Mrs Penstone

Mrs Stepien, Mrs Reader & Miss Jenkins

Welcome to our class page!

Hello, I'm Mrs Penstone and I am so excited to be teaching The Grove this year!  Mrs Stepien, Mrs Reader and Miss Jenkins will also be working with us.

I love finding out the different ways that children learn and challenging each individual to be the BEST they can be.

Contact: grove@thepinesschool.org.uk 

Year 4

Our main classroom door for the start and end of the school day is The Grove door.

Our regular PE lessons are as follows:

Thursday - Outdoor PE

Friday - Indoor PE

On these days, children should come to school wearing their PE kit.

Year 6

Our main classroom door for the start of the school day is The Grove/ Year 6 door.  At the end of the day, you leave from Year 6.

Our regular PE lessons are as follows:

Tuesday - Indoor PE

Friday - Outdoor PE

On these days, children should come to school wearing their PE kit.

Current Learning

Phonics

Time each day is spent working on our phonics skills, practising blending and segmenting the phonemes to use in our reading and writing.

Reading

We read as individuals, as small groups and as a whole class, using our phonics skills.  We will also be discussing texts, thinking about prediction, inference and explaining what we are reading.  We love to learn new words and will be developing our vocabulary wall!

Writing

We will be working on the individual needs of the children, developing our skills to plan and retain sentences orally before writing them down, using our phonics skills.

Maths

We are working on Place Value and how numbers are made, at an appropriate level for the individual child.  We are developing calculations skills and looking at how we can apply these skills.

Fine Motor Skills

Building up strength in our finger, hand and arm muscles really helps us with handwriting, particularly with pencil pressure and stamina.  We do lots of activities based on this.

Speech and Language

We work on specific targets that have been set for individual children, as well as ongoing activities to develop understanding of language.

Social Skills

We spend time supporting social interaction through guided activities and small group work.

We  follow the specific elements in each child's Individual Provision Map (IPM) to ensure that targets from EHCPs are met.

Road Safety

We are so proud of how hard the children have worked on this information film about Road Safety.  They have made it for the younger children in the school but have also been practising their own skills, too.

They wrote the script, planned the actions, made the props and vehicles and even composed the music.

Well done to all!

Star of the Week 

PGT

We are so proud of all our children who took part in 'The Grove's Got Talent' - it was wonderful to see them perform with such confidence and happiness!  

Well done to our two children who got through to 'Pines' Got Talent' and represented us so brilliantly - you were amazing!

Bubbles!

We have been watching a short film called 'Bubbles' and have enjoyed blowing bubbles, making bubble prints,  trying out Magic Bubbles that don't burst and experimenting with making the largest bubbles we could! 

Celebrating the Coronation!

Beegu

We have loved reading this book and thinking about how Beegu was feeling at different points in the story.  We used chalks to create our own galaxy pictures and made our own model Beegus from clay.  Then, one day, when Year 3 were at PE, a spaceship crash-landed outside The Grove!  There were even yellow footprints leading away from it.  The children decided it must be Beegu and hunted everywhere for her.  However, they couldn't find her so they left her letters and gifts of flowers and a hula hoop, like in the story.  In return, she left them a letter and a toy do they would remember her, before flying back to her own planet!

Spring Stars of the Week!

World Book Day!

What a great day - we loved all the book themed activities and making reading dens!

Our film - The Journey Home

We have been reading The Journey Home and we made our own film of it, using stop-frame animation.  We positioned all the toys before taking the photos, planned where the shots should take place, built the city from Lego, painted the sunset backdrop and even composed the closing music!  We made stick puppets of fish and seagulls and designed and sewed a toy dodo.  We even created the sound effects ourselves!

We enjoyed watching the film in our 'cinema' with popcorn (in boxes we made ourselves!) before showing the film to our special guests at the film premiere!  They had tickets to get in and walked down the red carpet.  

Coffee afternoon 21.11.22 - Zones of Regulation

Autumn Stars of the Week!

Chess!

Many of the children in The Grove are really enjoying chess at the moment.  We have been learning the names of the pieces, how to set up the board, how the pieces move and are beginning to develop tactics.  It has been brilliant to see the children sharing their knowledge and explaining the rules to others.  Even the teachers are learning, alongside the children!

Egyptians

Year 3 enjoyed making pharaohs' headdresses!

Learning Outdoors

When we learn outdoors, we are developing so many skills.  We are learning to explore, inquire and innovate in a multi-sensory environment.  We are developing our understanding of nature and living things and learning to care for and appreciate them.  We are challenging ourselves - taking risks and understanding potential hazards - which helps develop our self-esteem.  We are keeping active and developing our communication skills as we negotiate ideas and solve problems.  We are developing independence and creativity, both individually and as a team.  

Recommended Websites

We have enjoyed using these websites in class.

The 4 areas of need according to the SEND Code of Practice

If your child has a SEND, their needs will fall into one or more of the following 4 areas. To find out more about each area of need and how to support your child at home, please click below.