught. This will consist of a fun activity or game to focus on sounds the children have recently been taught or to look at tricky words.
Teach
This is the part of the lesson where new learning takes place. Children will be introduced to a new sound and taught how to orally blend and segment words containing that sound. They will be shown the grapheme to represent the sound.
Practice
During this section children are given the opportunity to read and write words containing the new sound as well as orally spell and blend words with their phonic buddy. They will use a range of resources to embed their new learning; ensuring there is an equal balance of reading and writing.
Apply
In every lesson children will be given an application task where they are expected to read and write new words and sounds within a caption or a sentence. This allows children to see their new learning in a context and to further embed their vocabulary and fluency. They will also apply tricky words and high-frequency words to their reading or writing.
Within this structure all children become familiar with the characters and know the roles of their jobs. Children are given an equal balance of reading and writing phonic activities to ensure there is equal weighting to their application of skills.
Reading Scheme
As a school we have a range of texts to support children and their reading development and these are categorised by the sounds they contain.
All reading books are matched to the sounds children have covered in school to ensure we maximise their ability to apply their new knowledge and these books are read both within school and then sent home for children to further embed the skills.
Assessment
Supersonic Phonic Friends is a programme rooted in the belief that “wrapping the children in lessons full rhyme will allow children to achieve every time,” and that the careful and rigorous assessment will allow children at risk of falling behind to be pinpointed quickly and teachers can intervene effectively.
Assessment takes the form of half termly whole class trackers to allow staff to easily identify children who are on track, above or if they require extra support to ‘keep up’ in their phonics and the application of their reading and writing.
Supersonic Phonic Friends have created videos to support:
- Basics 2 Alliterative Rhymes and Actions
- Basics 3 Alliterative Rhymes and Actions
- Supersonic Phonic Friends Helpful Phrases and Actions
Please visit the website below for more information:
Links to work units from the Summer Term: