Headteacher: Anna Moss

14.05.21

This morning, Red Class posed for their Reception Class photograph. Looking across the rows of little ones, I couldn’t help but feel like a proud mother hen looking over her chicks. The children have come a long way since September, including through a nationwide lockdown. Now, fingers crossed we were all looking in the right direction and smiling!

Earlier in the week, the children wrote postcards to describe what they could see and hear in Kenya. I could see cursive letters starting from the line and children writing super sentences. Although, I think their favourite part of the activity was using the school stamp for the address.

This week, we started our last phase of phonics teaching for the year. The children worked hard to read and spell CVCC (consonant/vowel/consonant/consonant) words like tent, jump, bend. When reading CVCC words, we often forget the third phoneme. For example, writing ‘tent’ as ‘tet’ or ‘jump’ as ‘jup’. By highlighting the third letter in a different colour and emphasising this sound, the children found it easier to read and spell CVCC words.

It was all about money in Maths. The children explored the colour, shape and value of coins and enjoyed matching, sorting and problem-solving activities. When I set the problem of buying two items from the market for 20p, I was amazed to hear the children’s answers:

“You will need four 5p coins, Mrs Webb.”

“Try two 10p coins because double 10 is 20.”

“We could use twenty 1p coins.”

In the afternoons, we performed 3 songs to each class wearing our special Samburu tribe necklaces. As well as raising money for African Promise, we shared our new way of singing using the Kodály method. Our performances were also a great opportunity to introduce members of staff who the children see less frequently, for example, Miss Phipps in Yellow Class. Thank you to all our friends across the school for supporting our project.

Miss Coyle will be working with Red Class for the next few weeks. Miss Coyle is a trainee teacher based in Purple Class (Year 2). Miss Barber will be joining us again after half term. She is currently gaining some experience in Year 2.

I know many of you have started new clubs. So, whether you’re playing cricket or football, biking across muddy tracks or singing and dancing this weekend, have fun. We would also like to say ‘Eid Mubarak’ to our families who have celebrated Eid al-Fitr this week.

Lots of love.

Mrs Webb and Red Class Team xxx