It’s October already. Junior Infants are well settled into life in primary school and eager for homework! Here is a guideline of what I covered with my infants at this stage of the year.
Phonics:
At this stage I would introduce Jolly Phonics to Juniors, I like to spend September on auditory processing, phonemic awareness and rhyming words. In October I introduce the sounds and I cover two per week with a revision day on Friday.
Senior Infants worked on the Jolly Phonics Pupil book 2 which also links with the whiteboard software for Jolly Phonics if you are lucky to have it. In September I spend some time on PAT with Seniors and revising sounds covered in Juniors so they are ready to learn new sounds in September.
Sight Words:
I have recommended Word Attack Pack in previous posts for sight words and Dolch. My Senior infants worked on 5/10 per week depending on the child. They had their own words to cut out at home (fine motor) and I had sets made for use in school. Senior infants also played a roll say keep game both at home and in school to practice sight words for the first week. On the second week I focused on developing fluency. I had prompt cards where the 5 dolch words were listed numerous times and the children had to recall them at speed. Each night for homework they would time how fast they could say the words. It was amazing how they got quicker over the course of the week. I am working on a pack of these prompt cards for Pre-primer Dolch and they will be available in my Mash.ie store soon.
Maths:
Juniors are still at the Early Maths activity strand and are working on one-property sorting. Maths Week is also coming up in the next few weeks so take some time to look at the Maths Eyes Website. It is an excellent resource for recognising Maths all around us and building on maths language too. Bring Juniors and Seniors on a Maths walk around the school looking for shapes, colours or other specific topics. They will identify shapes that you may miss!
Space Week:
Space Week is this week. Children love talking about space, planets and rockets blasting off. My class and I both liked this song for learning about the planets last year.
Halloween:
Last but not least it’s Halloween time, bring out the Room on the Broom storybook and song. Midterm is just around the corner!
A.M.
Aistear Múinteoir 