We will help children to use talk to help work out problems and organise thinking and activities, to explain how things work and why they might happen.

How can you support your child at home?

• Think out loud how to work things out.
• Give children problem solving words and phrases to use in their explanations: ‘so that’, ‘because’, ‘I think it’s…’, ‘you could…’, ‘it might be…’

We will continue to encourage children to identify and moderate their own feelings socially and emotionally.

How can you support your child at home?

• Practise and discuss taking turns, waiting politely, tiding up after ourselves and so on.
• Encourage your child to think about their own feelings and those of others by giving explicit examples of how others might feel in particular scenarios.

We will teach children to know and talk about the different factors that support their overall health and wellbeing.

How can you support your child at home?

• Talk with your child about exercise, healthy eating and the importance of sleep.
• Use picture books and other resources to explain the importance of the different aspects of a healthy lifestyle.

Reading:
We will explore six different texts this half term to support our English lessons. These are: Smiley shark, Shells Pop-up book, The Runaway Chapati, Titch, The Lion Inside and Coming to England. We will learn the story, understand the vocabulary and retell parts or all of the story. Alongside this, we will explore other storybooks, non-fiction books and rhymes.

How can you support your child at home?

• Look at non-fiction books together. Read aloud books that will extend their knowledge of the world and illustrate a current topic.
• Listen to and talk about selected non-fiction books to develop a deep familiarity with new knowledge and vocabulary. Talk about what is happening in each illustration and relate it to their own lives.

Writing:
We will write according to each child’s own writing journey. Children should spell words by identifying the sounds and then writing the sound with letter/s. When ready they should write short sentences with words with known sound-letter correspondences using a capital letter and full stop.

How can you support your child at home?

• Encourage your child to touch each finger as they say each sound.
• Identify St Michael’s key words that are trickier to spell. Help them to learn our ‘see and say’ words and model correct spelling.
• Support your child to form the complete sentence before writing. Help them to memorise the sentence before writing by saying it aloud.

• encouraging them to identify when it is appropriate to count and when groups can be subitised.

• continue to develop confidence and accuracy in both verbal and object counting.

• explore the composition of 10, thinking of odd and even numbers.

• explore different strategies including ‘just by looking’, by subitising and by matching.

How can you support your child at home?

• Spot and use opportunities for your child to apply number bonds: ‘There are 6 of us but only 2 spoons. How many more do we need?’
• Model conceptual subitising: “Well there are three here and three here, so there must be six.”

• respecting and caring for our planet – Shells Pop-Up book
• respecting and caring for all living things – Smiley Shark
• knowing about different countries in the world – The Runaway Chapati
• knowing about different countries in the world – The Lion Inside
• people, culture and communities –Coming to England
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How can you support your child at home?

• Teach children about places in the world that contrast with locations they know well.
• Explore the outside with them. Can they find any creatures? Observe closely and learn more about what they find.

We will continue to learn and sing entire songs. We will support children to return to and build on previous creative learning, refining ideas and developing their ability to represent them.

How can you support your child at home?

• Provide them with a range of materials to construct with.
• Encourage them to think about and discuss what they want to make. Discuss problems and how they might be solved as they arise. 
• Teach different techniques for joining materials, such as how to use adhesive tape and different sorts of glue.