YearR

We hope that you have all had a good break and the children enjoyed lots of Easter fun! We certainly enjoyed our Easter themed learning just before the holidays and it was especially lovely to see our Year R children spending time with their Year 6 buddies at the Easter event. We are looking forward to arranging other opportunities to meet with our buddies during the Summer term.

For the whole of the Summer term our topic is ‘What an adventure!’ After this first week when we are focussing on RE and the concept of ‘belonging’ we will begin our adventure with an imaginary hot air balloon ride. Once we are off in our balloons we will visit the UK and the Amazon this half term before continuing on to the African plains, the Great Barrier Reef and then up into outer space during the last half term.

You can find out more about our topic and other learning for this half term in our newsletter here.

We are excited to introduce Forest School to the children this half term, starting with Penguins on Tuesday 22nd April. Please read here for a reminder of the dates of your child’s class Forest School sessions throughout the term.

We are looking forward to travelling the world with your children! As always, information about what we have learned day by day will be shared on your child’s ‘walk and talk’ board.

The Year R team

The children so enjoyed our topic last term ‘People Who Help Us.’ The highlight was a visit from the police service; thank you to PCSO’s Emma and Dom for taking the time to visit us. Throughout the term the children demonstrated so much curiosity about each role and particularly enjoyed exploring their learning through role play. They were introduced to lots of new vocabularly and facts and we hope the children enjoyed sharing their learning with you at home.

Chinese New Year was another highlight last half term. The children were very enthused and had a wonderful time learning about this special Chinese celebration and taking part in our own parade complete with dragon dancing, singing and music making!

This half term our topic is ‘Spring to life!’ Please click here to read this term’s newsletter which briefly outlines the topic and explains a little about what we will be focussing on across the curriculum. As always, you can find more information about what we have been learning each day on Tapestry in our ‘Walk and Talk’ post.

At the end of this term the children will be meeting with their Year 6 buddies for an Easter event. More information about this will follow nearer the time.

A reminder that on Friday 7th March we will be celebrating World Book Day (please note this is a day after the official World Book Day). More information can be found about how we are celebrating as a school in our most recent newsletter.

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child’s progress at Parents Evening on Tuesday 4th or Wednesday 5th March. These appointments are aimed  solely at parents so we ask that you come without your children please. If  this isn’t possible and you need to bring your child, please bring something to keep them occupied while we speak to you separately. Thank you.

Finally, you will have seen in the last newsletter that we are in the process of making changes to some parts of our outdoor area, to enhance the provision the children have for their outdoor learning. Please could we ask you to take a look here to see if you have any items at home which you might be able to donate? If you can help, please either speak to your child’s class teacher or email us at yearr@stmarksce.org.uk.  Thank you.

We look forward to another exciting term with your children!

The Year R Team

We hope that you have all had a wonderful Christmas and that the children enjoyed the festivities! We are looking forward to hearing about their Christmas presents and the fun they had during the holidays.

We will start the term with an RE focus learning about ‘Jesus as a storyteller’. We will then begin our ‘People Who Help Us’ topic next week and this will continue throughout the rest of this Half Term. They will learn about the Fire, Police and Ambulance Services and also about other roles in the community and how they help us; doctors, dentists, nurses, vets, crossing patrol officers to name a few.

Please click here to read the newsletter for this term which briefly outlines our learning.

As always, you can find more information about what we have been learning each day on Tapestry in our ‘Walk and Talk’ post.

The Year R Team

We hope that you have all enjoyed a fun, yet restful Half Term. We are looking forward to a fun week when we return, learning about Bonfire Night and meeting with our Year 6 buddies again for some firework craft!

We enjoyed the opportunity to meet with you before Half Term to share and celebrate your child’s successes since starting school. Please can we remind you to add a comment to the Tapestry post we sent out before your parents evening meeting, titled ‘My first half term at school’. It’s lovely to hear your views on your child’s achievements so far.

The children have all done amazingly well and we hope they are recharged after the holiday ready to begin our next topic ‘Terrific Tales.’ Here is the Newsletter for this Half Term Year R newsletter Autumn 2 2024. As always, please do speak to us if you have a question.

Please can we remind you that the school’s weekly newsletter published every Friday contains information relevant to the whole school, including Year R. For some school-wide events, the information is emailed out directly to you.  Although we do communicate directly with you via Tapestry for Year R specific events (e.g. Autumn Walk), we do not duplicate information published on the school newsletter or emailed out directly to you. Please do ensure you are reading the school’s newsletter thoroughly each week to ensure you don’t miss out on an event, and making a note of events sent out via email from the school office. The next school-wide events coming up are the Scholastic book fair, and ‘Odd Socks Day’ during Anti-Bullying week. Check your emails from the school office, and take a look at the newsletter to find out more.

Thank you for your continued support,

The Year R Team.

We have all thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and your children properly over the last week and beginning to get to know you. We really appreciate you giving us such a warm welcome into your homes, so thank you from us all in Year R.

The children have all been amazing as they’ve come into school; they’ve shown such resilience and risk taking in the face of their new adventure and lots of curiosity as they’ve met new classmates and explored their new classrooms and outside learning areas. Everyone’s gone home smiling!

As we explained on our home visits we will post a half termly newsletter during the first week of each half term. These newsletters will give you an overview of what we will be teaching your child during the half term so you can support them with their learning at home.

This term we will spend the first few weeks focussing on settling the children into school before beginning our Phonics and Maths teaching.

During this period we will be:

• building supportive and trusting relationships with your child.
• supporting your child to form new relationships with their classmates.
• building up our daily routines gradually to ensure they are embedded and understood.
• building your child’s independence in completing daily routines.
• introducing new areas of the school gradually so all the children feel safe and secure.
• playing games and completing activities with the children to find out more about their individual starting points before their learning journey with us begins.

You can click on the link below to read this term’s newsletter.

Year R newsletter Autumn 1 2024

Please can we remind you that we are holding an online meeting this Wednesday 11th September at 6pm on Zoom. During this meeting we’ll give you information about how we teach Phonics, Reading, Writing and Maths in Year R and you’ll hopefully find it useful so you can support your child’s learning at home. The link for this meeting was sent out last week. Please check your junk mail if you haven’t seen it yet.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.

Mrs Baird, Mrs Callaghan and Mrs Rushton