Class Newsletter: Term 2

Miss Stephens and Primary 1S

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope you find the following information useful. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Learning in Term 1:

Through the topic, Our Community, the children learned about our local community in Alloa. They painted the Alloa Tower and discussed who makes up our school community. They also learned about the Emergency Services and how to make an emergency phone call. The children also learned how to travel on foot safely in our local community. They learned the Green Cross Code and used this to cross the road safely. The children were also very lucky to be invited along to see The Alloa Story, presented by the P7’s.

General Information:

Your child is encouraged to bring a water bottle into class. The bottles should only have plain water, no flavoured or fizzy water please.

Some of our activities in class can be a little messy. Could you please provide a painting shirt for your child if you have not already done so – old tops/shirts are great!

Please check your child’s hair regularly for head lice and treat appropriately. Thank you for your co-operation.

Learning focus this term:

Through our topic about Play, Toys and Games, we will be learning about:

• Using different types of evidence to find out more information about toys in the past
• How people lived in the past and use imaginative play to show how their lives were different from our own
• Use play opportunities to explore different materials and share our reasoning for selecting specific materials

In Science lessons we will be learning about Space. We will be learning about:

• The sky at different times of the day.
• How to recognise the sun, the moon and the stars.
• Our daily routines at school and at home.
• How daily patterns are linked to the sun and the moon
• The danger of looking directly at the sun.
• The sky during the day and at night and record the differences pictorially.
• To label and identify the sun, moon and stars.
• How day and night are linked to the sun and the rotation of the Earth

Core Literacy

• We will continue to revise the initial sounds of the alphabet and start to learn some more digraphs (we call them special friends in our phonics lesson – 2 letters making 1 sound e.g. sh)
• We will be continuing to sound and blend letter sounds to read and spell words.
• In our reading books in class we will be focussing on reading from left to right, top to bottom, pointing to each word as we read and learning new vocabulary.
• We will be writing personal stories and experience different types of writing linked to our topic.
• We are working on listening to and carrying out instructions carefully and promptly.

Reading books will be sent home in a few weeks once we have taught the last of the Set 1 sounds. We are reading books in class as part of our Phonics lessons. Once issued, please can reading books be brought into school every day to complete the associated reading and writing tasks.

Core Numeracy:

• We will continue to work on number recognition and formation.
• We will be revising the days of the week, months of the year and the seasons.
• We will be using counting materials and number lines to learn about adding.
• We will learn to tell the time using o’clock and half past the hour.
• We will be learning about symmetry and identifying 2D and 3D shapes.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING ACROSS THE SCHOOL:

As a Health Promoting school we actively encourage and teach our children to make healthy choices, to enable them to become healthy, active and emotionally resilient young people of the future.

Throughout this term we will be referencing and embedding the Rights and Responsibilities that we established last session. These are:

• We have the Right to be Safe and Happy
• We have the Right to Learn
• We have the Right to be Protected and Accepted
• We have the Right to be Heard and Express our Opinions
• We have the Right to Play

P.E DAYS:

We are also very fortunate to be involved in a team teaching opportunity every week with Mrs Morrison. This is additional to our P.E slots on a Monday and Wednesday, and will be for 30 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. It would be very helpful if children do not wear ties on these days to speed up the changing process.

Breakfast Club

As I am sure you will agree, breakfast is such an important meal to start off the day. We offer a Breakfast Club every morning from 8.30am until 8.55am at the cost of 82p per day. Children can enjoy a selection of cereals, toast and drinks then enjoy a relaxed social time taking part in games and activities before classes start. There will be no charge for those children who are entitled to free meals. Please encourage your child to come along and join our already popular Breakfast club. Children will be collected from the front entrance of the school.

Many thanks for your continued support and co-operation,

Miss Stephens