Our Christmas Play will have a circus theme this year. We are doing an adaptation of The Greatest Showman. If you have any circus costumes that you could lend us, that would be great but please DO NOT spend any money. Please have your child practice the following song at home whenever possible.

The children are getting really good at their dictation. This activity requires them to listen to me call out a sentence. They then have to recall all the letter rules I taught them to segment out the different letters in spell a words (throw in a few tricky words here!). At the same time, they also have to recall how to write these letters in written text. That's before we think about the sentence structure rules which require them to remember to leave a space between words, capital letter at the start of the sentence and full stop at the end!

Not as easy as you would think right!?

So credit to the children for working so hard in school. After  Christmas we will be changing the homework around a little and dictation will be part of their home practice, but feel free to give it a go whenever you get a chance!  

Mr Mulcahy joined us for some super experiments to celebrate Science Week!The children were engrossed in the experiments as you can see in the video below. 

Hope you're enjoying the weekend! Only Three school weeks to CHRISTMAS! ??

Kind Regards,

Ms Murray

The children and I wanted to share some videos to show their grown-ups how we practice our letters sound in school. All the activities shown can also be a playful way to practice tricky words too. We hope you will find the videos helpful and supportive of your child's practice at home. While we do lots of these activities in school, some children really need a quieter environment to practice, with one to one support. This is not always possible in a busy classroom so please take the time to work with your child at home. It will be extremely beneficial to their reading development. Following an assessment, some children have been sent home with a list of sounds they need to practice. It's perfectly normal that they don't know some of the double letter sounds yet. But with plenty of practice they'll get them in no time. Also I just want to say a BIG WELL DONE! to all the children for being such super stars in the videos! 

Sometimes we tend to offer the children words that contain the focus sound. But having the children think up of their own words will help them retain this information in their long term memory. Drawing a picture and writing the word is a fun activity. Collect their drawing and staple them together to make their own sound book for them to read back over! 

Using the letter sound flash cards i have sent home have a go playing this game. This game will help your child to recognise and read the sounds or tricky words. The reason I ask the children to take a picture of the sounds (in this video) is to make sure that they look at the sound while they say it. This helps make a connection between the text and the sound.

Looking for the focus sound in books, on cereal packets or anywhere throughout the day is a great way to reinforce the focus sounds or tricky words. It also helps put the sounds they have been learning into context.

Your child may be able to recognise the sound when shown letter/s. But they also need to be able to write the sounds/tricky words when dictated. Follow this simple activity to practice writing the sounds/tricky words and when you feel your child knows them well. Try having them list down the sounds/words as you call them out. Please make sure your child uses the correct letter formation for writing.  

It is really important to say the sounds just right if your child is going to be able to blend smoothly. Make sure you do not add an "uh" sound to the end of letter sounds. Your child will explain to you how some sounds are stretchy (continuous sounds) and some bouncy (stops sounds). Look at the list below to see which sounds can be stretched when enunciated correctly and which cannot. 

The children are getting really good at their blending so they will probably fly through these word boxes but there's no harm in going over them again. 

Some children will have a focus flashcard pack in their homework folders this week. They do not have an extra homework sheet until they know their sounds fluently and are confident blending them in words and writing them. Please practice one or more of the above activities every night for homework. Other children are asked to continue with homework sheet for now and focus on their readers. I will be sending everyone home tricky words next week. 
Thank you for your support in your children learning and should you have any questions about your child's homework, just ask! 

Kind Regards,
Ms Murray

This week we developed our learning about our community by looking at all the different people who work in our community. This topic is one that offers the children lots of scope for their Aistear role play. 

Check back to the blog on Monday for a special post on practicing letter sounds, reading, blending and tricky words at home.

Have a great weekend,
​Ms Murray

This week we stared our new theme ‘Community and people who help us’. To introduce our new theme we took a virtual trip around our community and explored the different buildings. Together we learnt how to map our own community and learnt the aspects of mapping.

Bringing all our learning into our play.

GAA with Gerry this week! They adore him 🤗

Great homework this week everyone! Well done 👍

We will be having GAA for the next 6 eeek in Thursday so please wear tracksuit and runners. We will be doing dance lessons on Monday for the next weeks so please wear tracksuits on these days.
Have a great weekend,
Ms Murray