Headteacher: Anna Moss

0121 445 1622

Red Class

Red Class Friday Fanfare 21.04.23

21.04.23

Hello Red Class Families,

Welcome to the summer term in Red Class. The children coped well with some changes this week including afternoon clubs, Forest School with older children and a shorter home time routine. I’ve visited the children, each day, in their afternoon clubs and they look happy and settled. Thank you to Mrs Edney, Mrs Birley and Mrs Thomas for all their hard work, in the spring term, to help Red Class make such a smooth transition.

During our first day, we used Dilemma-Based Learning to inspire the children’s talk around their new topic. The children used maps, paintings, diary entries and a film clip to find out about Julia and her life in Poland. We danced to traditional Polish music to experience one of her favourite hobbies.Throughout the morning, the children used each piece of evidence to form opinions, give reasons for their answers and debate ideas around Julia’s life and how her life might change. We will spend the rest of the topic finding out about Kraków and Birmingham as places Julia might like to live.

It's been a busy week, as we started to read and spell CVCC words e.g. tent, sand, belt, wind and introduced new tricky words too e.g. said, so, have, like. A list of tricky words, for this half term, can be found on the class newsletter. In Literacy, we shared the Polish folk tale, ‘The Woodcutter’s Duck’. We’re busy learning a retell of the story to share during the King’s Coronation Celebration. During this event, Friday 5th May, the children will perform their retell and sing as part of a whole school choir.

In Maths, we used Base Ten equipment to make and understand teen numbers. We also used blank number lines to develop an understanding of number order. Try finding and reading teen numbers in the environment. Can you find a teen number on a front door or a price label?

In Geography (Understanding of the World) lessons, we discovered Poland on the map and talked about the continent of Europe. We described how we would travel to Poland and used Google Earth to find Poland and the city of Kraków. The children wanted to find their school too, so we zoomed into Blackwell.

You will find a homework book in your child’s book bag this afternoon. Topic homework is optional as reading remains the most important part of home learning. Guidance can be found on the inside cover and our class newsletter.

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class xxx

Easter Fanfare

Easter Fanfare

Hello Red Class Families,

It’s been a busy term, finding out about transport from the past, entering a writing competition, raising money for local food banks, becoming wake and shake champions and, of course, Singing on the Steps. We’ve also braved every type of weather in our outdoor play and learning from snow to sunshine! Well done, Red Class.

During the holidays, please revisit your eBook collection, focusing on fluency and expression. Please also focus on your individual reading targets issued at parent consultations. Games such as matching pairs, bingo and snap will help you to remember individual letters, digraphs and words. Please look for any reading books at home as we’re missing a few from our sets.

If you would like to spend some time practising your Maths facts, then click here for some mental maths games: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/3-5-years/counting

Alternatively, write 0-10 on post-it notes and try ordering them. Turn over a couple of cards and see if you can work out the missing numbers using your 1 more and 1 less skills. If you’re secure with number order to 10, then work up to 20. Again, find 1 more and 1 less to 20 with the cards and then mentally.

Try to write over the holidays. You might write Easter cards or an Easter shopping list. Use the handwriting pack, sent home earlier in the year, to recap how to form each letter correctly and check your work with the cursive letter mat, sent home last week. If your cursive letter formation is developing well and you’re remembering your lead in and lead out, then begin to reduce the size of your letters.

When we return, after the holidays, the children will start their new afternoon clubs! Red Class will learn alongside older children, visiting new classrooms and meeting new grown-ups. Mrs Edney, Mrs Thomas and Mrs Birley have worked hard to prepare the children for this change. The children will now attend Forest School on different days, depending on their group. They can still wear joggers and trainers on their Forest School Day. Groups can be found on Parent App.

Finally, our next topic will see the children turning into ‘Globe Trotters’. We’ve enjoyed finding out about Redmond’s travels, so now it’s our turn to make a virtual visit! We’ll also be celebrating the King’s Coronation.

Wishing all our families a peaceful Easter full of sunshine, laughter and plenty of chocolate!

Best wishes,

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class

 

Red Class Friday Fanfare 24.03.23

24.03.23

Hello Red Class Families,

Thank you for joining me for parent consultations this week. It was great to share the children’s progress and next steps. Following parent consultations, we celebrated some show and tell items linked to the children’s targets. Well done, Team Red! On Tuesday afternoon, I will call the last few families to share your child’s progress and targets.

