What an exciting busy week!  This week we have continued our learning all about The Great Fire of London and learned about what changes happened afterwards so that the awful fire didn’t happen again.  The children learned that Sir Christopher Wren was instructed to design a new London.  The houses were rebuilt using stone and brick and were not allowed to be built using wood again. They were built much further apart and the streets were made wider.  Fire fighters were also employed and fire carts were introduced with equipment to put out fires in the future.

In English we wrote simple sentences about what we may hear, feel, see and smell in the Great Fire, following on from last week’s lesson.  The children wrote ‘I can see fire’ or ‘I can smell burning’, etc, using the phonics they have learned to date.  They are beginning to develop more independence with this, and hear the sounds in simple words more confidently.

In maths we explored the composition of 5 by using Numicon shapes to place together to make 5.  We found 4 and 1, 2 and 3, 1 and 1 and 1 and 2, 3 and 1 and 1 etc. There were lots of ways to make 5. We talked about the parts of 5 and the whole. We then played a game to help with our conceptual understanding of 5, where Mrs Riley place 5 bears under a pot, then she took some out. We looked at the amount out of the pot and could say how many were underneath!  Some of us used mark making to help us with our calculation.  We are getting really good at recalling the number bonds to 5 without counting.

We have continued practising our Nativity on the stage! Thank you for your support with helping the children to learn their lines and for their costumes. Despite all the poorly absent children, we have continued to practise and are almost ready to perform to the school on Monday and to parents on Thursday!  Specific timings and information will be sent on Parenthub to you. We ask that each child has a maximum of 4 people in the audience please, due to the space in the hall.  Fingers crossed for healthy children next week!

We had a fantastic day on Wednesday, where we watched the Pantomime that came into school.  It was so much fun and the children loved it.  Thank you to the PTA for this treat.  We also enjoyed our Christmas Jumper Day and Christmas Dinner too!  The children had lots of fun in the hall, pulling their crackers, wearing their party hats and eating Christmas dinner along to Christmas music!

Onn Friday, we walked to Repton School with the rest of the school to see the KS1 children perform their Christmas play, ‘The Inn-Spectors’.  It was so good and they did themselves proud!  Thank you to the parent helpers who helped us all to walk safely there and back.

In Monster Phonics this week we learned the digraph ‘ar’.  We know that Tricky Witch has changed the sounds a and r to make an ar sound. We worked together on different writing and reading activities associated with this digraph and our tricky words too.

We have sent home set 11 of the High Frequency Words to learn this week.  This is the last of this term’s words.  There aren’t so many next term, but please continue to practise reading these at home.  Thank you for sharing the children’s reading books with them.  The share together book that your child chooses is simply to enjoy with you reading it to them.  These are not intended for the children to read!  Please encourage your child to read the Monster Phonics reading books as much as possible (daily would be ideal). Even though it is repetition, it is so good for their memory of words, blending sounds and building up their confidence to read fluently.

Have a lovely weekend!