Summer Term
Our learning in the Summer term...
Our Vehicle for this half term is “Mini beasts”.
Through this curriculum driver we will be looking at stories with a minibeast and plant theme, Supersnail, the extraordinary gardener, What the ladybird heard, The tiny seed and the very hungry caterpillar etc. We will look at poetry that connect to these stories and explore the different characters. Alongside this, we will look at the past and explore what the past means with video clips from the past. We will also be using our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste to explore the world around us. We will look at other festivals and celebrations over this term, including Chinese new year.
Religious Education
Following completion of our unit of work on 'Lent’, we will be moving onto ‘Easter and Pentecost’. Children will learn to identify symbols of Easter and they will be introduced to the Holy Spirit. They will learn that the Holy Spirit is part of the trinity and the Holy Spirit visited the disciples in flame form. Children will also learn more about the priest and his role within the Catholic church.
PRIME AREAS OF LEARNING
Communication and Language
The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. We continue to support the children in learning new vocabulary and developing their spoken language through using ‘My Turn Your Turn’ and stem sentences modelled by the adults, role-play activities, lots of discussion and opportunities to ask questions.
Personal Social and Emotional Development
Children’s personal social and emotional development is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives. We continue to support them to learn and develop their personal social and emotional skills through developing strong and supportive relationships with the adults in the class and their peers. Through stories and activities including ‘Circle Time’, they will identify and name emotions, and are supported to reflect on and self-regulate their feelings and behaviour.
Physical Development
This half term the children will continue to learn key skills, such as throwing and catching and will begin to learn some basic athletics skills. All children will participate in sports day and other physical activities.
We encourage the children to get changed for PE themselves and they are doing brilliantly!
Please could you ensure that every item of PE kit and school uniform is clearly marked with your child’s name. As you can imagine – when 30 children are getting changed, it can be very difficult for them, and us, to match items of clothing with the correct child if it is not named. Thank you for your support with this.
Our children benefit from continuous provision and have access to the reception outdoor area freely in afternoons. Children practice, develop, and progress in gross motor skills with a range of physical development activities.
Physical Development is also about the development of fine motor skills, including holding a pencil correctly in order to write. The children participate in lots of activities which develop their fine motor, including threading, lacing, picking up small objects with child tweezers, dough disco, scissor skills.
SPECIFIC AREAS OF LEARNING
Literacy
Children are taught to read and spell through daily phonics – Read Write Inc. sessions. They will learn and practice recognising and sounding letters, use ‘Fred talk’ to read and ‘Fred Fingers’ to spell.
Weekly read write inc homework is set in homework books and your child has been assigned a group that matches their class work.
We will focus on many familiar texts this year, and not so familiar texts this term. We will use these texts, their characters and their settings to raise our curiosity about stories and to inspire our own ideas in drawing club and through the creation of our own stories.
Mathematics
We follow the ‘Power Maths’ Scheme which focuses on mastering key skills which will allow children to gain a secure understanding before moving on, thus building the foundations for future learning. Throughout Spring term, there was an emphasis on ‘number sense’, ensuring a solid grasp of numbers 1-10, including their composition – looking at the parts that make the whole number. We also worked on addition and subtraction facts and different concrete methods of solving these problems.
During the first part of Summer Term, we will be looking at counting forwards and backwards to aid our addition and subtraction skills. We will be looking at patterns in number including doubles, odds and evens and 'teen' and 'ty' numbers.
Understanding the World
We will continue to support the children to make sense of their physical world and their community through the stories that we learn in class. Through our traditional tales, we will look at similarities and differences of now and the past by looking at settings, characters and our own experiences. We will be learning about different minibeasts and their importance to our environment. We will have a visit from Rent a beast and learn more about how these creatures need to be looked after, and why! We will provide the children with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematical) activities and allow the children to investigate these where appropriate.
Expressive Arts and Design
Our Art focus this half term is to explore, design and make a picture collage in the style of Eric Carle (the very hungry caterpillar). Children will use different techniques to create the background, mixing colours and using a range of tools.
In Music, we will continue to use the Charanga Music Platform to learn to sing along with nursery rhymes and action songs, to listen and respond to different styles of music, to play classroom instruments, and to demonstrate the learning that has taken place through sharing and performing.