FUN and going back to basics

 New/Old ways of filling the gaps

With my New Entrants starting school this year I soon realised that there was a big gap in their foundational skills and Oral language. This is concerning because the students need to have some alphabet letter and sound knowledge to start with reading and writing. They should be able to recognise their name and have basic number knowledge too. 

With the isolation periods for most of the children the start was not perfect and they had to adapt to school all over again. We adjusted our teaching plan and focused on doing a lot of just hands on activities, which includes fine and gross motor activities, to build their phonological knowledge and number skills. Even though we didn't do a lot of structured learning as such because of numbers and teachers isolation it gave us the chance to get to know the children and their needs well enough to form a perfect plan starting Term 2. We would have filled most the gaps and hope to start a proper more structured literacy and Maths program next term.

On a Friday we have a big focus on exploring and developing each individual child's talents(choice activities). We will continue with this in Term 2.

We have two sessions:

First we focus on Fine motor skills activities. Each member of our team has to plan 1 activity e.g snack item, art activity, cutting, painting, play dough.

The next block we focus on Gross motor skills. Activities might include: big soft blocks and other items they can find to build their own obstacle course, sand pit with toys to play with, balls and hula hoops, basketball ring(small size), big duplo/lego blocks,  games(What's the time Mr Wolf and extending it where the students can change some features of the game), dance parties - here they can be creative and make up their own dances to their own choice of song and puppet shows.

Each week we have a different theme: This term we have Eric Carle books and a lot of learning is coming from the stories and we are also linking it in to our Key Understandings of the year: Digital Identity - In my shoes. Here are some of the activities we are doing on a Friday:

Making spiders using currants, apples, peanut butter/honey and pretzels - Yummy!! Eric Carle - The very busy spider

Play dough - we made it in class and making ladybugs - Eric Carle - The grouchy ladybug

Our favourite : Soft blocks and having a good old race.

Being creative and using the big Legos to make a robot.

Sand pit play - we love to get a little dirty without too much mess.

Free painting - inspired by the book.

We include our School Values in every lesson we teach and the students know the expectations. We love Fridays!!