Thanks again to all those who entered our Summer Competition. Summer might seem a distant memory, but these creations bring a sunny smile to our faces…

Make sure you check the Class News each week. Since the start of the year, there have been over 35 Class News stories to read across school, from Reception to Year 6!

This week’s message focuses on some specific teaching and learning guides that you might like to check out so that you can support your child at home…

Handwriting

This year, we’ve refreshed the way we teach handwriting. Children have told us that with better handwriting, they feel more confident and proud of their learning! Our Handwriting Guide is easy to follow and a great way to support your child. Check out the guide to letter formation and our three top tips on page 3.

Spelling

We’ve also updated the way we teach spellings in Years 2 to 6. Our Spelling Guide describes how we teach spellings in Key Stage 2, including sequences for teaching different spelling rules and patterns and related lists of spellings to learn.

Feelings First

Last year, some of you attended a Watch Us While We Work session where we showed you a Feelings First session. The feedback from the session was really positive. We’ve prepared this Feelings First Guide to give you an idea of the feelings we cover each half term (page 6) and our simple definitions of each feeling (page 7).

Homework

We’ve made a small tweak to our Homework Guide which reflects a change of routine for children in Key Stage 2: their spellings to learn is now around a two week cycle, with a small test each fortnight.

Relationships and Sex Education

At the start of each year, we like to encourage you to be aware of our Relationships and Sex Education Policy. Later in the year, your child will have Relationships and Sex Education lessons. In those lessons, we’ll talk about anatomical terms and different relationships. However, we might need to use the terms at other times, such as when dealing with incidents of misuse or disrespectful language, and we’ll talk about lots of different relationships at any time of the year, too.

Cooking

Over the course of the year, your child will enjoy three opportunities to prepare food:

• Year 1 and 2: a fruit smoothie, overnight oats, and fruit bars
• Year 3 and 4: egg pot, chopped tomatoes and garlic, and savoury scones
• Year 5 and 6: vegetable and chickpea curry, pasta bake, and bread

We’ve a couple of requests, please:

Most importantly, please alert us to any allergies your child has. We’ll do our best to adapt recipes.

For parents of children in Years 1 to 6, thank you to those of you who contributed towards the cost of ingredients last year. Doing this means:

• we make life easier for you by buying the food in bulk rather than asking for children to bring in their own ingredients
• we can continue to offer this opportunity to learn important kitchen skills

To make sure that we can continue to offer this across the year, please make a voluntary donation. We’ve set up Arbor for quick payments of £6, but you can also call into the office with any donation amount – we’d be grateful for any amount to contribute to costs.

For more about our Cooking curriculum, please check out our Cooking and Nutrition Guide – this includes the food preparation skills children will practise (this is Year B).

All the guides mentioned here (and more) can be found on the blue Learn More pages of our website.

Finally this week… Please remember to update us with any changes to the information we have about you or your child. This includes any changes in health details and contact details.