Beech Newsletter Term 1 – ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!’

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Dear Parents,

I hope you have had a lovely summer holiday! Our topic for term 1 is ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’! We will be reading a variety of texts including ‘Funny Bones’, ‘You Think it’s Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?’ and a range of non-fiction books . In maths we will be looking at place value and positional language and moving on to data handling. Our science learning this term will be focused on the human body and life processes. We look forward to learning lots of new action songs to go with our topic in music and learning about the ‘human timeline’ in history – this will include finding out about children in other time periods. Our PE days are Mondays and the occasional Friday, please ensure your child’s kit is always in school; as the timetable can sometimes change – trainers every day are essential.

Homework

We will stagger the start of homework this term – starting with spellings and reading.

Reading	Please read with your child regularly. Their books and book bags will need to be in every day. You may like to add a positive or helpful comment in their homework diary, but please acknowledge the fact that the book has been read by signing and dating in the comments space. A member of staff will be checking homework diaries on a Thursday and children are expected to have read at least 3 times a week with an adult.
Spellings	Spelling tests are every Friday and your child will be tested on the spellings they were given in the previous week. We send out new spellings on Fridays – the first six are essential and the last four are an optional challenge. We use the ‘No-Nonsense’ Spelling scheme in class and spellings sent home for homework will be derived from the Year 1&2 curriculum word lists. Please do ask if you would like to see the resources we use or would like to know more about how we assess the children’s spelling. Their spelling tests results will be recorded in their books for them to share with you at home.
Times Tables	It is expected that by the end of KS1 all children will know their 2, 5 and 10 times tables fluently (and hopefully some others!).
Maths	Maths homework will be on Mathletics and should consist of 30 minutes per fortnight, the children can compete against each other or complete their own timed skills trials – I will be able to see clearly areas in which they need more focus and how many minutes they spend online. If you do not have access to the internet at home, please let me know and we can arrange a time for the child to complete it at school. If your child has misplaced their login details, let a member of staff know and we can give you a copy.

Helping to enrich our topics

It is always great to have items or visitors that support our topic, so if anyone has any experience or items that may help us with any of the work above that we could hear about or borrow, we would love to see and hear about them. We are also looking for parent readers during the morning!

Reminders

Please can you make sure your child brings in a water bottle each day with fresh water; ensure all jumpers are labelled and bring a coat for any wet weather.

Many thanks for your continued support,

Mrs Woods

Reading at School and at Home

Useful Websites

Questions you could ask your child about their learning this term

Can you name any bones in the human skeleton?
What organs are there in the body? What do they do?
How can we keep our body healthy?
Why is it important to look after your teeth?
How do your eyes work?
How is our skeleton different to the dog/cat/hamster’s skeleton?