Lower Wortley Primary School

Each day we discuss a question at snack time through a circle time approach, and we share our news with peers.

Every week we send home a talk ticket via SCHOOP, which includes a question linked to our learning to discuss at home. We share these with our peers back in Nursery.

Children listen to stories, take part in small-group games, sing songs, and engage in activities with puppets and role-play scenarios, such as using telephones, to develop their communication, interaction, and listening skills. Oracy is central to our curriculum; practitioners’ model new vocabulary and sentence structures linked to themes and stories, extending children’s language through play and meaningful discussion.

The children continue to respond well to our positive behaviour management strategies including our superstar star chart, star of the day, achievosaurs, stickers and specific praise. Children are showing increasing confidence in sharing their news and creating amazing work for our WOW wall. Responsibility is encouraged through our daily milk and snack monitor roles.

Our stage will be enhanced this half term as we encourage children to develop their confidence performing to others. We will be discussing friendships including bullying and how to be a good friend.

The movement room provides excellent provision for the children to develop their physical skills. Each week we have a focus in our ‘Funky Fingers’ area to develop children’s fine motor control.

Outside we will be developing our gross motor control through dance with movement resources on the stage, balancing on the beams and stilts, and ball skills. We will be learning how to travel in a variety of ways as animals and transport.

We will complete regular yoga; our focus sessions are ‘Kickapoo the Kangaroo’ and ‘Calypso the Flamingo’.

Our mark making area includes enhancements to our Jungle theme such as writing an explorers list and about our favourite animals. In addition we have writing proformas throughout our role-play provision. We discuss the importance of using the correct pencil grasp and use rhymes to help our children remember the correct letter formation. To support children in writing their name every child has a name card which they can access independently.

Phonics is concentrating on developing children’s speaking and listening skills and supporting them to develop their oral blending and segmenting and rhyming. We are using Floppy’s phonics, and the children are using these books in their guided reading. 

We have a daily story time where we share stories linked to our theme and literacy spine. ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ is our Talk for Writing this term. Children will be encouraged to retell the story on our story map. This half term our focus rhyme is ‘Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’. The poetry basket poems we are learning are ‘Five Little Peas’ and ‘A Little Shell’.

Children will learn about shape and space through provision in the sand, malleable, water and construction areas. Through the Elmer story children will explore pattern. They will create their own patterns on Elmer templates and repeating patterns on snakes. They will look at patterns on the animals we are learning about and create our own. Children will also begin to use tallies to collect information about favourite animals.

Children are encouraged to complete several activities relating to our ‘star number’ including saying the rhyme, recognising the number and its value in Numicon. We will learn about one more and one fewer than a given number. Through practical activities children will begin to add groups of objects together and use our adding machine with purpose.  We will build on the children’s knowledge of shape through activities which introduce shape names and their properties.

Children will be involved in taking care of the flowers in our outdoor provision. We will observe the seasonal changes that take place during spring outside and with ingredients as children make animal biscuits.

Through our ‘Jungle’ theme children will learn about the different animals that live in the jungle and the habitats in which they live around the world.

Children have daily access to the computers and light panel, and they will create pictures using Dazzle.

Children will take photos of Lower Wortley from the school grounds and look at a slideshow of famous landmarks in Leeds. They will talk about their own journey to school in relation to Walk to School week.

Children are encouraged to express their creativity through our provision in Nursery. During focus activities this term children will create their own representations of jungle animals, create box craft animals and animal faces from paper plates. Children will use the construction equipment to make homes for animals. They will have opportunities to retell familiar stories in our puppet theatre and create music on our music wall. Children will continue to use their own mini me’s to support their imaginative play particularly in our construction and small world areas.

Role- play enhancements include a ‘Vets’ inside and a ‘Jungle Hide’ outside.