Class information sheet – Sunflower class

Teachers and Teaching Assistants
Mrs Bowditch works Monday to Wednesday and Miss Crimp works Wednesday afternoon to Friday. We teach maths and phonics in year groups so your child may be taught by another member of the KS1 teaching team. Mrs Thomas, Mrs Palmer are the Teaching Assistants who will work throughout the week. 
Reading
The children will be given two reading books and one library book – for ‘reading for pleasure’.  Please share these books with your child as often as you can and record this in the reading record book.   We have a guided reading lesson four times a week when the children will be doing class and group reading and reading activities.  This is the time when the teachers will be hearing your child read and assessing their progress.  Any time you spend sharing books has a big impact on your child’s progress.  We also run two reading incentive schemes – one where the children get a raffle ticket if they read 5 times a week and this is recorded by you in their reading record books.  We also encourage the children to read the books on our 100 books to read list which also earns small prizes.  Please hand this in regularly so we can keep up to date with how many the children have read.
Spelling
The children will have a spelling book in their book bags with words to learn each week.  There is guidance in the front of the book.  We will be collecting these in on a Thursday and they will be given out with new words to learn for the next week on a Friday. The Year 2 children will also be expected to practise the Y2 Common Exception Words over the course of the year. Please use DoodleSpell to support their learning too.
Handwriting
During Year 1 the children will begin to learn how to join letters in a cursive style.  We will be writing words in the spelling books using this style but the children do not need to write using joins straight away.   We want them to become familiar with how the style looks and begin to use it when they have learnt the correct formation and when they feel ready to do so.  They can still print their words when writing their spellings.  The Year 2 children will be continuing to learn how to join their letters and thinking about the size of letters and placement on the line.
Phonics
In preparation for the statutory Phonics Screening which takes place in June, the Year 1 children will be expected to confidently recognise the 40+ graphemes (written sounds). They will be continuing to learn how to use these graphemes to blend (for reading) and segment (for spelling). Any Year 2 children who did not pass the phonics screening last year will also retake the test.
Maths
Please continue to encourage your child to practise counting and writing their numbers 0-100.  Children are assessed termly in maths using a mixture of formal and informal ‘quizzes’.  Please remember to access Doodle maths which gives the children an opportunity to practise their maths at home .
Early morning activities
The children complete early morning activities every day. We try and encourage your child to be as independent as possible in school; it would be helpful if you could also be mindful of this, especially at drop off 
P.E
We will be having PE on Monday and Tuesday.  Please make sure all items of clothing are clearly labelled with your child’s name and include items that are suitable for outdoor PE during colder weather. The children will wear PE clothes to school. Tuesday PE lessons will be delivered by our PE Coach Mr Spencer.
Wellies
Please send in a named pair of wellies.  We will be using these for outdoor learning and playtimes if needed. 
Water Bottles
Please ensure your child has a named water bottle in school.  Our school policy is that these are filled with water.  Please make sure these are returned each day.
Thank you.