Curriculum Newsletter Spring Term 2008
Reception
Communication, Language and Literacy
The children will be listening and responding to a range of texts-traditional tales, weather related non-fiction books, rhymes and jingles. They will be discussing characters, stories and topics. They will be reading a range of books on an individual, paired and group basis. We will be continuing to encourage the children to develop their recognition of key words targeted at their age and beginning to blend and segment words to read and write. We encourage the children to practise these skills using the weekly spelling focus on our school website. We will be continuing to write all areas of the classroom and will develop their handwriting skills.
Personal, social and emotional development
The children will be encouraged to express their feelings in relation to stories, role play and classroom. They will be looking at caring/respect for our environment during the Winter. The children will be focusing on a unit about ‘Keeping myself safe’. We will be continuing to develop our skills working as part of a team, sharing and thinking of others feelings.
Mathematical Development
The children will be continuing to count past 20, and developing their skills of counting from a given number backwards and forwards. They will be reordering numbers to 10, writing to 10/20 and learning new number songs and rhymes. We will be matching objects and making sets; copying, recreating and continuing patterns. We will be developing their skills in addition and subtraction and combining sets together and recording this information.
Knowledge and understanding of the world
We are focusing on the winter, seasons and looking at appropriate clothing. They will be exploring the local environment, studying weather changes, weather charts, and the passage of time. We will develop their skills with simple hand tools, and explore wet and dry sand, water-warm and cold. The children will develop their skills within our computer suite, classroom computer, listening equipment and CD player. We will be developing keyboard skills and our ability to move around a computer screen. We will also be developing their skills using the computer keyboard. We will look at growing and change – seeds, plants and caring for them as they grow.
Physical development
The children will be continuing to develop their ongoing skills of changing/dressing for PE and using our various dressing-up clothes. We will be introducing the use of PE equipment in hall and exploring different ways of travelling on parts of body – feet, hands bottom and knees/ simple gymnastics.
Creative development
We will be developing our painting skills and exploring colour as well as snowy/icy pictures. We will be developing our role play and imaginative skills during our play activities. Our first role play area will be decided with the whole class as a shared project to encourage the children to think about and use their own creative ideas.
RE
Our RE topics this term are: Celebrations- to develop an understanding of what a celebration is and that people celebrate in church on Sunday. Thanksgiving- to learn about all there is to be thankful for, and Mass as a special way of saying thank you to God for Jesus. Self-Giving- to develop an understanding of what they can and do give, and of Lent. To learnt about Lent being a special time for giving and looking forward to Easter.