Welcome to Class 1

Class 1 News - Spring 2012

 

 

Welcome back to your child's second term in year 1 and Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a lovely Christmas.  Many thanks for all the Christmas cards and presents that I received. 

 

Staffing 

Staffing will remain the same this term.  I will be teaching in class for the majority of the time.  Mrs Karen Layzell will teach all day on a Wednesday (when I teach Music across the school) and on a Thursday morning.  Mrs Jackie Aspinwall will be working in the classroom and supporting the children full time.  Mrs Nicky Sheehy will also be working within the classroom for the majority of each day.  We will also be well supported throughout the week by members of the Language Provision staff.  In addition there will be a variety of different adults (volunteers and student teachers) working in the classroom at different times to support your children. 

 

PE

PE will continue to be on a Tuesday afternoon and a Thursday morning.  Could you please ensure that your child has a PE kit in school at all times as we may do PE at other times or do activities that require a PE kit.  Could you ensure that all kit and school uniform is named very clearly - we have already had problems today with children losing and muddling up their clothes!  Could you also ensure that the children have an ‘outdoor’ kit as we will be going outside to do some PE.  A pair of old jogging bottoms and sweatshirt are absolutely fine.

 

Topic for this term

  

This term the topic will be called ‘Who’d Live in a House Like This’.  We will be looking at houses and homes locally and all over the world, discussing and investigating the materials that are used to make houses, and then making our own houses.  We will also be looking at some fairy tales with houses as the main setting.  Thank you so much for all the work completed on the class holiday project.  Everything completed looks great on the wall and has provided a great start to the topic.  Mrs Layzell and I have added some new related activities to the Learning Platform which I hope you are all now accessing regularly.  

  

Homework

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As you are aware, in Key Stage 1 formal homework is not set, instead we provide little topic projects to complete intermittently throughout the year (ie the Barnaby Bear project, information on our homes project).  We do however still send your children home regularly with reading books to practice their reading skills.  Could you please ensure that you continue to read these books with your children regularly.  We read through these as new books in class and it is vital for the children to read them again, in order to develop their reading skills, ie use of fluency, intonation, comprehension and discussion skills.  In addition, don’t forget the High Frequency Word list/s that I gave out at the beginning of the year.  Continue to practice reading these words, but also now (if you have not already) start to practice the spelling of them.  In class now we are completing regular spelling practice of these words and any additional practice would be beneficial.  Also, don’t forget there are also lots of additional activities you can now access on the learning platform.  I have updated this resource with some new activities related to our new topic so please visit the learning platform for additional homework.  In addition, unfortunately we have had to change the log in names for the children.  To log in to the learning platform now, the children’s log in name is their first name plus first initial of surname, with .he after it (ie for me this would be pauld.he).  Their password is still the same.  If this does not work please come and let me know.

 

Talk for Writing Homework  

 

As you are aware, you child completes a session called ‘Big Write’ each week on a Thursday afternoon.  I am planning to start to introduce ‘Talk for Writing’ homework.  I will write to you at the beginning of some weeks to inform you about what our writing theme will be later in the week and ask you to complete some preparatory talking about the writing theme.  This should help your child’s understanding of the topic and prepare them for their writing.  Classes 2, 3 and 4 currently complete this homework and in year 1 we usually start it this term, and we have found it beneficial as it allows the children to come up with some ideas before they get into the classroom.  Please look out for these letters at the beginning of each week and please try to find some time to talk about what we are going to be writing about.  It is important to stress that this is ‘talking’ homework and should not involve the children completing any form of writing/recording – however if you would like to note down their responses to help them remember what they have said, this would be fine.

 

Junk Modelling Activity

 

During the week commencing 6^th February the children will be designing and making their own house out of recycled ‘junk’.  For this week they will need to have collected some ‘junk’ to bring into school to use in their model.  Therefore I thought I’d write to you early so that you have a couple of weeks to collect this ‘junk’.  They will need one or two boxes (ie cereal, shoe box, chocolate boxes etc), they may also need some cardboard tubes (ie kitchen roll, foil tubes).  This is important and must be collected to ensure that your child can complete this activity, though I would ask that if you could supply any extra ‘junk’ for any children who have not been able to collect any, I would be greatly appreciative.  I have been collecting some over the past few weeks but have not got enough for everyone in the class!

 

Finally…

To make my life easier and to ensure the safety of your children, could you please wait for your children directly outside the classroom at the end of the day (opposite the windows to the classroom), in clear view so that we can see that your children reach the correct parent/carer safely.  For the safety of the children I am very stringent and I will only let the children out if I have seen who is picking them up.  In addition, if for any reason you are not picking your child up could you please continue to fill in the permission slips that you have been completing in Class R.  This is again imperative to ensure the safety of your children at the end of the school day.  If your child is picked up by a child minder or different relative on a regular basis could you please let me know at your earliest convenience so that I am aware of the people that will be picking your child up.

 

Thank you,

 

Paul Dicker

(Class 1)

5/1/12

 

Last year in Class 1

We had fun during Book Week.  Please go to the photo galleries for some pictures of our book activities.

 

Here we are having fun in our quiet area sharing books during Book Week.

 

 

All dressed up as our book characters.  How many different characters can you see?