We are scientists!
This half term in Science we are learning all about the human body. We will be learning about the five senses as well as the names of body parts (see below).
In our first two lessons we investigated whether older people had longer feet. We drew around all our feet and then cut them out. Then we arranged the footprints from oldest to youngest. We discovered that older people don’t have longer feet. We also discussed what things made people have longer feet and we decided that the tallest people in the class had the longest feet.
Help at home by talking to your child about the names of different body parts or even play a game of ‘Simon Says’.
Autumn 1: Week 2
We’ve had a wonderful week in Reception! It’s been great to see a busy classroom. We’ve been so impressed with how well all the children have settled.
Phonics
This week, we’ve started our phase 2 phonics sessions. We’ve been trying really hard to form the graphemes (a ‘symbol’ of a phoneme –it’s a letter or group of letters representing a sound and we use the letter names for this) and pronounce the phonemes (The smallest unit of sound you can hear in a word. For example, ‘sat’ has three phonemes: ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’) correctly.
Learn at home phonics sheet
Today, your child has come home with a learn at home phonics sheets. The sheets link to our current phonics learning and will be sent home every Friday.
PE
PE starts next Friday. Please make sure your child comes to school in their PE kit.
Important
Our cloakroom is very small and can get very crowded on a morning! For the safety of our children and to reduce the amount of people in our cloakroom, your child will line up in the playground and come into the classroom independently. This will also allow a prompt start to learning and encourage independence. Please wait with your child in the playground until a member of the Reception team opens the gate. There are plenty of other opportunities for you to come into the classroom throughout the year.
Me and my family
Next week, we’ll be thinking about families. During this theme, we’ll share photographs of our families, make historical links and look at different types of homes.
Have a happy and healthy weekend!
Science: Friction and Air Resistance
In Science, we have been exploring the impacts of friction and air resistance.
Here are the definitions:
We first tested which object would have the least amount of friction on a surface: an ice cube or wooden cube? Our prediction was that the ice would be the quickest therefore it has the least amount of friction. Our scientific enquiry type was ‘fair and comparative’ tests.
The children then went on to test air resistance (or drag). We tested that if our surface area increased would it slow us down or speed us up? Bin bags were our equipment of choice, have a look at our experiment:
We found out that an increased surface area means more air resistance therefore, we ran slower with the bin bag than without.
Help at home: Discuss different scenarios that are impacted by friction and air resistance.
Book Club
Y6 Book Club will now be every Wednesday. This is so that it’s closer to homework on a Friday – I’m sorry for the confusion!
In this week’s Book Club, we celebrated the amazing words and phrases we have come across in the texts we’re reading.
We had a lovely, relaxing reading session and made note of and discussed some inspiring vocabulary or words that made us curious.
Help at home by exploring the meaning of words and phrases when you’re reading together at home. Talk about the word class, root word or other sentences you might find it in.
Learning at home
This week in Living and Learning we have been thinking about the 8Rs for learning and how these characteristics can make us better learners. This 8Rs for learning parents’ guide shows how you can support your child at home.
One of the 8Rs is being responsible and we are encouraging the children to take responsibility for their learning when they are at home. That might be practising spellings, completing their homework, spending some time on Numbots or asking an adult to hear them read their e-books.
E-book logins and reading record books will be coming home this week so please access your child’s reading book and record in their reading record book once they have read. Reading record books should then be returned to school.
Well done to Raffi, Mannat and Thea who received the first Numbots certificates of Year 2! Certificates are awarded every Tuesday.
You will find your child’s Numbots logins stuck in the inside of your child’s reading record books.
For any access or login problems, please let us know.
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.
- I am on time for my learning.
- I can give my opinion when I’m not feeling too confident.
- I know where to find information and use it in my learning.
- 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.
