Curriculum Newsletter Spring Term 2009
Reception
Communication, Language and Literacy Development
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, animals and Pets. 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.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
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. We will be practising these skills at home through the use of ‘Education City’ mathematical activities
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: Journeys, Communion and Growing
Journeys- The children will be able to talk about what a journey is and identify different journeys they have made. They will be able to retell the story of a journey to church on Sunday and Mary and Joseph’s visit to the Temple with Jesus
Communion- We will be learning about what we do with other people and the happiness this brings. The children will be able to recall some of the happy times described in stories. They will be able to retell the story of Jesus welcoming the children
Growing- We will be talking about how the children have grown and changed. They will know that Lent is a time to grow in a special way, being more caring and helpful. They will know that Jesus died on a cross on Good Friday and was given new life by God, his Father, on Easter Sunday.