Class News

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

What a fantastic day out! The Yorkshire Sculpture Park trip was brilliant. All staff commented that the children’s manners, levels of respect and interest in the workshops was fantastic. This trip will help to informour art topic next half term and support our writing.

Help at Home: Talk to your child about their favourite piece of art at the park. What is it made from? What did it make you think? Who was the artist? Who might want to conduct some research into the artist’s inspiration for the piece.

“I can do it”

One of the Prime Areas of learning in Early Years is Personnel, Social and Emotional Development, so learning to take care of ourselves is very much part of our curriculum. This half term we have been working very hard at this. Encouraging the children to put on their coats and fasten them up independently. They are all doing so well and are showing fantastic resilience.  Trying again when they cant always manage it first time.

Changing from wellies to shoes is something that we do many times throughout the day. Pushing your foot into your shoes can be tricky and can take lots of practice.

We have had quite a few coughs and colds this week so our ” nose blowing area” has had lots of use. Getting a tissue and looking in the mirror to check that your nose is clean helps to develop independence.

Help at home  : You can help at home to develop these essential skills. Perhaps on a weekend, when popping out, you could support your child to put on their own coat and shoes.  We can’t wait to hear how you get on and more calls of ” I can do it”  in nursery.

Next week: we will be continuing to enjoy Julia Donaldson’s Room on the Broom. We have been joining in with the story adding our own actions to various parts.

” The witch tapped her broomstick and whoosh they were gone”

As it is the last week of our very first half term we will be rehearsing the Nursery rhymes that we have covered so far. We are sure that the children would love to recite these at home to you all.

Baa baa Black Sheep

Humpty Dumpty

Incy Wincy Spider.

Reminders 

I’m looking forward to meeting with you all next week  for our first parent teacher consultations. If you haven’t managed to book an appointment contact the school office.

Nursery closes for half term on Thursday 23 October.

We will return to Nursery on Monday 03 November

Living and learning : democracy (voting for our class JLT representative)

This week’s Living and Learning lessons have all been about democracy. Children presented a speech if they decided they wanted to represent their class on the Junior Leadership Team (JLT). Then, we voted in the hall by putting our votes in a ballot box. We announced the winners in the Golden Assembly on Friday.

Help at home by talking about the British Values.

Watch us while we work

Thank you to all the adults who came to support us this week. Hopefully you got a little insight into what goes on in school.

Help at home by reading to you child every day.

JLT

Democracy is a key part of British Values and during this week, our classes have cast their votes for who they would like to represent their class on the JLT. We were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of children that wrote speeches. These were well written, full of ideas and showed off their best qualities such as leadership, good listening skills and initiative.
The votes were counted and the new members have been announced!
Here are our new members:

5,6A – Stanley
5,6B – Joseph
5,6C – Grayson
3,4A – Marshall
3,4B – Penny
3,4C – Jessica
2C – Oliver
1,2B – Oscar
1A – Harlow

Well done to each of you. I’m looking forward to working with you this year and can’t wait to get started.

Leaf Man

This week, we’ve explored all things autumn!

Understanding the world; seasonal changes

We took an autumn walk  to spot signs of autumn and changes in the natural environment. We were inspired by our story this week. Thank you to everyone who brought in conkers, leaves and other natural objects to explore in class.

Leaf Man

We’ve been reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.

“A Leaf Man’s got to go, where the wind blows”

The book takes us on Leaf Man’s journey, as he travels on the autumn wind across different autumnal landscapes.

Our ‘word of the week’ is season. We know that we have four seasons in the year; spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Inspired by the book, we made our own ‘Leaf Man’ pictures.

PE;  football skills

This week, we’ve been working on our kicking, balancing and passing skills.

We started by practising ‘small kicks’ around hall, keeping the balls close and under control. We then balanced on one foot whilst trying to move the ball around our standing leg. We finished with some partner work, passing the ball with good control and stopping it with our foot.

Did you know…

We’ve developed our PE curriculum across our Sphere Federation schools, alongside Foot-Tech Academy.  Foot-Tech are an innovative sports coaching company that provide sessions across the city for children to develop their skills and develop a life-long love of sport and physical activity. As teachers, we have received their training and guidance on how to teach effective PE lessons. Our PE sessions have a purposeful, game-based approach and include a range of activities involving multiskills.

On Wednesday afternoons, Reception are taught their PE lesson by Foot-Tech coaches.

Finally in our PE news, a big thank you to Foot-Tech for donating a new set of footballs to Reception. They are rainbow-tastic and so much fun!

Poetry Picnic

Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Five Little Pumpkins.

Phonics 

This week has been a revision and phonics assessment week.

There will be no new ‘Learn at home’ sheets until the first week of next half term. Please continue to revisit previous sheets with your child.

Help at home; blending

Oral segmenting/blending games are great, both if your child is still learning to blend and for those children who are confident ‘blenders’, to revisit their skills. Here’s just one idea to try at home: Dress the Baby (idea taken from earlyimpactlearning.com)

Any toy can be used for this game. Put a baby doll or another toy  down  with some clothes round it- for example a hat, boots, a nappy, a coat and gloves.

Say one of the pieces of clothing in sound-talk. For example a boot would be a ‘b-oo-t.’ If your child can blend it, then they can put a piece that piece of clothing on the baby/toy. To make it easier, you can say all the pieces of clothing like robots before you start.

Let us know if you try this game at home!

More pictures of our learning this week…

Swimming

We do not yet have a start date for our swimming lessons, due to swimming coach availability. We’ll let you know when the start date is confirmed. We also put swimming date posters in our windows or on the door, so you will have notice before the children start.

Dates for your diary and reminders

Parent teacher consultations: Week commencing 20.10.25- individual appointment times.

Nasal flu vaccinations: Thursday 23.10.25

School closed- training day: Friday 24.10.25

Democracy -3,4C

This week, our Living and Learning statement is ‘I take part in democratic decisions’.

In class, the children had time to discuss and consider what makes a good leader, why people should vote for them and what changes they would make. The children then had time to create their speech if they wished to be considered as the Junior Leadership Team representative for 3,4C.

Yesterday, the children enjoyed voting in the hall using the ballot box.

Well done to all the candidates that took part. We are really proud of you.

Living and learning: democracy

It’s been election week for year 5/6. We discussed what living in a democracy means and what the alternative might look like. We spoke about what makes a good leader. Children had the opportunity to write their own speech and share their ideas with the class. The speeches were very impressive with children showing off a range of orcay skills: pace, voice projection, emotive and persuasive language, and good body language.

Help at home: ask your child about writing their speech. What ideas did they have for improving the school?

Geography fieldwork in 2C

2C enjoyed carrying out their fieldwork this week. They counted trees and identified them using a leaf identification chart.

Help at home by counting the number of trees in your locality using a tally chart.

Fieldwork in 1,2B

We brought our geography topic to life this week by conducting some fieldwork outside. We wanted to find out how many and what types of trees are on our field. We used a tally chart to count and tree identification pictures to find out what types we have.

Help at home by identifying trees in your locality using ideas here.