Class Newsletter: Term 1

Dear Parent/Carer

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

General Information:

I hope you all had a lovely summer holidays. Children in P4N have made a great start to the year, and are working hard.

Brand new Red Communication poly pockets have been distributed to every child. We ask you look out for these in your child’s school bag as it will have information about homework be used for other school communication. On Fridays this will include their Golden Time Diary, please ensure you read and sign this every week and return it to the Red Communication poly pocket every Monday for us to see.

You will be able to follow what we have been doing in class each week by looking at our class blog.

Homework will be issued on a Monday and should be completed by Friday. There will a selection of Numeracy and Literacy (spelling and reading) activities and occasionally topic related tasks.

Please ensure your child has an appropriate snack kept separately from their lunch.   Your child should also have a clearly labelled water bottle everyday which is filled prior to arriving at school.  Please ensure your child has a labelled weather appropriate jacket as there will be outdoor learning opportunities.

Class Dojo

To promote positive behaviour Primary 4 are using Class Dojo. Please note we cannot access the messaging aspect of Class Dojo. Should you need to contact us please do so by telephone or in writing.

PE days

P4N have PE on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Please ensure that your child has a full gym kit, to include a t-shirt, shorts and gym shoes, which will be left in school. Where appropriate, please remove or tape over earrings.

Learning focus this term:

Through our Living Things and their Habitats topic we will be learning about/to:

• Investigate and research different habitats
• Observe how different animals and plants are suited to their environments
• How we can help our environment
• Food chains and understand the importance of how animals and plants depend on each other for food.
• Compare generations of families of human, plants and animals to understand how characteristics are inherited.

If you have any experience in this area, please let us know. We would love to have some ‘experts’ come in to share in our learning journey.

Core Literacy:

Our targets this term for reading will be:

• Using a dictionary to check spelling and find the meaning
• Continuing to develop our comprehension skills
• Writing book reviews

For writing, we will be working on:

• Varying sentence openers
• Using punctuation marks correctly
• Improving presentation of handwriting including joining up

For listening and talking, we will be focusing on:

• Listening and focus on hearing specific information that has been identified prior to the task.
• Asking and respond to different types of questions with confidence, to show understanding of the main ideas of a spoken text.

Core Numeracy:

Our main areas of focus for maths this term will include:

• Place Value
• Adding and subtracting up to 1000
• Sequencing and ordering numbers
• Mental addition and subtraction up to 100

We will also be learning about Buddhism and Internet Safety.

Health and Wellbeing:

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

We are delighted to be able to continue to deliver 2 hours of PE a week as well as opportunities for children to be active in our fabulous new grounds.

We would appreciate your support in promoting a healthy and balanced diet, both in your child’s morning snack and in their packed lunch. We would discourage any type of fizzy juice in school or energy drinks.  Children are encouraged to bring in a water bottle, which they can use during class time.  There are water fountains situated throughout the school for daily use.

Please encourage your child to participate in the Active Sports Clubs that are on offer at lunchtimes and after school, as well as any school based clubs that take place throughout the year. Keep looking in school bags for further information.

A reminder that all children who cycle or scooter to school must wear a safety helmet and ‘walk’ their bikes whilst in the playground. There are bike racks available.

Class Birthdays

We always celebrate if a member of the class has a birthday however we would request that birthday cakes are not brought into school to share with the class. In school, we have children with allergies who may be at risk from some ingredients. The cutting up and distributing of birthday cake also cuts into valuable learning time.

Playground toys:

We have a playground equipment for children to play with during lunchtime. Please do not bring in your own toys – except for Golden Time on a Friday – so that we can be sure that all toys in the playground belong to the school.  Many thanks for your support.

Golden Time toys:

Children can bring a ‘toy’ to school on a Friday to play with during Golden Time. Please remember that the school cannot take responsibility for the safety of these toys and therefore we request that your child does not bring in expensive/electronic items without your consent. We appreciate your support with this matter.

Green Wing Book and a Blether:

Please help us to promote reading by joining us for Book and a Blether. Come along to the Green Wing and spend some time reading with your child.  These will take place on the following date:

Friday 20^th September

Wednesday 25^th September

Thursday 3^rd October

Friday 11^th October

Wednesday 23^rd October

Thursday 31^st October

Friday 8^th November

Wednesday 13^th November

Thursday 21^st November

Friday 6^th December

Wednesday 18^th December

If you require further information, please ask a member of staff.

I look forward to working in partnership with you this session.

Kind regards

Miss Nicholl