Farm Animals

This week we have welcomed two new friends into the class. Mark is 4 years old and although he only joined us for 1 day it was great to see how well he settled and how happy he was to take part in the activities and follow the class routines.  It is great to see how keen he is to learn the language as even on his first day he tried to speak to me in English. We also welcomed Pau. He is 10 years old. Pau started the week feeling very nervous but he is now much happier and is confident to say when he doesn’t understand something. He has worked really hard to complete the activities and it is great to see him forming relationships with the other children his age.

The EYFS children (Sergi, Ona, Kai, Luke, Axel, Cloe, Carla, Julian, Katie and Mark) have started their topic on farm animals. It has been great to see how much Luke’s vocabulary has improved and how keen he has been to talk about the different farm animals he knows. Oasis is really proud of how much Luke wants to help the other children who find it more difficult to use English words. It is great to see the confidence he now has. Katie has also been very confident to talk a lot within our farm animal topic.  It is great to see that everyday she is gaining more confidence to speak in English and she is rapidly improving her vocabulary. She was especially confident to speak when completing a matching activity, whereby she matched the description of the animal to the correct farm animal. Gabrielle was really impressed with how well she completed the activity and how confident she was to identify the correct vocabulary. Julian has also been working really hard to learn the names of the farm animals.  He has worked very hard to trace the letters and write the name of different farm animals.  Gabrielle is really proud of how much Julian’s pencil control has improved and how much he is using the English phonics sounds to help him read the farm animal names. It is great to see how much his pronunciation has improved when naming the different animals.

In maths, the children have been learning about the triangle shape. Oasis is really happy with how much Carla has improved her pencil control. She has been working really hard to trace the triangle shapes and as a result she now has more confidence when using a pencil to write letters and numbers.

Oasis has been so happy to see how much Sergi, Axel and Ona have developed their personal and social skills. Sergi has become a real little leader within the group. He has worked so hard on all of his topic and maths activities and Oasis is really proud of the example he sets for the other children. It is great that when Sergi completes his activities he is always keen to help his friends complete their activities too, before he goes to explore the other corners. Ona has also impressed Oasis with how helpful she now is. She is always keen to help Oasis set up the activities in the class. It is also great to see how well Ona is listening to instructions. She is much more focused and keen to complete the activities correctly. Oasis has also been very impressed with how Axel attitude to work has improved. He is now listening more carefully to instructions and Oasis has been really happy with how much effort Axel is making with his work.

Unfortunately, Kai and Cloe haven’t been in school this week. We look forward to seeing them both next week.

The KS1 children (Joana, Thais, Carla, Arlet, Jordi, Marcel and Noa) have also been learning about farm animals. Jo has been really impressed with how much Marcel’s presentation and spelling has improved.  Jo is happy to see that Jordi and Marcel are using the phonics sound they have learnt when spelling and writing about the farm animals they know. Jo has been very impressed with Arlet as she is now independently writing, using her phonics sounds. She is always keen to try and blend together the sounds she knows to write words.

In maths, the children have continued to learn about the numbers 0-20 and the quantities which match to each number.  Jo has been really impressed with Carla as she now recognises and can name each of the teen numbers, when shown to her in random orders. Thais and Joana have also worked really hard to order and recognise the numbers. They are very keen to show their understanding of numbers 0-10 but they just needs to be a little more confident to name the teen numbers in English.

The KS2 children (Blanca, Sofia, Judit, Sara, Sara.B, Nil, Arnau and Tatiana) have also been learning about farm animals. Arnau has done a fantastic job of extending his vocabulary within this topic and he has been keen to communicate his ideas in English. Gabrielle was really proud of how well he completed a descriptive piece of writing about chickens as he used the new vocabulary he had been learning. Judit has also been very focused on our farm animal topic and it has been great to see how motivated she was to find out the names of the baby animals of some more unusual farm animals. She was very surprised to learn that many of the baby animals are called a calf. Blana was very focused on the task of finding out the products each animal gives us on a farm. It really opened her eyes to the jobs that each animal has and she was very keen to speak about how unfair she thought the treatment was of some animals. Sara B was very motivated to find out the names of the different meats which the animals provide. She was very touched when finding a photo of battery chickens and she was keen to find out more information about why the farmers kept the chickens in these conditions.

In maths, we have been learning about quantity. Gabrielle has been really happy with how independently Nil has been working. He was very engaged when writing his own sums and was keen to work out the answers. It was great to see how keen he was to listen and learn the new techniques which Gabrielle showed him. He then used these to help him find the answer. Sara did a great job when matching numbers to their quantities. She enjoyed practising writing the number names and was keen to learn how to pronounce and write all of the numbers to fifty correctly.  Tatiana has been working on fractional quantities. I was very impressed that she was keen to try completing a more difficult activity and she was very motivated to cut out, stick and match the equivalent fractions together.