w/c 20.03.23
We hope you've all had a lovely Mother's Day weekend and are looking forward to welcoming you to the classroom for our 'Celebration of Mothers' performance. We will keep the children inside at home time (unless you have informed us that they will be going home with any after school club at the usual time) and will open the gates at our normal time to let you in. Please collect any older siblings first and bring them with you.
In Mathematics, we will be continuing work on composition.
This week, the children will continue to explore the composition of numbers within 10, focusing on the ‘special case’ of when 2 equal parts combine to make a whole. The children will first use their skills of comparison and identify when 2 sets are equal or NOT equal, previously explored in Week 15. They will see a range of familiar representations including dice and fingers to explore the idea of ‘2 equal parts’, and then find the whole by combining these parts. This week the children will continue to use their subitising skills, and begin to ‘know’ the whole when they see 2 parts the same size for larger numbers within 10, as well as begin to recall some doubles facts when an image or physical resource is not available to support them.
The use of gesture will be particularly important this week. When children make a double pattern on their fingers, they will be encouraged to match their fingers to ‘check’ that the same number is shown on each hand. It will also be helpful to use a ‘circling’ gesture to draw the children’s attention to the double being composed of both parts together.
Note that the language used relates to the composition of numbers additively. In Key Stage 1, the children will learn that doubles can be seen as ‘the same number twice’, or ‘2 times the number’. They will be supported in connecting the addition structure to the multiplication structure by seeing the relationship expressed symbolically, e.g. 3 + 3 = 2 x 3, and with the language ‘2 groups of 3’.
The children have previous experience of investigating groups that have an equal number of objects. They will already have made arrangements of numbers within 10, and may have begun to notice ‘special cases’ when a number can be composed of 2 equal parts.
Moving forward, the children will continue to use their subitising skills to explore and deeply understand the composition of numbers within 10. This will support their increasing fluency with number bonds and help them to develop efficient and flexible calculation strategies in Key Stage 1 and beyond.
In our Literacy work, we will continue work based on the story of 'What the Ladybird heard' and will be using adjectives to describe Lanky Len and Hefty Hugh in our writing. In addition to our work in our phonic groups, we will also be re-capping set 2 sounds as a whole class: ay, ee, igh and ow. we will also be learning two sounds for 00 - 'oo' as in look at the book and 'oo' as in poo at the zoo.
We will be practising for our performance and our main focus this week will be Expressive Arts and Design. We will be designing, making and evaluating obstacle courses and dens!