Class News

Living and Learning – 8Rs

This week, Y6 discussed the 8Rs for learning. One of them even is mentioned in our school rules!

• ready
• responsible
• risk-taking
• responsive
• resourceful
• reflective
• resilient
• remembering

Challenge your child to match the statements we talked about in class to one of the 8Rs for learning.

1. I am on time for my learning.
2. I can give my opinion when I’m not feeling too confident.
3. I know where to find information and use it in my learning.
4. I learn from my mistakes.

Help at home by discussing which Rs you think are most important in different situations, most common or easiest to do / be.

Living and Learning: rules

Our first Living and Learning session this year was all about the school rules and why they’re important.

Our three school rules are:

• We’re respectful.
• We’re ready.
• We’re safe.

We spent our Living and Learning session discussing what following these rules looks like and sounds like in the classroom.

We concluded that following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy place to learn.

Help at home by asking your child to give an example of how they followed a school rule today.

Blue Peter Book Badges – apply now!

Do you like reading? Do you fancy getting your hands on an exclusive Blue Peter Badge? Now is your chance!

Blue Peter are introducing their exciting new Book badge, designed by one of the UK’s best known illustrators, Sir Quentin Blake, who you might know from bringing to life characters such as Roald Dahl’s BFG and Matilda! To earn your badge, just share your love of books with Blue Peter by answering the questions on the website! You can apply using the online form or by post.

Make sure you get an adult to help you!

Please read this information before applying.

Good luck!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back after the summer holiday. We hope you had a happy and healthy summer. It  has been great to see so many happy faces back in school.  The children have settled really well in their first week and are adapting to new routines, classrooms, teachers and an earlier start time of 8:45am.

This week, we have sent the children home with a reading book and a new reading record book. It is really beneficial that your child reads at home daily – it improves fluency and increases the enjoyment of reading. The children can record what they’ve read at home in the reading records. We will also set a task for them to complete at home. Please ask your child what their task is for their homework and actively encourage them to think about the presentation of their work in the journals and the importance of neat handwriting and accurate use of punctuation.

Thank you to all the children who have come to school in the correct uniform and PE kits  this week. If you are unsure of the uniform, please click the link to see what is required.

Important Dates

PE – Monday and Wednesday

Spelling test – Friday

Library – Wednesday

Class assembly – Wednesday 22nd November 2023 & Wednesday 21st February 2024

We are looking forward to a successful year!

Transition

This week, we welcomed some of our Reception children. We’ve had a busy few days getting to know each other and the routines. They’ve settled really well into their new classroom. We’ve been drawing, building, painting, making playdough cakes and cooking delicious food in the role play area. We are really looking forward to welcoming the rest of the children next week!

Reminder!
Don’t forget to attend our Welcome to Reception at 6pm on Tuesday 19 September. You will find out some basic “need to knows” about life in Reception.

A brilliant first week!

Well done everybody! We have had a fantastic first week in Year 1! The children have been amazing settling in and have really impressed both Mrs Roth and myself with their brilliant attitude and learning.

We look forward to meeting you over the next few weeks but for now, here is some key information about Year 1.

Important days and dates

PE – Monday and Thursday

Spelling test – Friday

Library – Friday

Class assembly – Wednesday 25th October at 2:40pm

Water bottles

These should be brought to school daily and they will be brought home every day for refreshing and cleaning.

Homework/Spellings

Whole school homework is set every Friday (along with new spellings). Homework and spellings can also be accessed from the website.

Reading

In Year 1, we will continue using e-books for our reading practice. Your child will bring home a log-in for the e-book website. Please log out of last year’s account and log in with the new account. This will ensure any new books are in the account.

Numbots

We continue to use Numbots in Year 1 (using the same login as reception) and certificates will be awarded every Friday for children who complete the different stages.

For spelling practice, reading and Numbots, little and often (10/15 minutes a day) is recommended.

Uniform

Please do check the uniform policy to ensure your child is wearing the correct items including for PE days. Earrings must be removed on PE days.

Finally, please do ask if there are any queries and keep checking back on class news to find out more about your child’s learning!

Living and Learning: rules

At the start of the new school year, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life.

Before focussing on our revised school rules, we started by thinking about…

Why do we have rules?

What rules can you think of?

What places have rules?

Who makes the rules?

Rules tells us what to do.

We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.

Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.

Rules help us to be happy and healthy.

In our school we have three school rules.  Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.

We concluded that following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.

We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.

Finally, we considered our rules about online safety at school. Your child has brought home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.

Any questions, please do ask.

Help at home – think about our revised school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime.

Spellings

Instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.

However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.

Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more.

Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would.

We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home.

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out this ‘Super Spelling Strategies Guide’ : Some-super-spelling-strategies

Half-term 1

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative ways for writing the ‘ay’ sound
• alternative ways for writing the ‘ee’ sound
• ‘double up for a short vowel sound’
• ‘drop the e for ing’
• ‘drop the y for an i’
• adding the suffixes ed, ing
• homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

Welcome back!

Year 4 have hit the ground running this week – it’s like we’ve never been away!

It’s been so lovely to spend time as a class again and Mrs Burgess, Mrs Charlesworth and I have been blown away by their behaviour and attitude towards school and learning. They are superstars!

A few bits of information:

• Our PE days are Wednesday and Friday. Please wear PE kits on these days. (If you have been told that your child is going swimming on Wednesday, they will need to come in their PE kit and bring their swimming kit with them).
• Reading records will be sent home tomorrow. The activity (stated on the homework) needs to be completed and accompanied by a parent/guardian’s comment and signature and brought back to school every Friday for book club. Thank you for your support with this.

As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.

Reading Records!

Reading Records

This week, Year 3 will be sent home with their new and exciting reading records! These records are to help me (Miss Birch) keep track of the children’s reading progress. 

The new reading records key info:

• Each time one of the children signs out a new book to read from the library, they can make note of these in the book and rate them out of 5 stars.
• I’ll choose an activity for the whole class to complete on their chosen book each Friday. More information on these activities are inside the record.
• The children will need to bring in these reading records every Friday for our Book Club lesson where we’ll discuss their books and develop their love of reading.
• The children’s grown-ups will also need to write a short comment sharing with us the lovely reading their child has been doing at home.
• It gives the children ownership and responsibility of their reading!

I hope this is all clear and I’m really looking forward to seeing their progress.

Any questions, please ask!