Learning in Giraffes class is based around an approach that involves both adult-led teaching and child-initiated learning.
We believe children learn best when they are allowed to discover and apply their growing skills within a range of contexts.
That is why we create learning opportunities that have real life contexts and that are fun and engaging for children.
A typical day within Giraffes class will involve phonics, maths or literacy. We also theme our learning via topic and it is here that we cover our science, history or geography learning.
We also have weekly PE lessons, Forest School and music.
This term Giraffes class have PE on Tuesday and Forest School on Friday.
Our topic for the Spring term is ‘What to do with an idea?’ with children exploring the concepts of creativity and perseverance.
Our main text for the first half of the spring term will be The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch.
Our literacy learning will continue to cover the correct use of punctuation when writing sentences, specifically full stops, capital letters, question and exclamation marks. Over the spring term we will be focusing upon the development of the children’s vocabulary, use of adjectives and conjunctions, as well as prefixes and suffixes.
Our literacy learning is supported by the continuing focus on phonics. We are now looking at the alternative ways of spelling phonemes alongside spelling tricky and high frequency words.
Children in Giraffes class change their reading books three times per week and read to an adult within school every week. We ask parents/carers to support their children by reading with them at least three times per week.
In our maths learning for the spring term we will be looking closely addition and subtraction of one and two digit numbers, working in numbers to 40, as well as measuring, time and multiplication and division.
Problem solving will feature heavily across the year with children able to apply their mathematical skill to real life contexts. This real life context not only demonstrates to children the importance and relevance of maths within everyday life, but through specific questioning, will enable them to reason their conclusions, providing opportunities to deepen their understanding of key mathematical concepts.