Getting to know each other!
Settling in
It’s been wonderful to see so many happy faces this week as children came into their new classrooms. Most have now completed their transition sessions and we’re really enjoying getting to know them and seeing new friendships forming.
There are lots of routines to learn and things to remember at this stage, but we’ve been amazed at how quickly children are settling in. We’ve had a few missing lunch boxes, water bottles and cardigans – thank you for your patience at the end of the day as we help children to become more independent at home time. Labelling all of your child’s items with their name really helps with this.
We’ve had lots of fun exploring our new environment and learning this week. Take a look at what we’ve been up to:
Phonics
We started our phonics lessons this week. Children have learnt the sounds s, a, t and p. They practised listening carefully to the initial sound in a word and sorted objects into those beginning with ‘s’ and those that didn’t.
In phonics lessons, we teach children to use the pure sounds. For example, we say ‘ssss’ rather than ‘suh’. If you’d like to hear the sounds pronounced, you can watch a short video clip which shows all the letters we’ll cover this half term.
You’ll find out more about how we teach phonics at our Stay and Learn Phase 2 Phonics session on 06.10.25.
Help at home: Each week, you’ll receive a recap sheet of the phonics learning. Please look at this with your child and complete the short activities together.
PE
Children loved their first PE lesson this week! Lessons are fun and active, with a focus on developing fundamental movement skills.
- Reception PE will take place every Tuesday and Wednesday.
- On PE days, children should come to school wearing their PE kit. Further details can be found by following this link to our uniform policy.
- We won’t be starting swimming lessons just yet – we’ll send out more details closer to the time.
The Great Big Book of Families
Next week, we will be reading this story to help us learn more about each other’s families. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.) We’ll then talk about our own families and about people who are special to us.
Help at home: To help support our discussions, please send in a family photo that can stay on display in the classroom or email us a copy.
Everyday Items
Please make sure your child brings the following to school each day:
- Book bag
- Water bottle
- Waterproof coat (we spend lots of time outdoors, rain or shine)
We also ask that each child has these items, which can stay in school:
- A pair of wellies (kept under their peg)
- A bag of spare uniform/PE kit including underwear and socks (we’ll send it home to be replenished if needed)
All items should be clearly labelled with your child’s name. Please take a few minutes this weekend to check for any missing labels – thank you!
School Gateway App
If you’d like to receive important reminders and updates, please make sure you’ve downloaded the School Gateway App. You’ll find details in the information pack you received when your child started school, or email scholesoffice@spherefederation.org for support.
Best start in life
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has written a letter to parents with a focus on ensuring children have the best start in life. It signposts parents to the best start in life website – there’s information on Best Start Family Hubs and support with your child’s early health and learning.
Reading With Prosody: The Secret to Survival
This week in Reading, Year 5/6 have been exploring a diary entry inspired by the first story in our class novel Survivors. The story tells the true account of a young girl who was travelling by plane over the rainforest when disaster struck and she suddenly found herself alone, injured and fighting to survive in the wild.
We began the week by inferring how the girl might have been feeling at different points in her ordeal, using clues from the text to build a deeper understanding of her emotions.
As the week went on, we turned our focus to performing the diary entry in small groups. Using prosody, we worked hard to make our performances engaging for the rest of the class – changing our voices, adding expression and making sure the story sounded as dramatic as it felt on the page.
Help at Home: Ask you child about how to read and perform with prosody.
Living and learning
I can use the 8Rs to help me with my learning.
This has been our living and learning statement this week. The children enjoyed discussing the 8Rs – reflecting, remembering, resourceful, resilient, reflecting, risk-taking, responsible and being responsive.
For each 8R, the children were able to give examples of when they had demonstrated one of these in school since the start of term.
“I always have the right equipment and I’m ready to learn.”
” I could remember the actions we had created to help remember our topic vocabulary.”
If you’d like to know a little more about our living and learning curriculum, please click here.
Science: what is air resistance?
In science, Year 5/6 have been exploring friction. This week, children took to the playground to explore the effects of air resistance. While our quick experiement might have had some limitations, we all agreed that we could feel the drag.
Help at home: review the forces vocabulary with your child.
Dates for your diary
Here is a copy of the Dates for your diary letter that was sent home this week. It contains all the key dates for meetings, ‘Stay and Learn’ and Learning Journey drop-in sessions.
Welcome to Reception
A reminder that our ‘Welcome to Reception’ meeting is on Wednesday 17 September, 2025 at 6pm. This is held at school.
Following our first welcome session, this is an opportunity to find out some basic ‘need to knows’ about life in Reception.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Welcome to Nursery
Hello everyone!
We’ve been busy this week meeting some of our new children at their home visits. It’s been lovely finding out about you all and what you like to do. We’re looking forward to getting to know you more when we welcome you to Nursery next week.
We are looking forward to welcoming back our returning children. We can’t wait see see how much you have grown and to find out about your summer holidays.
Nursery is now ready for the new school year. Have a look at the photos to see what you might like to play with next week. We’ve tried to make sure that there’s something for everyone to enjoy, including some of your favourite things that you told us about on home visits. We’ve got Paw Patrol, a farm, diggers, The Gruffalo and our mud kitchen bikes ready for you to come and play.
Where will you play?
A few reminders from home visits: what your child will need every day…
- A waterproof coat (named)
- A pair of wellies (named)
- A change of clothes (top, trousers/ leggings, underwear, socks)
- A filled water bottle (named)
Welcome to 1A!
What a fantastic week we’ve had in 1A! The children have settled very well into their new classroom and we are all getting to know each other. I am very impressed at how quickly the children have adapted to their new environment and routines.
We have practised some of our sounds in phonics and practised our handwriting. We’ve written our full names every day this week using a whiteboard pen! We are going to do this every morning when we come into school.
It is also important that we strengthen our fingers, so we’ve done some ‘dough disco’ to practise our fine motor skills.
In Maths, we’ve been counting all the way to 10 (forwards and backwards). We’ve also been practising writing our numbers the right way around in books. Today, we worked together to identify and order numicon from 1-10.
All of the children have been super brave and resilient this week. We’ve talked about our emotions, what makes us happy and how we can recognise emotions in others.
In PE we played a co-ordination game called ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and cone’. We even had fun balancing the cone on our head and walking from one end of the playground to the other without dropping it!
Well done 1A for a brilliant start to the year. I can’t wait to see what the year brings.
Living and learning: school rules
We have been talking about our school rules this week and how it is important to follow them so we make our school a happy and healthy place to learn.
Help at home by asking your child if they can tell you are school rules.
