w/c 24.04.23
WOW!!! We were really impressed with all your 'Not a box!' creations and the children completed their own evaluations of their work on Friday. Don't worry if you haven't made yours yet, just bring it in any day and we will find the time to 'Show and Tell' them all!
We were pleased with the children's phonic assessments and our English co-ordinator Mrs Kawagoe will be analysing the results on Monday and assigning the children to their new groups this week. Keep up the good work! In addition to our daily phonic group sessions, the children will also be having whole class phonic sessions focussing on set 2 sounds: 'ar' and 'or'. In other Literacy work, we will be writing about our pets or pets that we would like to have.
Our focus in Maths is on subitising. We will be completing week 22 of the NCETM's mastering number programme.
This week, the children will continue to develop their subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) in increasingly complex arrangements. Some arrangements are easier to subitise than others – e.g. a set of 6 dots arranged in a structured die pattern that exposes the double-3 pattern is easier to recognise than a random arrangement of 6 dots. A key focus this week is to use the children’s developing understanding of doubles to support their subitising skills. By moving away from counting for sets that can be subitised, the children will develop their abstract understanding of number, which will help to support future calculation strategies. This week’s sessions will also continue to encourage the children to consider when they can subitise and when they might need to use counting as a strategy.
Another key focus this week is the ongoing development of visualising skills: encouraging the children to look carefully at structured arrangements, such as those shown on dice and 10-frames, and then to close their eyes and explain what they see. Using spatial language and hand gestures to describe sub-groups within these arrangements will deepen the children’s understanding of part–part–whole relations and allow them to further consider composition (the numbers within numbers).
Subitising is an essential feature when developing number sense. It can support the children’s understanding of cardinality (the idea that the last number in the count tells us how many things there are altogether), and it will also help them to identify groups and units in a repeating pattern.
The children will already have lots of experience with perceptual subitising and with making collections of small amounts. The use of 10-frames to support their developing sense of numbers to 10 will help to foster a deep understanding of the composition of some of these numbers. This understanding will support their increasing fluency with number bonds and will help them to develop efficient and flexible calculation strategies in Key Stage 1 and beyond.
Other work this week will focus on building our own dens outside and discussing the changes in the seasons since our last discussion. We will link this to art work and observational drawings. We will also be sorting fruit and vegetables.
We are looking forward to warmer weather. Please remember to bring your named water bottles and as it gets sunnier don't forget to apply long lasting suncream before school and to bring a hat. Children may bring their own suncream to school, but need to be able to apply it themselves.