Welcome back!
I hope you had a happy and healthy summer. Welcome back and welcome to Y6 – your last ever year of primary school! I know we’re going to make it the best one yet.
Here’s some key information:
- This year, PE will be on Mondays and Thursdays.
- Our library slot is a Tuesday so bring in your library book then – but it’s a good idea to have it with you every day.
- Book Club will take place every Friday so please bring in your Reading Record on this day.
We’ve had an amazing start to the week. I’m loving the energy and enthusiasm that the class are bringing.
Living and Learning – rules
This week’s Living and Learning lesson was all about rules.
We discussed our rules and why they’re so important. We also talked about the rules we have at home and how they’re similar or different.
Help at home by having a chat about which of our school rules is most important and why.
Our learning really linked with our British Values. We made connections between following rules at school and the Rule of Law and Respect & Tolerance for example.
Welcome to Year 4!
The children have had a fantastic start to Year 4 and settled in brilliantly. It has been great to see how well they’ve adapted to the new routines and new teachers. We’re really looking forward to an exciting and successful year!
This week, your child will come home with a reading book and new Reading Record. They’ll need to bring in their Reading Records every Friday for Book Club sessions, where they’ll be set an activity to complete at home (more information on the activities are inside the Reading Record). It’s really important that your child reads daily. This not only develops their fluency but also their love of reading.
Important dates:
- PE – Wednesday and Friday
- Library – Monday
- Spelling test – Friday
- Times tables test – Friday
Any questions, please 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!
Y3/4 Spelling list for half term 1
In Key Stage 2, instead of asking you to learn a short list of spellings each week, you will be given a longer list (roughly 40 words) that we will focus on in that half-term. Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to learn them all in one week. Instead, we’ll ask you to focus on learning these words over the course of the entire half-term. There’s a few reasons for this:
- We want you take responsibility for your own learning and start to figure out how you learn best (there’s some ideas below). Even if that means making some mistakes along the way.
- Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long-term.
- Similarly, lots of research suggests that if you learn something for a week and don’t come back to it you’ll likely forget it anyway
- We won’t have a ‘formal’ test each week. Instead, we’ll mix it up. We might ask you to test each other on the words you’ve been learning. We might test the words at random and then you’ll know which words you need to practise more and which words you’re confident with. We might just think about some of the words and share ideas for how we’re going about learning them.
- Ultimately, we want this to be about learning – and not just getting them right in a test.
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.
Every Friday, we’ll spend time practising or testing (informally) or discussing all things spelling so be ready (one of our 8 Rs for learning) to join in!
If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.
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.
| famous | believe | accident | breathe | answer |
| library | passion | notice | were | possess |
| century | address | favourite | appear | here |
| their | weight | complete | ordinary | wear |
| straight | they’re | surprise | busy | increase |
| session | possible | there | hear | where |
| suppose | mission | eighth | extreme | occasion |
| fraction | different | attention | learn | possession |
Living and Learning: rules
At the start of the new school year, in our Living and Learning lesson, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life. This also links to the British Value of rule of law.
Before focussing on our 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.
Our reading fluency text for this week was all about rules too.
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.
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.
Next week, we will be thinking about our rules about online safety at school. Your child will bring 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 three school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime. Here are some examples the children thought of. Being ready would mean looking at the speaker, being respectful would mean laughing with not laughing at someone and being safe would mean washing our hands before lunch to stop spreading germs.
Living and Learning: Rules
In Living and Learning this week, we looked at the school rules and why they are important. We then discussed how we can show the rules are being followed in school. For example, we can show we are respectful by using our manners or we can show we are ready by having eyes on the speaker.
We also discussed our school’s Acceptable Use Agreement for their use of the internet in school. This document has been sent home with your child today; please sign and return them ASAP.
Help at home: Discuss what rules you have at home and compare them with the school’s rules. Are they similar? Are they different?
Welcome to Year 5!
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 and teachers.
This week, we will send 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 – Tuesday and Wednesday
Spelling test – Friday
Library – Wednesday
Class assembly – Wednesday 20th November 2024 & Wednesday 26th February 2025
We are looking forward to a successful year!
Welcome to Year 1!
The children have settled in brilliantly into Year 1 and I am very impressed with how eager and engaged they have been.
I wanted to share some important information about Year 1.
PE days are Monday and Thursday. Children should come dressed in PE kit for these days.
Reading records will be handed out on Thursday and will need to brought in every Thursday.
Collins E-books have updated their interface and app this year so all your children will receive a new log in in their reading record. You will also have to download a new app (search for ‘Collins Hub) or log in to the new Collins hub website (here).
Our library day this year is on Friday. If you have any library books at home can you please bring them in on Friday.
Any other questions please don’t hesitate to ask.
School Games Mark Platinum award
We are delighted to announce that we have achieved the School Games Platinum Mark Award for the 2023/24 academic year.
The School Games Mark is a Government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust, to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community, and we are delighted to have been recognised for our success.
As part of our application, we were asked to fulfil criteria in the areas of participation, competition, workforce and clubs, and we are pleased that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded this year.
Thank you to all the children who have represented school at different inter school events and competitions, parents for their support and staff for accompanying the children. We look forward to more events this year.
We are very proud of our children for engaging with these physical activities both in and out of school to support our ethos of being a happy and healthy school.
