Learning through stories and play in Room 9

In Room 9 we’ve been exploring how to bring more play-based learning into our routines.  As part of this we introduced a wee “café”, which has been a massive success with our learners.  From spontaneous imaginative play, social interactions with our peers, applying new communication skills to building fine and gross motor skills, the café has impressed us all.  It has been so popular we have given it a name, and one pupil helped to design a banner to signpost our new classroom highlight!

We have also moved onto our final book study of the term.  After several rounds of pupil voting, “Tiddler” closely won against “The Snail and the Whale”, so “Tiddler” is now our story for the next few weeks.  We’ve enjoyed joining in with “Oh, no, he didn’t!” “Oh, yes, he did!” as we read along together, signing fish songs, exploring body percussion and rhythm in response to fish songs as part of our listening activities, and made our own fish for our reading records, choosing from painting or collage (or both, for some of our most enthusiastic artists!).

For World Book Day, the whole class team each dressed up as a different emotion from the story “The Colour Monster”, and we made sure to add some additional time for telling the story during the day.  Between enthusiastic performances from the class team and fascinating props, engagement was really high throughout.