Welcome to Kingfisher Class

Class teacher: Miss McCormack

Class email: kingfisher.class@rawreth.essex.sch.uk

Miss McCormack can be reached on this email address. This inbox will be checked at least once each day between Monday to Friday.  Please still contact the office for urgent matters including absence, school lunch orders, change in home time collection arrangements etc. 

Welcome back from half term! I hope you all had a lovely rest!

Please make note of the change to our PE days - we will now have PE on Monday and Tuesday - please can kits be in school on the first day back after each half term, hair tied up and earrings removed for these days.

Changes to Kingfisher class this week:

Tuesday - all day - PPA/ECT - supply Mr Taylor

This section will be updated every half term. 

This week we will be learning:

• Maths - Our focus will be multiplication and division. We will start by looking at odd and even numbers before moving onto how we can recognise and manipulate equal groups by sharing and grouping. We will focus on our 2s, 5s and 10 times tables.
• English - Our story focus for this fortnight will be 'The day the crayons quit!' We will learn actions to the story, draw story maps to help us remember the story before moving on to boxing-up our model text and innovating by changing the story to our own version. We will then write our own version of the story. We then spend a week focusing on different aspects of grammar; this will include using conjunctions.
• Science -  We will be looking at animal life cycles. We will look at the different stages of life cycles and what animals need to survive.
• DT - We will be experimenting with sliders before planning and making three pages of a moving story book, based on a familiar story. The children will draw the page backgrounds, make the moving parts and assemble it.
• History - Our topic for this half term will be toys! We will look at how toys have changed from the present day to early 20th century to Victorian toys.
• Computing - We will be looking at programming quizzes using Scratch jr. They will recap their knowledge of scratch jr which they have used previously. They will then explore current quizzes on the Scratch website before adapting these and creating their own.
• PSHE - Our next block of learning relates to citizenship. We will look at the importance of rules, how to look after our community and explore the different groups we can belong to.
• RE - We will be learning the Easter story and exploring how it is celebrated around the world.
• Music - Our focus will be learning songs for the infant music festival. In between lessons we have been using finger tracing as our brain breaks which help expose children to different types of music.
• PE - On Mondays we will be looking at invasion games. We will start by exploring the terms attackers and defenders before learning each role and learning games to help us explore both roles. On Tuesdays we will be focusing on the fundamental aspects of PE. This will look at skills such as jumping and landing safely, skipping with a rope and exploring changing directions safely and dodging others.

PE Days - Monday and Tuesday 

Please could you ensure children have the appropriate clothing for the weather and they have a top, trousers/shorts and appropriate footwear in their PE kits.

Please remove any earrings before school.

Hair should be tied up - especially on PE days.

Homework

Login details for homework will be stuck in the back of reading records by Friday.

Daily reading - please log their reading in their reading records. Please be aware that children's books will be changed once per week. If your child has read lots at home that's fantastic, please use the questions in the books to discuss the story so we are also building on their comprehension as well as their reading and fluency. Please also allow them to read their own materials - this could be magazines, books, poems, songs, etc. to help encourage a love for reading rather than just reading for homework. 

Maths - Please encourage your children to explore the numbots website. There will be dojos up for grabs for time spent using numbots.

Phonics - Children will receive a blue folder with the sheets for the year, this can be kept in their book bags and bought into school. Once your child is secure with the sound and words at home please could you highlight/mark this. 

Handwriting - Please spend time focusing on letter formation ensuring the letters start and finish in the correct places. This is to help ensure a smooth transition when they move through the school and begin to join their handwriting. I have uploaded some more resources below to help support handwriting at home. There is a worksheet for both lower and upper case letters as used in the Monster phonics scheme. There is also a document which details the handwriting rhymes used in Monster phonics to help the children remember how to form each letter.

Spelling - Using the spelling shed website, children have assigned tasks set for each week. Year 2s will have their spelling tasks assigned according to their group.

Thank you!

Phonics resources:

Pure sounds: https://youtu.be/oJGDN5p-Kvg 

Letter formation: https://vimeo.com/909204231?fl=pl&fe=vl

The children have a phonics book to read and an additional book from the library to share with someone at home. The library book is to be read for pleasure so they may need help to read this. Both books need to be returned to school each week. 

Year 2 pupils in Kingfisher class have been very excited to start quizzing on their accelerated reader book and have so far been amazing!!