Important Information

Belongings

Things that your child will need to bring to school with them include:

A water bottle – clearly named

A pair of wellies (to be kept on our class welly trolley) – clearly named on both boots

A bag of spare clothes (that can be kept on your child’s peg) – clearly named

    Please note that the bag of spare clothes does not have to be spare uniform. It 

    can be a t-shirt and joggers.

A lunchbox (if your child isn’t having the universal free school meals) – clearly named

Please bear in mind that we are a Healthy and Nut Free school when selecting items for your child’s lunchbox.

A coat, hat, gloves and scarf (when needed) – clearly named

A book bag (ready for reading material to begin to be sent home later in September) – clearly named

We cannot express enough how important it is to clearly label your children's items as they often get lost and without a name, they are unlikely to be successfully returned. Therefore, please label all belongings clearly with a permanent marker to include items of uniform and PE kits. Thank you in advance.

Weather Conditions

Please make sure your child comes to school prepared for the forecasted weather conditions.

If it is due to be warm, please make sure you have applied sun cream before dropping your child to school. Your child should also have a hat and water bottle with them. Children can bring sun cream into class but they must be able to apply it themselves - we cannot apply it for them.

If it is due to rain or be cold, please ensure that your child has a waterproof coat and layers to keep them warm.

ClassDojo

ClassDojo is an app that you can download on to your device that will help build a strong classroom community. There are many functions to the ClassDojo app to include:

Sharing class stories (similar to the newsfeed on Facebook) of activities that the children have been doing in class.

Inform you of upcoming events e.g. Sports Day.

Send and receive messages to/from the class teacher.

If you haven't already been able to sign up to ClassDojo or wish for additional members of your family to sign up, then I will be sending login details home with your child of how to join the ClassDojo app during the first week of term.

Evidence Me

Evidence Me is an app that we use to record the children’s learning on. We share these observations with parents on a termly basis. This is a two-way system, which is set up so that you can also add your own observations from home, or comment on our observations from school. If you haven't already been able to sign up to Evidence Me or wish for additional members of your family to sign up please let me know so that I can either resend the invitation email or link additional email addresses to your child’s account.

PE

We will have one weekly PE lesson. These lessons will change days throughout the year depending if we are having sports coaches delivering them or ourselves. For term 1, PE lessons will take place on Mondays. PE lessons will commence from the week beginning 11th September.

On these days, children will need to come into school dressed in their PE kits. The school's PE kit consists of the following:

a plain white or royal blue polo top/t-shirt or school PE top

black or navy shorts, leggings or tracksuit/jogging bottoms

a pair of trainers

their school jumper/fleece to keep warm or school PE hoodie

Swimming lessons will take place during term 6. I will send out further information regarding this towards the end of term 5.

Forest School

Forest School will begin to take place later in term 1 – we will advise you when these sessions will start. We have protective outer clothing that the children will wear but they will need a pair of wellies. It is advised to provide your child with a thick jumper, hat and gloves on the colder days as we will be going to the Forest School area in all but the most extreme weathers.

Reading at Home 

Once your child has been taught the first 5 sounds from our phonics scheme, your child will begin bringing home reading material to either read to you or share with you e.g. sharing books (books that we do not expect the children to read but a book that you can share as a bedtime story). Once this has started, as a school, we ask that you hear your child read or read to your child, at home, at least 5 times per week. Please record each time you hear your child read, the page they have read up to and any comments regarding their reading, in your child's reading record. This doesn't necessarily have to be when they read reading material from school (sharing books, ditty sheets, levelled books, sound cards, green words, red words), it also includes reading their own books, comics and magazines at home, it all helps!

We will monitor reading records and send home new reading material every Friday. However, we politely request that your child brings in their book bags daily as we will be hearing the children read in school as well.

Please encourage your child to read and reread their reading material to help build/further improve their confidence, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, word recognition, patterns and rhythm.

If you have any questions about your child's reading or need support and/or ideas, then please do come and talk to us - we are here to help your child be the best reader they can be and to develop a love of reading for life.