Week 5 - 30th November 2020
This week, with the start of December, we have been talking about Christmas. The children said that at Christmas, "The elves come back", "It will snow", "There will be presents and cake". We talked about the story of the first Christmas and have listened to different versions of the story. You can watch the video below to find out about why Christmas is celebrated.
This week we have begun writing Helicopter Stories. This is where children dictate a story to an adult scribe. The story can be as short as a simple phrase or sentence, or as long and complex as they like. The adult writes the story in the child's own words and supports the children to do the bits they can-for example writing their name at the end, writing the first sound of a word, a whole word-until the child, over time, is able to write independently. Because the story is written in the child's own words, it helps them to read back their story-which is, of course, the purpose of writing-we write a message to be read by ourselves or another person. The children have been very keen to come and write a story with a grown up and we have been very proud of the enthusiasm for having a go at doing some of the writing themselves. Thank you for all your hard work in supporting the children with their phonics learning at home-this is really showing in both the children's reading and their writing! Not all children have had a chance at writing a story yet, but below are a sample of some of the children's work.
If you want to find out more about Helicopter Stories, have a look at the website below.
The children are all really enjoying our phonics lessons, in particular, some of the games we play to practise our phoneme recognition and blending. If your child would like to play some of these games at home, please visit the Phonics Play website-some of the games are available without subscription.