Welcome to Squirrels Class page!
Squirrels class is a mixture of Reception children, Year 1 and Year 2 and is taught every morning by Miss. Humphries. Our mornings focus on the teaching of Literacy - our reading and writing and our Mathematics.
Literacy
For our literacy, we follow the RWI (Read, Write, Inc) phonics scheme, supporting the youngest of our children to read and write from the very start. We move from learning single sounds, to blending words to reading whole sentences and books.
We also use Drawing Club to develop the reception children's vocabulary skills and introducing them to a range of stories and animations on a weekly basis.
For the older children in the class, we have short daily guided reading, grammar and spelling sessions and we follow The Literacy Tree as part of our English curriculum. The children are submerged into a range of different texts and stories covering various topics including mythical creatures and environmental issues.
Our main focus is ensuring the children have a love of reading and enjoy getting lost into a book! We have a cosy reading corner where the children can choose a reading buddy to read to or snuggle on a pillow. The children have daily stories read to them and daily reading for pleasure sessions - the children choosing their own favourite books to read in front of the fire (pretend of course).
Mathematics
For all the children, we use White Rose Maths scheme and we follow the small steps to ensure all areas of the maths curriculum are covered. We use a range of manipulatives to support early maths skills including the use of Numicon. Daily, the children have a fluency session following the NCETM scheme of work to enhance our maths teaching and ensure the children have the basic foundations in order to access trickier mathematical concepts. We use movement songs to support counting skills which the children love.
Our learning this term!
In Literacy, the children are loving exploring the text of The Dragon Machine by Helen Ward! Below is an example of the journey the children take through the text! We are also reading Eric by Shaun Tan as our guided reading text.
In maths, in the first half of the term, we are looking at addition and subtraction in Year 1, multiplication and division in Year 2 and 6, 7, and 8 in Reception. Later in the term our topics will be length, height and time and place value.
