Sant Jordi's day

Welcome back to school- our final term. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter break!

This week, we welcomed three new friends to put class. Andrés is 3 years old and he has settled in so well to the class routines and is happy to take part in all of the class activities. He especially loves spending time with the animals in the farm. Nico is 4 years old. He instantly impressed me with his level of English and the way in which he was so keen to get involved in all of the activities. It was great to see how quickly and confidently he settled into the class routines. Finally, we welcomed Sira, who is 8 years old. Sira instantly bonded with the children her age and has become a very popular member of the group. Sira has been very determined to speak English and has participated with the activities with such determination. It is lovely to welcome you all into the class.

It has been a short, 4 day week but we have managed to learn lots and have lots of fun.

The EYFS children (Kai, Luke, Sergi, Nico, Andrés, Ona, Cloe, Mark, Julien, Katie, Carla and Ivet) have continued to learn about the numbers 1-10. Kai has become really good at tracing the numbers and he was very confident when writing the numbers himself. His numbers are now becoming legible  and you can really see the numbers he has formed. The children have also continued to learn about shapes. Sergio has enjoyed the challenge of creating a shape booklet. As well as tracing each shape, Sergi enjoyed drawing each of the shapes himself and traced the name of each shape. He was even keen to write the title on his shape booklet by himself. When creating the shape booklet, Ivet has really improved her fine motor skills. She can now confidently use scissors and she was much more focused when colouring in the shapes. We will continue to work on this and will help her to develop the ability to colour within the lines.

In topic time the children have been learning about the three little pigs as a traditional story. Luke was very vocal and confident to talk about the story when talking about the different events and characters in the story. Mark has also developed more confidence to speak and he started to use English words when talking about the story. Cloe has also developed the confidence to speak more and she was very confident to answer questions about the story; independently explaining her answers in English.

Oasis is very proud of how much the children’s English is improving. She has been particularly impressed with the vocabulary Katie is using. She has returned to school, remembering and using vocabulary which she learnt in the previous term. Katie is able to use size and colour vocabulary correctly when asking for different materials, as she completes her activities.

All of the EYES children have settled back into  the routines really well. Oasis is really proud of Ona as she has behaved brilliantly this week; following instructions well and helping her friends with their activities. Julien has also come back to school with a great attitude. He has been really receptive to instructions and he has tried hard to help his friends.

Unfortunately, Carla wasn’t well this week. We missed seeing her and look forward to her being back next week.

The KS1 children (Jordi, Arlet, Marcel, Thais, Joana, Noa and Carla) have been working on time in maths. Jo was very impressed with Jordi, Arlet and Marcel as they were all able to identify and read the o clock and half past times, with confidence and independence. Our topic this week was traditional stories; focusing specifically on the story of the three little pigs. Nova, Thais and Moans enjoyed listening to the story and they became confident to recount the different parts of the story. The girls particularly enjoyed creating their own version of  the story. They all created fantastic book covers; showing the ideas they had for their own stories. They all worked hard to write a beginning for their story. They will continue to write their own middle and end of their stories next week.

Carla didn't  join us until Friday. We missed her and we were  happy to see her back.

The KS2 children (Judit, Blanca, Sara, Sofia, Pau, Sara2, Tatiana, Arnau, Sira and  Nil) have also been learning about time in maths. Blanca and Judit have been working hard on time related SAT’s presentation. They were initially quite nervous and were worried to make mistakes but when they both realised they could answer the questions confidently, they felt much better and happily completed the tests each day. It was great to see that each day the girls became more at ease and they began to finish the papers more quickly towards the end of the week. We will continue to work on SAT’s paper next week; focusing on checking their answers and showing their working out. When learning how to read the time, I was particularly impressed with Sira and Tatiana as they worked fantastically together to work out the times shown on each clock. They both listened carefully as I explained about the position and sizes of the hands on the clock. Towards the end of the week they had become more independent when reading the clock times. Arnau and Pau also worked really hard together to read the times. It  was great to see Arnau so motivated and keen to complete his work. I am really proud of the attitude he has towards his work. Pau did a great job of reading a TV schedule and working out how long each programme lasted for.

