This week, we learnt about our local community. We discussed what a community is and then spoke about the different places in our community, including those that are special to us. The children enjoyed sharing the places they like to visit in their community, including the park, shops and canal. We also learnt that our school is in a town called Hanley, which is in a city called Stoke-on-Trent. We had some interesting discussions about where are houses are, and what we see on our way to school.
We read the book 'Look Where We Live' to learn more about what can be seen in our local community. We then looked at a map of Hanley, and discussed the different features we could see, including roads, the canal and even our school! The children enjoyed learning what a map is and we had a great discussion about why we have maps.
In phonics, we have been continuing to learn our new Phase 3 sounds. The digraphs/trigraphs we learnt this week are: ur, ow, oi and ear. We practised reading words containing these sounds, and also developed our fluency by reading short sentences.
In writing, we have been applying our Phase 3 phonics knowledge by writing captions about places in our local area. We are continuing to practise using a finger space between each word in our caption, and are also becoming more independent when using a sound mat to support us with our spelling.
We have also been practising how to write our ladder letters this week.
This week we have learnt about length. The children have been comparing lengths, using the language of long/short, longer/shorter, longest/shortest. They used cubes to make a length that is longer/shorter than a given objects. We then compared the lengths we had made and ordered them from longest to shortest.
Swan Class WB 23.01.23
