Summer term learning

Our learning in the Summer term...

Our Vehicle for this half term is “Nurture nature”.

Through this curriculum driver we will be looking at mini beasts and their environment, including lifecycles.  We will look at poetry that connect to the different insects and their habitats. Alongside this, we will design and make bug hotels and create our own wild garden for a range of different insects. We will continue to use our senses to explore the world around us. We will look at artists who use nature and create some of our own art work. 

Religious Education

  Following completion of our units of work around lent. holy week and Easter’, we will be moving onto ‘'Pentecost and people who help us. We hope to have some parents in talking about the jobs they do. They will learn about the story of Pentecost and recognise some of the changes that took place in the Apostles. They will also know some of the symbols the Church uses to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.

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.

This half term we are using the Ruth Miskin (read write inc creator) talk through stories to familiarise ourselves with some new and exciting stories whilst learning lots of interesting vocabulary. 

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 fundamental skills. These skills include running, skipping, throwing and catching (a range of equipment) and working as a team. We encourage the children to get changed for PE themselves and they are doing brilliantly!

Please could you continue to 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 practise, 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 practise recognising and sounding letters, use ‘Fred talk’ to read and ‘Fred Fingers’ to spell.

Weekly read write inc homework is set on the school website and your child has been assigned a group that matches their class work.

We will focus on many familiar, and some unfamiliar texts this year, which we will use to inspire our writing. We will begin by re-telling the stories in a variety of ways, including using actions, role-play and story maps, to help us know the story really well, including lots of new vocabulary. We are concentrating on texts about insects and their environment this term, including Super worm, the extraordinary gardner, what the ladybird heard, as well as lots of none fiction texts. 

Children learn a new poem weekly. These poems connect to the book focus. Children will listen to the poem, create actions for the poem, learn the poem and perform the poem. This helps to develop language, rhyming, performance skills and listening skills.

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 Autumn term, there was an emphasis on ‘number sense’, ensuring a solid grasp of numbers 1-5, including their composition – looking at the parts that make the whole number.

During  Spring Term, we developed the fundamental mathematical skills of sorting and recognising, describing, continuing and creating patterns, before moving onto numbers to 10.

This term we will be looking at measure, number bonds to, and within 10 and numbers to 20.

During maths sessions, the children will use a variety of concrete resources and a variety of pictorial representations, as well as the abstract numerals that represent each number.

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. We will be planting our own flowers and looking at how they grow. We will also be looking at the life cycle of butterflies, and we will have our own caterpillars to look after and observe in class. We will look at a selection of different insects and describe them and look at their habitats. We will then use this to inform our bug hotel creations. 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 to continue looking at different materials and colours in our continuous provision and to look at a range of different artists. We will make artwork in the style in these artists using lots of different techniques. 

We will also design and make our own bug hotels using natural resources and a range of different tool, including scissors, pliers, wood saws etc. 

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.