In topic, we have also been learning about the three little pigs. When writing a recount of  story we heard, I was particularly impressed with the effort which Sara put into her recount. She added lots of detail and was very keen to include each part of the story and write it s accurately as she could. Nil was also very good at recounting the events of the three little pigs story and he correctly included all of the events from the story. However, he found it more difficult to create his own version of the story. We will keep working on that next week.  When writing our own version of the story, Sofia did a fantastic job, changing different elements of the story to create her own story- ‘the three little mice’. It was great to see the understanding she had of the original story structure and the imagination she had when creating her own story. Sara2 also showed fantastic imagination when writing her story about three little chihuahuas. I am always so impressed with her range of vocabulary.  

On Friday, we had a lovely time at the park as part of our treat time. The children behaved very well and I was really impressed with how well they followed instructions from the teachers. We then spent the afternoon reading out our stories from our published book-24 little stories. I hope everyone enjoyed listening to the children’s stories. Thank you all for joining us to celebrate Sant Jordi’s day and a big thank you to Puri for making us cakes and fresh lemonade.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Presentation of Projects April 2017

This week we have welcomed two new friends into the class. Carlotta and Ivet are both two years old. Ivet instantly settled into the class and was really happy when playing in the class and farm environment. She settled into the class routines very quickly and was very confident to try all of the new activities. Carlotta found the new routines more difficult, particularly her first three days. However, towards the end of the week she became more settled and became more content to take part within the activities and school routines. It is a pleasure to welcome both girls into the class and I hope they will be very happy and have lots of fun in our EYFS group.

This week was a little different than usual. The EYFS and KS1 children spent lots of time practising their songs for our presentation to the parents. They especially loved practising the ‘down in the jungle songs’ and all of the children were very expressive with the actions, especially when making the gorilla sound. The children were very focused during practises. They listened and watched Jo carefully for each song as they were keen to learn the words and do the actions correctly. I am sure you will agree that the children did a great job of singing during the presentation on Friday.

The KS2 children also spent lots of time this week preparing their PowerPoint presentations and practising the parts they were going to read to the parents. The children really impressed me as their teamwork skills have really improved since doing the previous presentation. They all worked really well together and were great at organising their parts and listening to their friend's ideas. The children worked hard to practise their parts and they really impressed me with the amount of information they had learnt whilst preparing the presentation. I hope you enjoyed learning all of the information which the children shared in the presentation.

This week, we also had lots of fun doing Easter activities, in preparation for our Easter holiday. The children all made very individual Easter pictures of cards for their families. The children particularly enjoyed finger painting yellow circles, which they then turned into little chicks on their cards. All of the children were very focused when making their cards and try worked very independently to create their cars the way they liked it. I hope you all liked the cards your children made as they were all very proud to give them to you.

As part of our Easter celebrations, we also made little Easter rabbit boxes, which was quite difficult as the children had to think about how to fold along the lines of a 3D cube net. The children enjoyed creating their little boxes but they were even more excited to find out that they were going to do a Easter treat hunt around the farm to see if they could find treats to put in their boxes. The children  loved running around the farm looking for 72 Easter treats, hidden all around the farm. The teachers had baskets and the children had to run and put any treats they found in the baskets. The older children did a great job of helping the little ones to find the treats and they showed real enthusiasm when the little ones found treats. We kept stopping and counting how many we had found so far and it was great to see how confidently the children counted up to 70. After lots of searching we managed to find all of the treats. We then divided them amongst the children. They were all very keen to ensure that they had the same amount of treats.

As part of our celebrations, the children had a great time making Easter nest cakes with Jo. They melted the chocolate and then mixed in the cornflakes. However, the best part was adding lots of different sweets to make the cakes look like nests and so that they were super yummy for the parents. The children had a great time making the cakes. I hope you enjoyed eating them after the presentation.

To end the week, the children showed their farm animal presentation to their families. The younger children did a fantastic job of singing and doing the actions for our three songs about farm, jungle and ocean animals. I was so proud of how enthusiastic they were and it was great to see all of their big, beaming smiles. The older children did a fantastic job of presenting their farm animal PowerPoints. They all spoke very confidently and explained their information in great detail. I was really proud of how confident they were as they were all feeling very nervous. I hope you all enjoyed the presentation and enjoyed learning all of the interesting information which the children provided.

I hope you all have a lovely Easter holiday and do lots of fun Easter activities. I look forward to seeing you all back at school in a week’s time.