Headteacher: Anna Moss

06.01.23

Hello Red Class Families,

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Friday Fanfare! This week, we jumped straight into our new topic, ‘Building a Business’. Through Dilemma-Based Learning, the children listened to a story about a family of mice with leftover party food. They considered different points of view including putting the food in the fridge or cupboard and putting it in the bin. Later on, the children met Mrs Hedgehog who needed some help to feed her family. We started to think about food banks and how they help people. Some children shared their experiences of donating to food banks during the Christmas period. Throughout the morning, the children worked with their new learning partner to share opinions, give reasons for their answers and to make decisions. By the end of the morning, most children decided the family should give their party food to Mrs Hedgehog.

Through our Dilemma-Based Learning we decided to raise money for a local food bank by setting up a business. We’ve decided to offer afternoon tea during the week beginning 23^rd January. The children will send home an invitation for one lucky relative to visit the School Room for afternoon tea. More information will follow including the exact day and time for your child.

During the next few weeks our learning will help us to prepare for afternoon tea. For example, today we made mats for the tables during handwriting. In Art lessons, we will learn how to dye textiles to make a runner for the tables and in Design Technology we will design and make the finger sandwiches. It’s going to be a busy few weeks!

In Phonics, we recapped some of the tricky digraphs from last term including ‘th’ and ‘sh’ and read words with these digraphs. Next week, we will begin to learn new phonemes using vowel digraphs e.g. ‘ai’ in rain. During group reading sessions, we recapped the book from the last week of term. New eBooks will be available next Friday. If you have a copy of ‘Fix That Bell!’ at home with missing pages, please return it to school with a post-it or email the office to let us know.

At Forest School (we stayed on site for Forest School today), we discovered that birds struggle to find food during the winter months, so we decided to make birdfeeders. We also looked closely at a nest and talked about how it was made. Try spotting birds in your garden or at the park this weekend. How many birds can you name?

Next week, we will begin to form cursive letters, starting with ‘c’, ‘o’ and ‘a’. I’ve outlined some top tips to support handwriting in the class newsletter. One tip is to use a formation phrase. This is a short phrase to say to the children as they write. The phrase is linked to the picture we associate with each letter. Next week, I will send home a formation phrase sheet where you will be able to see the cursive letter, the linked picture and the formation phrase. Every week in the blog, I will let you know which letters to focus on.

Just a reminder to contact Cool Milk if you would like your child to access milk after they turn 5. All children remain on the milk list if they’re still 4.

Best wishes for a lovely weekend,

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class xxx

P.S. We like to show and tell learning and achievements from home and any projects the children have been working on. Just pop the certificate or piece of work into the book bag or send a photo into the office. Please keep toys safe at home. We saw a superb Forky today!