Hello and a big warm welcome to Squirrels class!
Squirrels class has 2 teachers; Mrs Cowley who will be in class Friday, Monday and Tuesday and Ms Osborne who is in class Wednesday and, Thursday. 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 - Fire Fire!
- Term 3 - Colours of the World
- Term 4 - Make a difference
- Term 5 - Amazing Africa
- Term 6 - Terrific Technology
PE is on a Tuesday & Wednesday. Please ensure that your child brings their PE kit in a named bag. Bags can be left on pegs all term. 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. You have lots of time for this, so spread the tasks out, be creative and have fun! You can post photos/ videos of the work on our Class Dojo page, and we will celebrate the work in school, inviting parents in to view all the hard work at the end of term.
Each week your child will be sent home spellings by Friday which will be tested on the following 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% and/or try their best! We will set these once the children have completed some assessments.
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 'sport' 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 just inside our door. This way the children can access their drink without having to leave the room and miss 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 if you have any issues.
Once again welcome to everyone and if you have any queries feel free to ask.
Mrs Cowley, Ms Osborne and Mrs Clarke