Penguins

Welcome to the Penguin Class

Class teacher: Mrs Melanie Newby

MNewby@cambridge.cumbria.sch.uk

Teaching assistants: Mrs Simpson, Mrs Gibson and Miss Charnley.

We are a class of 19 happy, busy and independent children. We love coming to school because there are always new and fun things to learn. Our role play area this year has been a house, Santa’s workshop, a frozen ice castle and a vets! Our teachers are enthusiastic which makes us enthusiastic too.

Our classroom is always changing to make sure that it suits our learning needs at the time. We love our new indoor sandpit. We are independent learners and are able to access resources and equipment independently. Our teachers ensure that the curriculum and learning opportunities are fun, practical, matched to individual learning needs and led by our interests. Some of the topics we cover are: Me and my family, Autumn, Winter and Pets, Dinosaurs, Planting and Growing & Keeping Healthy. We also bake every week making lots of new foods for us to try.

Reading

We love reading!

We teach children how to read using the Little Wandle, Letters and Sounds scheme of work. Jolly Phonics is a programme which uses the synthetic phonics method of teaching letter sounds in a way that is fun and multi-sensory, enabling children to become fluent readers.

We invite parents to attend a reading meeting in week 2 of September to discuss how we teach reading and ways they can help.

Phonics is taught daily (approx. 20 mins) ensuring that previous learning is revisited, new learning (sounds and words) introduced and any new learning is consolidated through fun games and activities.

A love for reading is encouraged and fostered in the Penguin class. We enjoy reading in many various forms and always have a story at the end of the day. Our favourite author at the minute is Julia Donaldson!

We enjoy a wide range of texts, stories, poems and rhymes many of which fit around our topic at the time. However, we do have a set of core texts that we use in Reception (see our core reading list). These build on the core texts covered in Nursery.

Reading books are changed once a week although can be changed more regularly if required. Our new reading area is now much bigger to make sure more Penguins can now relax and share a book.

Outdoor Learning

We love being outside in the Penguins and do much of our learning outdoors whatever the weather. We are lucky enough to have a large and varied outside area including a woodland/wildlife area, mud kitchen and fire pit as well as various climbing equipment. We also plant and grow our own fruits and vegetables. We enjoy picking them when they are ready, using them to cook with and eating them for snack!

Each week we put on our suits and wellies and go out for “Welly Wednesday”. We have great fun and some of our learning opportunities this term have included:

Making bird food and feeders, splashing and jumping in muddy puddles, making mud slides, cooking and baking in the mud kitchen, exploring and hiding, den making, digging for worms, climbing trees, bug hunts, making bug hotels and making patterns and pictures with the natural resources we find.

We love nothing more than warming ourselves up with some toast and hot chocolate afterwards. Yummy!

Physical Development

Opportunities for physical development are provided during continuous provision in the form of various activities in class.

We have an exercise session of “Jump Start Jonny” every day which we really love. Our bodies have to work hard but singing along to the songs we know make it fun! We have PE on a Wednesday morning this term with Brad. He teaches us new games and skills to help us with our balance, control and coordination. Funky fingers – We do funky fingers every day (for the duration of a song) to help develop our fine motor skills. This will help us to use tools and pencils with greater control and accuracy.

Maths

We have a daily 20 minute Big Maths CLIC session each day. This covers skills that a child needs to become numerate and consists of fun games, counting songs and activities repeated daily. At the end of each week each child is asked 10 CLIC questions. Learning for the next week is dependent on their score. Gaps are identified and learning tailored to plug the gaps. A consistent score of 10/10 for 2 consecutive weeks sees the child progress to the next CLIC. The children enjoy completing their CLIC and work hard to try and beat their score from the previous week.

Opportunities to develop and consolidate CLIC are provided during continuous provision in the form of various activities / games in class.

We take a very practical approach to Maths and we try to make the learning experiences meaningful to the children with real life problems to solve!

Other areas of Maths are also discretely taught and consolidated through activities offered during continuous provision.