This week, we started our new topic, ‘Easter’. We shared the Easter story and discovered how people celebrate Easter from egg rolling competitions to writing Easter cards. We’ve been working hard on our Easter songs ready for ‘Singing on the Steps’.

In Phonics, we read compound words (popcorn, farmyard) and words ending in -ing (waiting, singing). Every week, we’re seeing good progress in the children’s confidence and ability to form cursive letters. We revisited ‘r’, ‘n’ and ‘m’ in handwriting lessons. I’ll send home a copy of our cursive letter mat to support cursive writing at home.

In Maths, we used the part-whole model for subtraction. We practised our halves every day too. If you say ‘Chip the Chopper’ to your child, hopefully, they should be able to show you their chopping action for halving and they might be able to sing the song too!

Mrs Hampton helped the children to navigate their eBooks in our Computing lesson. New eBooks have been added to the children’s accounts. Please revisit eBooks from previous weeks to develop fluency and expression. If you’re playing games to practise digraphs, trigraphs or tricky words, this will count as a tick on your reading sheet. New reading sheets, to record reading at home, were sent home on Monday. Just a reminder to some of the Giraffes to bring their library books in on Fridays so we can change them.

Finally, a big thank you to Mrs Allen who helped us with our campfire today. The children toasted marshmallows and it was Mrs Lewis’s job to check when they were ready to eat. Mrs Lewis has all the best jobs! Next week, will be our final Forest School session as a class. After the Easter holidays, the children will visit Forest School during club time. When afternoon clubs have been finalised, we will let you know your child’s Forest School day.

We look forward to seeing you next week for Singing on the Steps (28.3.23 at 8.45am).

Best wishes for a lovely weekend,

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class

Red Class Friday Fanfare 17.03.23

17.03.23

Hello Red Class Families,

This week, in Phonics, we read words with two or more digraphs. Every day, we read a sentence to apply our learning. Before reading, we look for digraphs and trigraphs within words, spot tricky words and find any words we’ve previously seen in the warm up. We then practise reading the sentence several times. Here are two examples:

The sheep march up the hill and into the sunset.

The queen has seven sheep and a shark.

In Literacy lessons, we thought about good word choices such as ‘shiny’ and ‘magical’ to describe the lamp from Aladdin. Later in the week, we read phrases using good word choices and then wrote phrases together. Although, we’re moving into our Easter topic, next week, we will spend the first part of the week writing phrases to match our transport yoga poses. Our writing will then be entered into the Blackwell Writing Competition.

During Forest School, the children discovered how to prepare for a 5 minute campfire. We talked about the sticks we would need to collect and how to arrange them. We also talked about what to do after a fire to look after the forest and to keep everyone safe. Next week, weather depending, we’re hoping to enjoy a real campfire at Forest School.

You might start to hear songs about chickens and seeds at home! We’ve started to learn our Easter songs and, although we want to keep a few surprises, we thought you might like to practise one of the songs at home. You never know if there might be some audience participation during ‘Singing on the Steps’. Please click the link to find one of our songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEey4LZLeGw

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at good relationships in PSHE. Today, we talked about what to do if we have a problem. As a class, we planned some strategies to help, for example, using some ‘thinking’ or ‘quiet’ time to calm down, talking through our problem and trying to find a solution. After the lesson, one little boy said, “Mrs Webb, we (pointing to his friend) have a good relationship because we’re sharing.” Other children offered examples of how they’d fallen out with their friend or sibling but they’d found ways to solve their problems, such as taking turns to play different games.

Finally, thank you for helping to raise money for Comic Relief. The children looked fantastic in their class colour!

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend.

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class

Red Class Friday Fanfare 10.03.23

10.03.23

Hello Red Class Families,

If we managed to return every glove, hat, sock and snow boot to the right children then I will be very happy and surprised! Mrs Spurgeon’s organisation skills were certainly put to the test at 1.40pm and she did a marvellous job. If you’re missing any items, just email the office. The children enjoyed their time in the snow.

