Cwtch Derbyn

Class teacher: Mrs Millington

HLTA: Miss Callow

PPA cover: Miss Clee

Our PE day is Friday. Please come to school dressed in PE kit ready.

Summer 1 - Finding Beauty Everywhere

Week 1 - We will be focusing on weather and seasons where we will be exploring the effects the seasons have on plants and animals.

Week 2/3 - We will be exploring plants and what plants need to be able to grow. We will also be exploring and sequencing life-cycles of plants alongside learning how to successfully plant seeds.

During week three we will celebrate the King's Coronation.

Week 4 - Our focus will be on a variety of animals and their habitats. We will learn about growing and changing and will explore life-cycles of some animals.  We will also visit Newport Wetlands to take part in practical learning experiences involving minibeasts and pond life. 

Week 5 - We will be learning about the importance of bees and other pollinators. We are lucky enough to have Mrs Caroline Hartfield join us during the week, where she will share her knowledge of bee-keeping with the children. We will celebrate World Bee Day Thursday 18th May. Please feel free to send your child in ‘bee colours’ or fancy dress. 

We round off the half term with the focus on humans. We will learn about healthy eating and keeping healthy, our senses and parts of our body.

Numeracy focus:

Addition and subtraction within 10 and 20.

Symmetry in nature and creating simple symmetrical patterns and pictures. 

Comparing length and width and learning key vocabulary such as longer, shorter, wider, taller, narrower, bigger, smaller.

Repeating patterns.

Phonics: 

Revision of phase 2 and 3 sounds will continue alongside phase 2 and 3 high frequency and tricky words.

Phase 4 cluster blends will be introduced alongside phase 4 high frequency and tricky words. 

You will also find the sounds/word mats within your child’s Seesaw account. 

Spring 1 - Belonging

This half term Reception children will be learning all about their locality and nearby localities. Each week we will have a themed focus.

Week 1 - My home

We will be looking at different types of homes and identifying similarities and differences. 

Week 2 - Where I live

We will be exploring where each of us lives, and will begin to recognise that different places have different physical and natural features.

Week 3 - St Mellons

We will learn that St Mellons is in Cardiff and Cardiff is the Capital City of Wales. We will explore simple maps and learn about distance and how to follow directions. We are very much looking forward to using a simple map to find our way to TESCO to buy some fruit and vegetables. 

Week 4 - Cardiff

We will begin to recognise differences between our own locality and wider parts of our city. We will also learning about key landmarks in Cardiff. 

Dotty Dog (our class dog) has asked friends to join us. Dotty’s friends would like to go on an adventure with the children. 

Week 5 & 6 - Famous Welsh People

We will be exploring the artwork of the Welsh artist, Rhiannon Roberts. We will be thinking creatively and imaginatively and producing our own artwork using her style. 

Our phonics journey continues:

We will be focusing on phase 3 sounds and phase 3 HFW and tricky words.

Hear the sounds

Mathematics and numeracy focus

We will begin to use money, and the language of money, in play and real-life situations and  begin to understand that we need to exchange money for items.

We will continue to develop our counting, addition and subtraction skills.

We will celebrate: Chinese New Year, St Dwynwen's Day, Safer Internet Day, Valentine's Day. We will also start preparing for our first Eisteddfod at Bishop Childs.

Autumn 2 - Celebrating Difference

As part of our Health and Well-being focus we will be exploring how to respect similarities and differences. We will also explore anti-bullying and being unique. Each week we will have a themed focus:

Week 1 - What am I good at?         

Week 2 - I'm special, I'm me!        

Week 3 - Families                      

Week 4 - Houses and Homes     

Week 5 - Making Friends               

Week 6 - Standing up for yourself 

We will continue our Language and Literacy journey by moving on to Phase 2 phonics. In Phase 2, children begin to learn the sounds that letters make (phonemes). There are 44 sounds in all. Some are made with two letters (digraph). In Phase 2, children focus on learning the 19 most common single letter sounds. 

By the end of Phase 2 children should be able to read some vowel-consonant (VC) and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, and to spell them out. They also learn some high frequency and ‘tricky words’. There is further guidance on this in your child's Seesaw account.  

Mathematics and Numeracy focus

• Properties of 2d shapes 
• Heavy and light. Heavier/ lighter.
• Developing data handling skills integrated with our DCF skills
• Big Maths ‘Learn Its’ Step 2. We will focus on developing our mathematical language whilst solving addition problems. 

3 + 3 =

4 + 4 =

5 + 5 =

Our Expressive Arts and Science and Technology closely link as we will be exploring structures. We will look at the work of the Swiss-artist, Ugo Rondinone and Australian artist ,Annalise Rees. We will then create our own art work using their style and  techniques.

Autumn 1 - Being Me in My World

In Progression Step 1 we will be exploring our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others. We will focus on how to keep ourselves healthy and happy, as well as build positive relationships with others. We will also begin to explore different emotions and how these can play a part in our everyday life.

We will begin to learn about our school values: 

Respect  Aspiration  Teamwork  Equity

To help us learn about the four purposes we will learn the names of the characters and how they can guide us through our learning journey.

Language and Literacy - Phonics Phase 1

What is Phase 1 phonics?

Phase 1 phonics is the first stage of the phonics teaching programme. At this stage, the focus is primarily on developing speaking and listening skills. Speaking and listening are an important set of literacy skills that will create the foundation to a lot of your children's further learning. Listening requires the fundamental skill of focusing attention on the speaker in order to be able to hear and understand what the speaker is saying. Speaking skills require students to take turns, speak confidently, stay on topic and speak with clarity.

Phase 1 phonics skills that are developed at this stage:

• Aspect 1 - Environmental sounds
• Aspect 2 - Instrumental sounds
• Aspect 3 - Body percussion (e.g. clapping and stamping)
• Aspect 4 - Rhythm and rhyme
• Aspect 5 - Alliteration
• Aspect 6 - Voice sounds
• Aspect 7 - Oral blending and segmenting (e.g. hearing that d-o-g makes ‘dog’)

The purpose of these different aspects is to develop students' language abilities in the following ways:

• Learning to listen attentively
• Extending their vocabulary
• Speaking confidently to adults and other children
• Discriminating between different phonemes
• Reproducing audibly the phonemes they hear
• Using sound-talk to segment words into phonemes

Why is Phase 1 phonics important?

The purpose of this phase is to develop children's listening and communication skills, including their vocabulary, to prepare them for reading and writing in the next phase. If children do not fully develop these skills it can mean that they may struggle to hear the individual sounds in words, which can mean children find it much harder to spell and blend sounds for reading.

Numeracy

We are learning to recognise and write numbers to 10. Big Maths 'Learn Its' this term are step 1 & 2.

1+1     2+2