March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.
Weekend wonder…..
I am going to keep it the same as before the half term break - I appreciate that to create such a masterpiece takes time!
“I wonder if you can create a self portrait”
Look at yourself in the mirror, what colour are your eyes, your hair, do you have freckles? You may wish to use paints, pens, pencils, pasta, fabrics, junk modelling – be as creative as you like – really express yourself.
Bring in your creations next week and we will display them all on our board in the classroom – it is empty and ready to be filled with you!
This week…….
It will come as no surprise to you that I always look forward to March – Spring is in the air and of course what better way to start the month than with a celebration, especially one as close to my heart as the celebration of St. David’s Day.
It is so lovely to be back in school, don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the half term break but there is something comforting about being back and having that sense of belonging. I tried to put this into words in Whole School Worship on Tuesday – I wore the daffodil with pride – a sign of my welshness – my belonging, my identity, my being part of something – my ‘hiraeth’ as we would say in Wales. I would like to think that we as a school offer that similar sense of belonging – wearing the school uniform with the school badge, giving that sense of pride.
A new term comes with a new Christian Value and a new Learning Power – so please say hello to Colin the Caterpillar (and yes I do have a ‘Colin’ voice that I use in class!!!!) and the power he wants us to use is to Concentrate.
Our Christian value is Friendship and I can honestly say I saw so many examples of friendship during World Book Day. All pupils were placed in mixed age groups according to their houses, Anvil, Watermill and Arlington. Each teacher took one of the VIPERS as the focus of the session (Vocabulary, Infer, Predict, Explain, Retrieve, Summarise) and the children rotated around the classrooms to a different VIPERS workshop throughout the day. It was just brilliant listening to their interactions, their ideas and above all else their enjoyment and laughter – it was a great day and the costumes were fab too!
As well as St. David’s Day and World Book day we also learnt about Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) and Ash Wednesday (marking the beginning of Lent). We also made pancakes in class that we were able to eat (they were nice and warm) and also had a go at tossing pancakes (cold ones that we did not eat as they mostly ended up on the floor!!!). The children found it quite tricky at first to get the co ordination of flicking a fairly heavy frying pan with two hands using enough force so that the pancake lifted out of the pan – they all had a good go though and their little faces lit up with excitement (and surprise) when they actually tossed the pancake and caught it!
In Phonics this week we learnt the sounds x, y, z, zz, recapped reading the tricky words, the, I, go, no, to, he, she and learnt to sing the alphabet song – the L, M, N, O, P bit still needs a little more reinforcement! However, we introduced the vocabulary of capital letters, vowels and consonants and despite not being pronounced quite accurately yet, I have overheard children during their free flow using the vocabulary and saying, ‘I am going to write my vowels and consonants now’ ‘I am going to be the teacher and sing the alphabet song.’
Now that we know the order of the alphabet we are looking to spot places where alphabetical order is used, so far we have found it used in the register, the helper list and the online ordering system for lunch.
Next week…..
In Phonics we will be learning the digraph sounds (2 letters making one sound) qu, ch, sh, th, ng – we will spread this learning over the next two weeks to really embed the sounds and apply them in our reading and writing. Don’t forget, if you wish for the home learning Phonics books to be updated with these sounds, please send them in and we update them with pleasure.
Finally, thank you to those of you who have already signed up to be a ‘Mystery Reader’, we will be putting a timetable together soon and will let you know when it is your week – if you have not already signed up please return the form or just pop us an email – even if you don’t want to read the story please feel free to come in and join us for a story time – we promise you, your child will absolutely love you being there (and we will too).