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, participate in small group games, sing songs, complete activities with puppets (including making their own sock puppet), to develop their communication, interaction and listening skills.

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.  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. Activities this half term include making patterns on peg boards, using tweezers to sort objects, fastening screws, threading to create African jewellery and cutting patterns.  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’.

We have superhero writing capes which encourage the children to mark make with superpowers using a variety of mark making equipment. In addition to our mark making area 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 will be ‘Two Little Dickie Birds’.

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. We 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.

During our ‘Around the World’ theme we will locate different countries on the globe and learn about children from other cultures including similarities and differences between their food, homes, weather, clothes and music. This will include children tasting traditional Indian food and smelling a variety of spices. We will also look at animals from around the world and similarities and differences between their habitats.  Children will take photos of Lower Wortley from the school grounds and look at a slideshow of famous landmarks in Leeds. We will learn about how we travel to different places, make our own passports and use the remote-controlled cars.

Children will create their own representations of their homes through a choice of media. They will design and make their own vehicles from box craft to go on imaginary journeys. During our work on Africa children will listen and respond to African music on our outdoor stage and have a go at playing African drums. Children will also explore other musical instruments and the sounds which they make.  Enhancements to our provision will include a ‘Vets’ inside and an ‘Airport’ outside. Children will learn about the different roles involved. They will recreate their own experiences and go on imaginary journeys.  We will also have several focus activities in our ‘Construction Site’ linked to building homes and shelters from around the world.