STF
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What Have We Been Up To? - Summer 2024
During the summer term our children have worked hard on our phonics curriculum. They have been working on grapheme and matching phoneme activities, writing letters and words, reading and comprehension, reading fluency, topical vocabulary, pre reading matching skills and spelling activities.
Other pupils have been working on their readiness to access the phonics curriculum by focusing on early speech sounds, exploring pre writing shapes, pre reading matching and identification skills,, early reader skills such as how to handle books as a reader and exploring symbolic play and coordinating noises.
The children have also been working hard on their communication skills across their day. Whether they use their voice, a coreboard or an aac device they are all working towards getting their wants and needs met effectively. Some children have been working on core vocabulary like ‘more’, ‘finished’ and ‘help’ while others have been able to make sentences.
Throughout our curiosity curriculum we have also worked on literacy skills across the curriculum including listening and carrying out instructions to create drumming rhythms and sensory bucket time activities.
At the beginning of the term children undertook Film Fortnight focusing on the film ‘The Wishgranter.’ Children were able to create story boards to create our own film and access sensory activities based on the film. The children were then able to perform parts of our Wishgranter storyboards including creating voiceovers and music to support the filming.
The children have been working extremely hard on our Peter Pan and Lion King shows. They have been learning songs and lines. They have also been learning about their respective shows and exploring the characters, their feelings and creating music. The children also had the opportunity to access African drumming workshops this term which they thoroughly enjoyed.
Children have absolutely loved the Cadle farm sessions this term where they have been able to get outside into the garden, meet baby goats and create macrame butterfly feeders. They were able to sort healthy and unhealthy foods as well as explore different foods to taste. We have also explored recycling through stories and recycling sorting this term. Finally, all the children have worked on a range of gross motor activities like yoga and nursery rhyme sessions, outdoor learning sessions and the opportunity to attend the STF football league where they were able to meet other children from other STFs and socialise with them.
This summer children in the STF have continued to work hard in our bespoke numeracy curriculum TENDD (Teaching Early Numeracy to children with Developmental Disabilities). Children have made great progress throughout the summer that focuses on early numeracy skills such as identifying and understanding numerals, visualising patterns, identifying varying sequences and building up to practices with the four operations. Children have enjoyed a range of play, provision and focused activities that has challenged them to develop their numeracy skills.
Weekly, children have had in-class provision that challenged them to become more independent learners, including developing their capacity skills by playing and experimenting with funnels, tubes, pipettes and containers in our water area. During our ‘Express Yourself’ topic.
Children have had a range of opportunities that have challenged them to design, create and experiment in various ways. In class provision has challenged children to independently create marble and water runs, where they were able to experiment with the different ways they could make the objects flow. They enjoyed playing with ‘Ooblek’ where they explored the different properties of the substance and how it can become both liquid and a solid. Children also had fun predicting and experimenting with ways they could break fruit that was encased in ice cubes.
We have also developed strong links within our community this term. Children have enjoyed various visits that have included a community library walk each week where children have been able to engage with library staff, members of the public and choose a new book to read each week.
During our work on our ‘film festival’, children were inspired by our film ‘The Wish Granter’ and were able to explore a local park where they threw money into a lake and made a wish.
Children also thoroughly enjoyed our recent Welsh festival. They were able to engage with stalls, do activities, listen to incredible music and re-discover what being Welsh and living in our amazing country truly means.
