Week commencing 24th November 2024

The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Plan Do Review

We had special visitors in Nursery to watch our morning plan, do, review session on Tuesday. The children shared their plans confidently. Here are two examples of learning taking place in a typical plan, do, review session.

‘I plan to paint my cat Bridget. She is black but her eyes are shiny! I will use glitter for her eyes!’

‘I plan to play with the dancing pool noodle outside!’

During this session, the children confidently followed their own plans and explored their ideas. In the painting area, we looked at pictures of cats and discussed their features. The children selected their colours, carefully poured them out, and some even experimented by mixing colours to create new shades. As they worked, they noticed and described key details, excitedly pointing out “pointy, triangle ears,” counting “one… two… three… four!” legs, and talking about the cats’ “shiny” eyes.

Outside, the ‘special planner’ was making the pool noodle move in different ways which the children copied with their bodies. This is a favourite physical development activity for our children. After plenty of energetic fun, the children repurposed the pool noodles as bats to hit balls, and later used them as informal measuring tools, comparing objects in the environment to see which were taller than the noodle.

In review time the children came back together to talk about their learning. We use this time to share what we learned in the session, any achievements, and challenges and any learning we would like to take forward in the next session. Our visitors who are all Early Years teachers, were impressed with the language for thinking our children used alongside their focus during the session!

Parents as Partners

Thank you for joining us for our two stay and play sessions on Wednesday. It was so wonderful to see so many of you and to witness the joy the children had in sharing their learning with you. We hope you enjoyed the activities and were able to see how independent and enthusiastic the children are as learners! We observe this on a daily basis!

Our story of the week was Robin’s Winter Tale, which we explored using a story bag filled with objects to help the children retell the events. We connected the book to our own friendly robin who often visits the garden. Together, we talked about the seasonal changes we notice each day and considered how these changes might affect the animals living outdoors.

‘The squirrels…they bury it! They get it at winter!’

‘He didn’t know winter was the snow!’ (the Robin)

Owl said ‘you have to stay’ because Robin has little wings!

Next week we will continue to develop the theme of animals in winter with ‘One Snowy Night’ by Nick Butterworth.

You may have already heard some amazing singing of Christmas songs and we have indeed begun practising for our performance on Wednesday 17th December at either 11am or 2.30pm. We have started adding our beautiful baubles to the Christmas tree in Reception, we will continue to do this next week!

We hope you can join us for some beautiful singing and a sweet treat!

Have a lovely weekend!