Branston Church of England Infant Academy
'The Best We Can Be'
Welcome to Little Owl Class
Little Owl Class is our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Reception Class.
Within Little Owl Class we have two ‘nests’: Barn Owls and Tawny Owls.
In Little Owl Class we love to learn and particularly enjoy to explore the outdoors, finding and using natural resources to help us learn new things. We discover through play and use a range of brilliant stories to guide our learning. Our timetable is a combination of child initiated learning and adult led activities. Our wonderful indoor and outdoor learning environment provides endless learning opportunities; we can follow our own interests and access exciting weekly challenges. Adult led learning takes place in small groups or in our ‘nests’.
The EYFS Team
Teachers – Miss Barker (Barn Owls) & Miss Edey (Tawny Owls)
Teaching Assistants – Mrs Andrew and Mrs Stephenson
Term Six
Our Church School Values
LOVE KINDNESS HONESTY FORGIVENESS PERSEVERANCE RESPECT
Our value this term is HONESTY
We will learn about honesty through stories, role play and through discussions in our Class Worship and Talking Time sessions. Every time we are honest about something, we will add a leaf onto our Honesty Tree in our Classroom Reflection Area.
What are we learning about?
OUR WORLD
Week 1: Under the Sea
Following on from our learning about sea creatures and oceans before half term, we will now think about how to keep our oceans safe. We will read the story ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’ and discuss sea pollution. We will also explore a range of pirate enhancements in the classroom, including making treasure maps and plenty of role play opportunities. Shiver me timbers!
Week 2 & 3: Dinosaurs
We will discover a mysterious egg in the forest this week! After lots of investigation and exploration, we will find out that it is in fact a dinosaur egg! We will learn that dinosaurs lived in our world a very long time ago in the past. We will be palaeontologists and look at fossils, as well as learn about some of the different dinosaurs that existed. In music we will compose some dinosaur music using a range of instruments.
Week 4 & 5: Space
This week our learning will be ‘out of this world!’ We will discover that our planet, Earth is not the only planet in the solar system. We will use nonfiction books to learn about the other planets and Neil Armstrong and Tim Peake will inspire our learning, as we find out about their adventures in Space. In Art we will be painting sky scenes inspired by The Starry Night by Van Gogh. 5,4,3,2,1… Blast off!
Week 6 & 7: Summer
As the weather gets hotter, we will be learning about the seasonal changes of Summer. We will use all our senses as we explore the forest area and talk about what we notice. We will also talk about the importance of sun safety. In our final week of Little Owls, we will think about our memories of the year and discuss what we can do now that we couldn’t when we started.
Phonics – Phonics will continue to take place every morning. A new term means a reshuffle of phonics groupings again to ensure that the children are in the suitable group to continue their learning.
The children will bring home two Read, Write, Inc books and these will be changed at least once a week. Please can your child practise reading their books with an adult at home several times each week. This will really help to consolidate their learning and develop their reading fluency.
They will also bring a library book home that they have chosen from our class selection. Library books are stories to share with adults at home, perhaps at bedtime or over the weekend. These are just for enjoyment and do not need to be recorded in reading diaries.
Maths - In daily Maths Fluency sessions this term we will review all our learning from the year. We will learn how to use a rekenrek which will help to develop our number sense. We will deepen our understanding of the counting system, number facts (including doubling and halving), and the mathematical relationships within numbers to 10. Through classroom provision we will explore ‘measures’, including length, height and weight.
NumBots – Playing NumBots little and often will significantly improve your child’s recall and understanding of number facts. Please just ask if you need reminding of your child’s login details.
PE - PE will take place on Tuesdays with Miss Barker & Miss Edey and on Thursdays with the Sports Coach & Miss Elise. Please ensure that the children wear their PE kits to school on these days. This term we will be developing lots of skills in preparation for Sports Day!
We will share weekly updates of our learning journey with parents on our Class Dojo Story as well as a Home Learning Guide. Keep a look out for Little Owls on our School Twitter page too!
What books will we be sharing?