The end of term 3, I can’t believe we are half way through our reception year already! This week in phonics we learnt two new sounds ‘or’ (horn, torch, corn) and ‘ur’ (hurt, surf, fur) as well as the tricky word ‘they’. Their new sound flashcards have gone home in book bags today. Please do continue to practise these and read with your children over the half term term break.

In maths we have been practising conceptual subitising, recognising groups of numbers within numbers greater than 5. This ability to identify a whole quantity by subitising the smaller quantities that make up the whole number is a skill that will support children to develop mental images for addition and subtraction. This in turn helps them to move away from counting on and counting back when calculating later on. You can practise this at home and whilst out and about too if you wish. Ask your child to say the whole number first and then how did they know that, by naming the two parts or more that they saw. For example “I can see 8. There are 4 here and 4 there. There are 8 altogether.”

Tuesday of this week was ‘safer internet day’. we spend some time each day talking about how to stay safe when we are online. We read about the adventures of Smartie the Penguin and as the theme this year was artificial intelligence, (or AI) in reception we talked specifically about the use of voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri or Google.

In P.E. we had lots of fun finalising our dance sequence and in R.E. we listened to and talked about a special story from the Qur’an ‘The boy who threw stones at trees’ and wondered what Muslims might learn from this story. The RSPB Big Schools Birdwatch also took place this week and we joined in. We read stories and looked at pictures to help us identify common garden birds, we learnt how to draw a bird and then we went outside to do some bird spotting ourselves with our year 6 buddies.

We collected all the library books back in today from the children and will visit the school library again in the new term. Have a wonderful half term break, we look forward to seeing everyone again on the 23rd February.

Jo Bentley

Please do not hesitate to email me with any questions or queries: jbentley@stjohnsprimary.org