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 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 ‘It is hot’ or ‘I will run’, 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 and we had a dress rehearsal, performing to the whole school on Friday. The children were absolutely AMAZING! We have high hopes for Monday and are very excited about performing to the parents! Please check your ParentHub for details about the day.

We had a fantastic day on Wednesday, where we watched the Pantomime at Repton School.  It was so much fun and the children loved it.  Thank you to the PTA for this treat.  

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 10 of the High Frequency Words to learn this week.  There aren't so many to learn next term, but please continue to practise reading these at home.  Thank you for sharing the children’s reading books with them.  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!