Dear Parents,

Happy New Year and welcome back.

We will continue learning phonemes (letter sounds), graphemes (letter shapes), letter names and alphabetical ordering.  Being able to recognise phonemes and graphemes helps your child progress as a developing reader.  Understanding alphabetical ordering will help later when we begin to explore information books together.

The children will be taught to read using a carefully structured phonic approach.  This involves learning all of the sounds that individual letters make, as well as some necessary blends to help them read unknown words.  Each sound or blend has a corresponding action which the children will enjoy. Your help with these activities at home would be invaluable.  By joining in with your child you will help him/her to identify phonemes when s/he sees the graphemes.

We will be recapping phonemes and graphemes in groups:

1.         s  a  t  p  i  n  m  d

2.         g  o  c  k  ck  e  u  r

3.         h  b  f  ff l  ll ss

4.         j  v  w  x  y  z  zz  q  u

            and introducing the new phonemes and grapheme

1.         sh  ch  th  wh  ng

Then, we will introduce the remaining phoeneme-grapheme correspondences, for example, graphemes representing:   /ee/    /ie/   and   /oe/.

Our topics this term include Animals and Easter.

In St Francis class we will be looking at traditional stories and nursery rhymes.  It would be helpful if you could explore any of the following:

• Choose a traditional tale or nursery rhyme to share with your child as a bedtime story every night.
• Identify the general themes of the story and discuss the main events.  Help your child to recount the principal events of the story in the correct sequence.
• Search for patterns in the structure of the narrative, such as repetition.
• Look at the common recurring elements of traditional stories, for example, journeys undertaken, promises not kept or transformations that take place.
• Identify the ‘problem’ posed by each story.  How is it resolved or overcome?  For example, in the tale, ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’, the goats long for the sweet, juicy grass of the meadow.  However, an encounter with the ugly troll could be an extremely dangerous experience . .
• Focus upon the characters in the story, their personality traits, the motivation for their actions, and how they respond to events.
• Traditional stories provide a wealth of opportunities to explore writing activities.  Your child could:
  - re-tell the story
  - create a map of the story
  - write letters to the main characters in the story
  - write captions or speech bubbles for their own drawings

Encourage your child’s writing, even if it doesn’t look ‘real’ to you.  It will serve to boost his/her confidence.

As Spring approaches, we will begin to in investigate how to grow plants and vegetables.  We will explore the characteristics of seeds and the similarities and differences between various types of seeds.

 Thank you very much for your help and support and support.

 Yours sincerely,

CARRIE SILLINCE

Class Teacher