Dear Parents/Carers,

I hope you have had a good week. At school, we have had a couple of busy weeks since I last wrote to you.  I can not believe we are already nearing the half term.  Last week, I had the pleasure of watching Chestnut Class perform their assembly to their parents.  This was the first class assembly of the year and this week Oak class performed also. It was thoroughly enjoyable and great to see how much the children have learned already.  Year 3 and 4 took part in a poetry Worksop last week led by Malini Shah, a local poet from Watford, who writes children's wellbeing poetry books. She has written five children's poetry books to date with topics ranging from allergies, autism, food and mood, animal welfare, and is currently working on her sixth poetry book about ADHD.  Children from Year 1 visited the library on Wednesday as part of our ongoing efforts to encourage a love for reading and to familiarise the children with the library's resources. 

Both the teachers and I are looking forward to seeing you at the parents' meeting on the 21st/22nd October either in person or online.   Mrs Perry, our SENCO,  has also made appointments available if you would like to speak to her in addition to the class teacher. I would like to take this opportunity to thank so many of you for completing the parent survey.  This is very important to us and we will be using the feedback we have gathered to action plan our future work with families and carers.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.  

Kind regards,

Mrs Wright

Maple Class has made a super start to the new academic year and we are excited to share all the fantastic things we've been up to so far. Year 1 is an exciting time for learning, as we start to build on the foundational skills the children developed in the Early Years. We have a heavy focus on reading and phonics and begin to introduce the children to new subjects such as Science and Geography. 

Our literacy journey began by looking at the texts 'The Day the Crayons Quit' and 'The Little Red Hen'. Over the last few weeks we have been focusing on the fiction text 'Farmer Duck'. We have explored different word types such as nouns, adjectives and verbs and have focused on including these in our sentence writing. Our next step is to work with non-fiction texts finding different features and writing to inform. 

For our maths sessions, we have been working on developing our place value knowledge. We have looked at familiar vocabulary such as greater than, less than and equals, as well as using number lines and tracks.  The children are fantastic at using concrete resources to help them answer mathematical problems and have begun to move onto to pictorial representations. 

In our afternoon sessions, the children have enjoyed exploring our foundation subjects. Whether that is expanding our fundamental skills in PE or learning about Christian beliefs in RE. A favourite subject among Maple class is Science, where we have been looking at materials and their properties. Children looked at how materials are used in everyday life and completed a scavenger hunt around the classroom to see how many different materials they could see. The class had a great discussion on the most suitable material for building a house using their new found vocabulary to help them explain and evidence their ideas. 

In Year 1 we have been promoting healthy lifestyle choices, with a big focus on our daily Skip2BFit sessions. Children are actively persisting in securing their skipping skills to help develop their co-ordination and physical fitness. We are also proactive in eating healthy by having fruit and vegetables during our snack time to help boost energy for our learning. 

We have been very impressed by the maturity show in Maple Class as they have transitioned from EYFS to Year 1. Our days look very different to their previous school environment but they have embrace their new way of learning amazingly.  As we continue our journey through this school year, we’re excited about exploring new topics, engaging in more fun activities, and growing together as a class. 

This week's book recommendation is suitable for KS1 children.

Have You Filled A Bucket Today?
By Carol McCloud

This book includes a simple metaphor of an invisible bucket that is filled up when we choose to be kind to one another. With Children's Mental Health day being on 9th October, KS1 spoke about ways to look after their mental health and this story is beautifully told and teaches empathy, nurture, kindness and positivity. This picture book also talks about sometimes we dip into other people's buckets by what we say and do which might hurt them.