Nightingale
Welcome back to school for our first term! It has been wonderful to spend time with the children and build positive relationships with them.
Topic
This term, we will be learning all about London. The children will be exploring transport, landmarks and the other countries and capital cities within the United Kingdom. The children will spend time comparing London to Trowbridge and they will finish their learning by showcasing their knowledge by creating a tourist guide.
In English, we will be writing a planet fact file, based on the story Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers. Within this we will be developing our sentence structures with a focus of capital letters, full stops and using statements. Later in the term, we will be reading the stories Beegu by Alexis Deacon and The Man on the Moon by Simon Bartram. We will be developing our ability to discuss different texts and answer questions and form opinions based on these.
In Maths, we will be covering Place Value to 20 (Year 1) and Place Value to 100 (Year 2), which includes counting forwards and backwards, identifying one more and one less, comparing numbers of objects and writing numbers in words. We will embed our use of sentence stems to articulate our understanding. Alongside this, we will be using manipulatives to showcase our knowledge.
Home Learning
It is still essential that the children are completing home learning tasks in order to consolidate their learning. We cannot express enough the importance of your child reading daily. Spellings of the Year 1/2 Common Exception Words will continue to be sent home each term following an assessment of what the children know. We recommend that the children spend a short amount of time each day practising these. This term, we are also sending out some optional home learning challenges for the children to further their engagement with our topic. Children can pick one or two activities and there will be an opportunity to bring in and share towards the end of the term.
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Daily |
Weekly |
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Regular reading both independently and with an adult/older sibling.
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Spellings- Practice the Year 1/2 Common Exception words.
Sounds-Write Homework (this will be issued fortnightly on a Monday and to be returned on the Friday of that week).
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Reading
In Year 1, children will bring home a Sounds-Write specific reading book to read daily at home. In Year 2, children will bring home a Sounds-Write specific reading book to read daily at home and once all of the Sounds-Write books have been completed will be moved to coloured band books. The children will only be moved to the next book once they are 90% fluent in reading their Sounds-Write books. Please record that a child has read to somebody at home in their Reading Record. Adults in school will assess and monitor children’s progress on internal records, logging against Sounds-Write criteria, so will no longer be recording this in the Reading Records, which will primarily be for home adults to use. Sounds-Write books will usually be changed early in the week and children will also be bringing home a library book weekly to encourage reading for pleasure.
PE Kit
PE sessions will be held on the days stated below; however, there will be occasions where we will need to be flexible so please ensure your child has their PE kit available in school every day.
PE kit should consist of black shorts or jogging bottoms, their house coloured plain t-shirt and their school jumper.
Please ensure all items of uniform are named!
Kingfisher – Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon.
Nightingale – Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning.
Woodpecker – Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon.
Planning time
Each week, the teachers in our phase have planning and preparation time, which they complete out of class. This will be on the following days, with the following cover arrangements:
Kingfisher – Tuesday mornings.
Nightingale – Thursday all day.
Woodpecker – Tuesday all day.
As one of our learner’s values, we encourage the children's independence in communicating messages; however, any important messages can be communicated via email to the office admin@paxcroft.wilts.sch.uk or please feel free to pop in and see us; we hold an open door policy and are more than happy to arrange a convenient time to meet.
Kind regards,
Miss Beaven, Mr Benjamin and Miss Granger