Throughout this term, we have been working really hard to develop the skills needed to become wonderful writers.
In Reception, our writing journey began with Dough Disco. These were fun sessions where we took our fingers for a workout, which was great for strengthening our fingers and improving our fine motor skills.
The next stop on our journey was carrying out Busy Fingers. Each morning, we had an activity the supported our fine motor skills development. Some activities included weaving, threading, using peg boards and tweezers.
Following Busy Fingers, we were introduced to different pre-writing shapes. The shapes we drew are all the shapes that form letters used in writing. We used lots of different ways of showing these shapes including glitter, sand and paint bags.
After the pre-writing shapes, we started to practise letter formation. As we learnt new sounds in phonics, we also learnt which graphemes represent each sound. This also meant we were able to practise our pencil control using the nip, flip, grip technique.
All parts of our writing journey have led to us being able to write CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant). When writing CVC words, we say the word aloud first. Next we listen to what sounds have been said and then write down the sounds we hear.
We also enjoyed sharing 2 key texts as part of our Talk for Writing – ‘Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see?’ by Eric Carle (Willow Class) and ‘Polar Bear Polar Bear What do you hear?’ by Eric Carle (Lilac Class). The Talk for Writing approach begins with children listening to the story being told. Then the children perform each story alongside their teachers, using actions to help them remember the words. By performing the story with the teachers, this in turn helped the children to learn key story language and repeated refrains. Talk for Writing is a great way for children to begin to develop the ability to create their own stories, by drawing upon what they have heard from other familiar stories. We also created some paper plate characters to help us remember these 2 key texts. The children were brilliant at retelling the stories.
