Returning to school after the midterm break can be a little difficult for Junior Infants. Take some time next week to remind them of the classroom rules and consequences. It may take one or two days for everyone to settle back in fully.
Junior Infants are now well familiar with phonics, letter sounds and introducing blending. There are many multi sensory approaches to blending. In my own class I used my fingers to help them blend, tapping one finger to my thumb for each letter, then bringing all fingers together to bring the word together. Using this approach allows for more than 3 or 4 letters in each word. I saw a post online using toy cars in parking spaces for this letter. This is also a good activity for auditory processing and phoneme segmentation.
In November I introduce my reading programmes to my Senior Infants, I focused on sight words and oral language for September and October. I use a variety of reading schemes in my class from Rigby Stars and Sails to Songbirds from Julia Donaldson. I have two reading records, one is a reading record for parents to complete each night and the other is specific to the scheme the child is reading. It records the titles the child has read for a specific set of books. I assign the sets of books based on their sight word progress and my own observations in class. Senior Infants also continue to work on sight words, using both flashcards and prompt cards help to develop their fluency. Prompt cards are now available on my Mash.ie store.
In Maths, I continue with the story of number with Senior Infants. I spend three days on number activities and 2 days on topics per week as suggested by the Ready Set Go programme. For Junior Infants they will begin conservation of number and other number activities along with topic work. Topic work is ideal to link in with the Aistear topic also. I have a previous post on Maths Games that can be used with my Ready Set Go printable pack on my Mash.ie site.
I hope everyone is enjoying the midterm break! If you have any questions about this post or any posts on my blog please send me an email.
A.M.
Aistear Múinteoir 