Hello and a big warm welcome to Squirrels class!
Squirrels class has 2 teachers; Mrs Johnson who will be in class Monday and Tuesday and Miss Osborne who is in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Our teaching assistant is Mrs Clarke who is in every day.
May we now take this opportunity to say hello and give you some useful information.
We have lots of fun things planned for the coming year.
Our topics will be:·
· Term 1 - Where do I Belong?
· Term 2 - Colour of the World
· Term 3 - Fire Fire
· Term 4 - Dare to be Different
· Term 5 - The World Came to our School Today
· Term 6 - Amazing Africa
Please ensure that your child brings their PE kit in a named bag. Bags can be left on pegs all term. PE is on a Tuesday & Wednesday. PE kits should all be named and include: shorts, PE shirt, daps OR trainers and jogging bottoms in colder weather. We do go out on Tuesdays whatever the weather so as we get colder weather please do remember long trousers.
We use a creative approach to home learning to give the children an opportunity to choose what interests them. We hope that it will also provide some activities that pupils and parents may enjoy working on together. In addition to the essential daily reading and spelling practice, we will provide you with 7 different tasks to complete across the term. These are varied and cover a range of subjects and we encourage your child to complete 2/3 of these tasks. You may produce your home learning in any way you wish and spend as much time on it as you wish. Once the homework is set we will let you know the date it needs to be handed in. Of course, we encourage you to present your work as well as possible. You have lots of time for this, so spread the tasks out. You can post photos/ videos of the work on our Class Dojo page and we will celebrate the work in school. We are hoping to be able to invite parents in to see some work this year but we will keep you posted on whether we are able to.
Each week your child will be sent home spellings on a Friday and then tested on a Wednesday. The spellings will begin focussing on sounds we have learnt in phonics and then we will move onto the Year 1 and Year 2 common exception words. We ask that your child practises the spellings three times in their books and then any other practise down on other paper. Prizes will be awarded to children who regularly get 100%.
We love reading in Year 2 and we spend time sharing a range of books to the class. We cannot stress how important reading with your child is. Please ensure your child reads to you regularly in the week and that you read to them as well. We plan to have lots of reading incentives in our class which will hopefully continue to ignite the children's reading.
Children NEED to bring in a water bottle with a 'sports' top so they can keep hydrated throughout the day. It should come in every morning with fresh water (sorry no juice) to be kept in a tray in the classroom. This way the children can access their drink without having to leave the room and missing learning time.
We do have an open door policy and always welcome parents in to school if you have any worries or concerns. Mornings are quite busy so after school is better. However, we are also happy to receive messages via Class Dojo or via email if you have any issues. But please be aware that we both have young families of our own so can't always reply straight away but will reply as soon as we can.
Once again welcome to everyone and if you have any queries feel free to ask.
Mrs Emily Johnson, Miss Osborne and Mrs Clark