We tackled ‘z’ in our handwriting lessons and spent the rest of the week working on curly caterpillar letters. We created some transport-themed pictures using these letters. Every week, we practise forming numerals too. This week, the children focused on 3, 6 and 8. Remember to start each numeral from the top.

x and z- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St5RHwFCkWM

In Phonics, we read words containing ‘er’ and ‘air’ and words with double letters e.g. ‘rubbish’, ‘muffin’ and ‘chatter’. Every lesson, the children write 3 keywords including a tricky word e.g. no, go, of. I can see progress in the children’s confidence and ability to write these words using cursive letters. Well done, Red Class.

In Maths, we used ordinal numbers to order people and objects. Try using ordinal numbers at home. Who is first to eat their dinner? Stand your teddies in a line and find the third teddy from the front of the line. We’ve also started to count in 5s. The children might like to sing this song at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ4jV14Oz5I

New eBooks have been added to reading accounts tonight. Sometimes, we share the same book over two weeks if we feel the children would benefit from extra sessions to improve their fluency and comprehension.

The children also enjoyed their first outdoor PE lesson, this week. We looked at good running technique and practised our skills in relay races. Next week, we’ll be practising our jumping skills with Mrs Thomas.

Finally, parent consultation times were sent out today. Please contact the school office if you need to change your day or time. During this meeting, you’ll be able to see your child’s learning journey and workbook.

Best wishes for the weekend whether it’s full of snow or sunshine,

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class

Red Class Friday Fanfare 17.02.23

Hello Red Class Families,

We managed to make it through the week despite many bugs trying to stop us! We even managed a fantastic performance in the Wake and Shake competition leading to a Red Class victory! We are the La Bamba Champions and the Wake and Shake Cup stands proudly in our classroom. Other highlights from this term included our afternoon tea for two, visiting St Catherine’s Church and starting to put pencil to paper for writing.

The children are ready for a week of play and rest after a very busy seven weeks at school. In that time, we have covered all the graphemes from the Reception Year. So, for the rest of the year, we will revisit all digraphs and trigraphs and apply them to longer words. Following our half-termly phonics assessment, we’ll also target tricky digraphs and trigraphs and send home reading books to support personal targets.

In handwriting lessons, we covered ‘m’, ‘p’, ‘j’ and ‘s’. When we return to school, we will learn how to form our final set of letters (v, w, x and z) and revisit all our letter families. If the children can practise their handwriting during the holidays, particularly the first set of curly caterpillar letters (c, o, a, d, g, q), this will make a big difference to their progress in school.

r, n and m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ApSBO_prI

p, j and s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ad5hDpIkmM

This week, we’ve been watching film clips of the children playing in the environment to talk about learning behaviours such as cooperation, communication and resilience. These skills are particularly tricky in the last few weeks of term, when the children are very tired, so it was good to spot kind hands and voices and to celebrate learning behaviours.

When we return to school, we’ll be travelling back in time to find out about ‘Transport’ and taking a magic carpet ride to meet Aladdin. As part of our play, we’ll be making large role play vehicles on the balcony. Please save any large cardboard boxes at home.

Whether you’re at home or away this half term, enjoy the break. Well done, Team Red.

Best wishes,

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class xxx

P.S. The children had their hearing tests this week and their results can be accessed through the Parent Portal.

Red Class Friday Fanfare 10.02.23

10.02.23

Hello Red Class Families,

This week, we used ‘chunking’ to read longer words. When reading ‘laptop’, we chunked the word into smaller parts e.g. lap and top and used our sound talk and blending skills, before putting the word back together. Try chunking at home using the following words: sunset, farmyard and bedroom. Remember to look for digraphs too. This week, we recapped previously taught tricky words: pure, sure, are, into, of, he, she, me, be and we.

Handwriting lessons focused on two different letter families. First ‘e’ and ‘f’ and then ‘r’ and ‘n’. We also include ‘m’ in the latter family. We will cover this letter next week.

e and f: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxKjG9VGUlw

r, n and m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ApSBO_prI

In Art lessons, we’ve been tearing, cutting, arranging and sticking as part of our collage work. The children have been developing their scissor grip and action and learning how to tear strips and shapes. This linked to our Maths lessons where we’ve been exploring 2D and 3D shapes. Next week, we will use our collage skills to create artwork for the office area.

Our Visit to St Catherine’s Church

Today, we visited St Catherine’s Church where we met Rev. Sheri Gidney. We looked at some of the features of the church including the font and the altar. We also shared stories from the Bible and talked about prayer. Thank you to Rev. Sheri, Marie, Jenny and Dave for helping us with our learning.

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend,

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class