Welcome to Spring Term!

Hello Hedgehogs and Parents, and welcome to spring term!

It was lovely seeing the Hedgehogs' smiling faces on Wednesday, and even lovelier to have everyone back again after the many absences we had before Christmas. The children are happy to be back and have been getting reacquainted with each other. 

Important and interesting information about the term:

Staffing:
Mrs Gyau-Awuah will continue to work Tuesday-Friday
Mrs Abery is joining us on Wednesday mornings for five weeks, and then will be with us full time from 14th February. 
We have a PGCE student joining us soon who will work alongside myself and Mrs Gyau-Awuah as she trains to be a teacher.

Forest School:
Forest School will continue on Thursday afternoons. It is likely to be very chilly for the next few weeks, so please ensure your child comes to school dressed warmly and has warm Forest School clothes and snow boots in school. Gloves, hats and scarves will be needed!

PE:
PE will continue to take place on a Friday afternoon. Year 1 will learn with Mr Small while Reception will be doing some gymnastics with Mrs Gyau-Awuah.

Milk:
From your child's fifth birthday, milk is no longer free. If you want your child to continue to have milk at school, you will need to arrange payment. We will then receive an updated list with their name on it. All Reception children who are four years old automatically receive milk. 

Posessions in school:
A few children have been bringing things in from home in their pockets or book bags. Please could nothing from home come into school, including necklaces and bracelets, as they are likely to get lost or damaged. A simple watch is fine if your child is learning to tell the time, but please nothing big and distracting!

Reading:
Now that the Reception children are more confident readers, we will be hearing them and the Year 1 children read in pairs, instead of individually. This is so that the children can practice reading aloud to each other, gain confidence with their reading and have a good discussion about the book with a friend and teacher. Children will be heard read in this way once per week, but will continue to change their own individual reading books as needed. 

Children who need more support reading will be heard on a 1:1 basis, daily where possible. 

Please continue to read with your child daily and to help them to learn their sight words (Reception children and any Year 1 children that have them). Please make a brief note in their reading records so we can see how often you are able to read with them, and any problems you may be having. 

Maths:
Both year groups continue to follow the Mastery of Number programme, looking at the basics of number and how numbers are composed. This takes place four days per week. 

In addition, over the spring term year 1 children will be looking at:

* Numbers to 20

* Teen numbers as '10 and some more'

* Addition and subtraction within 20

* Length and Height

* Numbers to 100

* Fractions

Phonics:
Reception children will learn the final few single-letter sounds. Then we will focus on applying them in reading and writing, before moving on to digraphs (where two letters make one sound, such as 'sh' as in 'ship').

Year 1 children will continue to learn alternative graphemes (such as 'ay' for the 'ai' sound that we learnt last term). Friday spelling challenges will re-start - the first spellings will be given next Friday.

Mantle of the Expert:
The children loved being Percy's Park Keepers last term and were very pleased with the work they did. I don't want to give too much away about this half term's story, but it will involve some elephants, and going back in time...

I think that's everything!

Please note that we currently don't have an office administrator, so please bear with us while we recruit. This means that emails and phone calls may take longer to respond to. Thank you for your understanding. 

I am very much looking forward to the term ahead!

From Mrs Simpson