Welcome to Seals

Teacher - Seals Amanda Waters
Photo of Amanda Waters

Welcome to Seals Class! We are an energetic and lively group of 10 children supported by 5 adults.

We use lots of different approaches to our learning but we particularly enjoy singing with sign along, designing and building towers and writing and drawing. Where possible our learning is linked, so our English lessons will support our learning in Maths, History and even cooking! We enjoy working together on our communication and language development and we are learning to support each other with our emotional understanding. We have a positive attitude to learning and developing and we aim to make every day fun!

 

Spring Term 2 Curriculum Info for Parents - Support communication and language development, emotional growth and generally embed a positive attitude to learning and developing.
EnglishIn English we will be sequencing key events from books and telling simple stories. We will be focussing on 4 texts to support our learning in English and across the curriculum: ‘Colour Me Happy’ by Shen Roddie and Ben Cort, ‘Shark in the park’ by Nick Sharratt, ‘Shark in the dark’ by Nick Sharratt and ‘Wow! Said the Owl’ by Tim Hopgood. We will be using storyboards with simple pictures and words to practice sequencing and remembering some of the key phrases from the text. If you don’t have copies of these books at home, it would be great if the children could pay a visit to their local library with you to borrow a copy or you could simply look the stories up on YouTube where you can lots of versions of the texts.
MathsIn Maths we are studying measurement, lists, tables and graphs. We will be looking at characters from the stories we are reading and comparing their size, putting them in size order from small to big and big to small, developing language and understanding of concepts such as biggest, middle sized and smallest. We will also be learning to collect data, using simple graphs. We will be recoding our favourite colours or toys and putting our choices into a table so we can interpret the data and make comparisons between popular and less popular choices. To support your child’s learning at home you could try looking at and comparing different sized toys and commenting on bigger and smaller ones, longer and shorter etc. You could also practice counting out items to encourage one to one counting correspondence.
SceinceIn Science, Seals class will be learning about light. We will be using ‘Wow! Said the Owl’ as a starting point to discuss the differences between day and night, light and dark. The children will be encouraged to explore different light sources and we will experiment with making shadows and shapes using different characters or items from that we have drawn and cut out from the stories we have shared. We will also be learning about how and why we need to keep safe in the sun. This is also something that you could discuss with your children at home – please encourage them to notice and comment on the changes in the light throughout the day, particularly in the early evenings. You could also have some fun with torches at night, making shadow puppets with your hands or silhouettes with your faces!
GeographyThe children will be exploring ‘human and physical features’ in our geography lessons. We will be using the story ‘Colour Me Happy’ to consider and explore the range of emotions we feel and we will be exploring appropriate ways to display and explain these feelings. We will use mirrors to look at our facial features, discussing similarities and differences and we will practise making facial expressions for our friends to guess how we are feeling. We will be extending this theme to explore the whole human body and our features and will use action songs and movements to help us consolidate our learning. At home it would be great if you could play games such as ‘Simon says … point to your toes’ or ‘Simon says … touch your elbow’ etc with your child to encourage awareness of the various body parts.
ICTIn ICT we will be learning about and using different types of technology, such as iPads, macs and sound buttons to make and record various sounds. Following on from last term’s topic, we will be exploring a range of devices, learning how to use them safely and will group them according to their different function and characteristics e.g. things that play music, devices that show images, items that help us prepare food etc. It would be fun for you to spot electronic devices around the home and when you’re out and about with the children and discus their uses.
PSHEIn Personal, Social, Health and Emotional lessons the children will continue to be learning to name, understand and articulate their emotions. This will be supported through songs, games and stories that build on what we learned last term as well as support what we cover in our geography sessions, encouraging body and mind awareness. If you would like to build on this with your child at home, you could encourage them to think about how characters are feeling in stories that you read with them and discuss why they might be feeling this way.
MusicThis term Seals class will continue to explore songs and actions that support or learning themes and we will be practicing our ‘Signalong’ end of the day song in preparation for a very special performance to some friends at the end of term! It would be lovely for your child to show you what they have been learning at school, so if you would like to practice this song with your children at home, please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZHgb643HY
P.EIn P.E. we will be playing lots of games to encourage turn taking and team work. We will use balls, bean bags, hoops and other equipment to build on our group skills.
Art and DTOur Art and DT lessons this term will involve designing and making a character that we can move or operate! The children will also cover World Book Day and Easter in these lessons – we look forward to seeing what they create!