This week has been an exciting and fun-filled week of reading in RDT! We all enjoyed going on two different library visits and sharing stories in our indoor and outdoor reading areas. We have shared lots of lovely stories together throughout our week at school!

We loved going on an exciting local visit to Moor Allerton Library this week! When we arrived, our Librarian showed us to the children’s section and we all sat together to share a story. It was then time to explore the Library! We remembered to use quiet voices and handle the books carefully when reading. We put our books back neatly in the right boxes when we were finished. We really enjoyed sharing stories with our friends, our parent/carer volunteers and our Librarian!

Thank-you to our parent/carer volunteers who joined us on our local library visit! The children loved having you with us and your help was very much appreciated!

Our Librarian explained that we could have our own RDT library card! We worked as a team to decide which design to choose and the dinosaur card was most popular. We then selected some books to borrow from the Library to take back to school. Luca and Sammy enjoyed taking them to the machine to scan them!

Lots of us told our Librarian that we would like to have our own library card, so she explained to us how we could get one. She told us that if we visit Moor Allerton Library with our grown-up, we can ask for our own library card and then choose some books to borrow.

Next week, there are some exciting events taking place at Moor Allerton Library for the half-term holiday. Their ‘Ready Steady Readers!’ story and rhyme session is a free session that takes place on Tuesdays at 10:30-11:30am. They are also having a special treasure hunt for the Leeds Storytelling Festival that you can take part in throughout the week!

When we went to visit our ACE Library, we talked about our experience of going to Moor Allerton Library. We enjoyed sharing another story as a class and then got busy choosing our own stories to look at together!

We have had a very exciting week full of stories and books in RDT this week!

This week in RDT we have been learning all about Lunar New Year and the story of ‘The Great Race’, following last week’s celebrations. We began our learning by listening to the story of the ‘Great Race’ to help us learn why Lunar New Year is celebrated and about the 12 animals of the zodiac. We learnt that 2025 is a year of the snake and had a special parent/carer visitor who taught us all about how Lunar New Year is celebrated.

Our talk for writing learning this week involved sharing part of the story through our talking and writing skills. We recalled the different animals within the story and what happened. We then used colourful semantics to build our sentences when talking and writing.

When playing outside, we re-enacted the story by taking on the roles of the different animals and setting up our own races! We used stepping stones to build river banks for the race and ran as fast as we could through the water!

We really enjoyed making our own paper lanterns this week for Lunar New Year. We all concentrated carefully as we folded and cut lines in our paper to create the lantern. We then hung them around the classroom as decorations for our celebrations!

For our storytelling session this week, we created our own ‘Great Race’ story. We decided together to have six animals in our race, as we have been learning all about the number 6 in maths this week. We had lots of fantastic ideas, which we shared through speaking and listening as a group. We then created our own story maps to tell our ‘Great Race’ stories, using our mark-making and writing skills.

What a busy and exciting week of Lunar New Year celebrations in RDT!

We have had lots of fun learning all about birds this week at school, as part of our whole-school participation in the ‘Big Schools Birdwatch 2025’ by the RSPB. Inspired by our learning, the children in RDT have been incredibly eager to look for birds around them when outdoors and very excited to recognise and name what they see. You could extend this interest at home by getting outside and seeing which birds you can spot. The RSPB website contains some fantastic resources for identifying and recording birds for young children.

Our talk for writing learning this week began by working together to make our own bird feeder to put outside. We then used talk and our writing skills to record the instructions for creating a bird feeder – if you would like to make your own at home please see our instructions above!

We have learnt lots of information about birds this week through sharing information books. During our library session, we listened to lots of facts about birds before joining in with a bird-themed quiz! We have also really enjoyed looking at different bird books in our reading area whilst exploring provision.

We have also practised and developed our fine-motor skills through different bird-themed activities this week. Many of us enjoyed catching worms for the birds on our finger gym table! We also applied our mark-making skills to create detailed robin drawings from reference as a group learning experience. This then inspired some of us to choose to do this again independently when exploring in provision!

What a busy and fun-filled Bird Week we have had in RDT!

This week, we were really fortunate to have our local policing team come into school and visit us in Reception! We have been – busy learning about different people who help us within our community this half-term, so this visit provided a fantastic opportunity for us to see what it really means to be a police officer. Many of us are enjoying using our imaginations to take on the role of police officers within provision and now we have much more knowledge to inform our play! Thank-you to our visitors for giving us such an exciting and informative experience!

We began our learning experience by trying on some special police hats and hi-vis jackets, as we took on the role of Police Officers! We then walked over to see a real police van, watching the flashing blue lights and listening to the siren! As we learned about the different parts of the police van, we were able to get inside and see it for ourselves. Some of us sat in the front cab, some in the back and some of us even had a go at getting into the cage!

We all listened carefully as our special visitors told us more about how the police help us and our community. We were eager to ask lots of questions to learn more. We all enjoyed this wonderful opportunity to learn through this memorable, real-life experience!

Our Talk for Writing text for this half-term is This is the Bear by Sarah Hayes. We have really enjoyed becoming familiar with the story by listening carefully and exploring the key vocabulary within the text. This week, we have been learning to tell the story ourselves through talking and by using the actions that we came up with! As we practised telling the story, we used our class story map to help us recall the key characters, events and phrases. You could use our story map below to retell the story at home with your family!

Here are some photos of us enjoying retelling This is the Bear through talk and with actions!

We have all enjoyed discovering new learning experiences within provision this week as we started to explore our new ‘people around us’ theme! We have had lots of fun visiting our new ACE Shop, where we made our own shopping lists and became different roles within the shop with our friends. Our shopkeepers did a fantastic job of serving the customers and we soon got the hang of queuing up to wait to be served!

We also loved exploring small-world play with our new hospital and people who help us figures! We enjoyed acting out different scenarios taking place using the hospital building, ambulance and rescue helicopter with our friends throughout the week. We also enjoyed learning more about different people who help us by looking closely at the wooden people figures and using them within our small-world play.