Author: Mrs Taylor

We are looking forward to having some coaching in school from Elite Netball Academy in the next few weeks.

Elite Netball Academy run weekly netball classes on a Saturday morning at Gateways school and they have an early bird offer for their October half term camps held locally at The Grammar School at Leeds- £25 per day if booked by 17th September.

We’ve had a great, hot, few days and it has been lovely to see all the children back together with their friends and ready for their new learning in Year 2. Here’s some information about some of the Year 2 routines and the upcoming learning.

Firstly, thank you for the postcards you have sent us – they are displayed on our topic board which this half term is all about British geography, Where in the world am I? We have updated the maps in the playground so have a look at them with your child as you arrive at school.

In science this half term, we will be chemists learning all about materials and their properties. This will include some practical science too.

In maths, we’ll be focusing on place value and some basic number facts with numbers up to 100. Help at home by counting forwards and backwards in 2s, 5s and 10s. Numbots and Hit the Button (the website is free compared to the app) will support this learning too.

In reading, we’ll be continuing to develop the children’s reading fluency by having a weekly fluency text. We’re also working on their retrieval and interpreting skills based on different fiction and non fiction texts – our first one being Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. Help at home by reading daily with your child, new books will be sent home next week, and choose some of the reading activities from this guide. Ten/fifteen minutes of Lexia daily will also help.

In phonics, we will be recapping the Phase 5 learning from the end of Year 1 before moving onto some other spelling rules. Help at home by playing some of the games on Phonics Play, accessed through their website not an app, choosing Phase 5 games (Login Sphere Password Sphere3).

In writing, we’ll be starting with lots of sentence work to ensure we remember the basics of capital letters, full stops, finger spaces and making sure our sentences make sense. Help at home by practising spellings in silly sentences. We will continue to work on our handwriting too. This guide shows the cursive letter formation that we use.

Living and Learning will include getting the children settled back at school and talking about how they are feeling  as they start a new year. We will also be thinking about the 8Rs for learning and how they can help us at school and at home.  We will end the half term with learning about mental health.

The children always look forward to their PE sessions (Tuesdays and Fridays). It’s great to have more space now to get active. We also aim for our active 30 minutes a day throughout the school day with lots of brain breaks. Run the red carpet is one of our favourites. 

Homework books will be sent home on Friday and they can be kept at home and used for the children to practise their weekly spellings and to record any brief notes from their talk time homework.

Lexia and Numbots logins remain the same. These will be stuck inside your child’s homework book for reference. For Lexia, the children should aim to achieve their Level 9 certificate by the end of Year 2 and for Numbots, the children are aiming to reach Diamond level.

The children continue to receive free fruit for playtimes in Year 2 and they continue to receive free school meals too. The children have enjoyed returning to a more normal lunch service and trying some new meals from our current menu. If your child has a packed lunch, they can do a combination of school meals and packed lunches if they want to give them a try.

We will be visiting the library on Mondays so if the children have finished reading their book and they would like to change it, please bring it to school on Mondays.

Please do let us know if there is anything we can help with.

Mrs Taylor and Mrs Lake

We hope you have all had a happy and heathy summer break.  We are looking forward to seeing everyone back  to school on Monday ready for Year 2.

Below is a list of key points to remember:

• Mrs Taylor will be teaching every Monday and Tuesday.
• Mrs Lake will teach each Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
• Mrs Burgess will also be working in Year 2.
• The children will line up in the playground when the bell goes at 8:50 and a member of staff will take them round to the cloakroom.
• Please ensure your child has a coat every day.
• Water bottles can be brought into school and can be refilled throughout the day.
• PE is on a Tuesday and Friday. The children are being asked to come to school in their PE kits on those days. They will remain in their kit for the whole day.
• Reading books will be changed on Tuesdays and Fridays.
• Please check the uniform policy if you are unsure about any items of clothing or footwear.
• If you have come across any reading books, reading record books or library books from Year 1, please bring them back into school.

Please do ask, at the start or the end of the day, if you have any queries.

Mrs Taylor/Mrs Lake

All the Year 1 staff would like to say a big THANK YOU for all the thoughtful and generous gifts we have received this week.

The children have made us very proud and we have thoroughly enjoyed watching them grow and develop throughout the year.

Here’s some parachute fun from our last day.

Thank you for all the support you have provided throughout the year and we hope you have a very happy and healthy summer break.

Don’t forget to send us a postcard from any visits in the holidays ready for our geography learning in September.

Year 1 have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Skipping into summer project this year with Jodi and Chris from Skipping School.

While Jodi and Chris haven’t been able to come into school to deliver skipping skills sessions, we’ve enjoyed their online tutorials.

At the end of our Being Healthy themed week, we celebrated our skipping skills by sharing them with Year 2. It was great to see how the children have improved their coordination to perform some amazing skipping techniques.

Then, we had a ‘surprise’ visitor – Jodi came to see our super skipping skills!

Just wanted to say another big thank you for inviting me into school this morning. It was such a joy to see all those smiley faces 🙂 The skill level for that age group, especially your Year 1s, was AMAZING! Being able to speed bounce, side swing and even backwards cross over in Year 1 is just incredible! And then to have them bouncing in the big rope in groups to finish things off at play time was so lovely.

Thank you for taking part in the project and keeping skipping with us.