Hello!

It is my great pleasure to be the teacher of Giraffe Class again this year and I am very much looking forward to the year ahead! Unbelievably, this is going to be my 6th year at Barley Close and I think it's about my 18th year of teaching. I've taught in every year group during my time as a teacher, but recently, most of my experience has been in Year 5 and 6. 

   It's really important to me that everyone who is in my class enjoys coming to school and thinks that classtime is fun. Yes we have lots of learning to do - but when you think about how many hours of our lives we spend at school, it's as important to laugh, smile and have a good time!

  We are lucky enough to have Mrs Harris, Mrs Spindler and Mrs Wilkins in class with us as well .  Mrs Harris will also be teaching you on Monday afternoons. 

  I will post regular updates here, so please check back to see what has been happening in class. I will also post spellings here on a weekly basis. If you need to contact me, please email me on karen.beard@barleyclose.org.uk, or you can message me via class dojo (if you need me to re-invite you, then let me know).

Miss Beard 

PE

In Term 1, PE will be on a Wednesday. Remember to wear your PE kit to school! Long hair should be tied back, earrings should be removed and no branded sportswear should be worn. We will also be swimming in Term 1 - every Monday morning, starting on September 13th. Remember your swimming costume, towel and a bag to put your wet kit in! 

Reading

Children will be bringing home a school reading book. The reading books will need to be sent into school every Friday, so that they can be changed. Books will be quarantined for 48 hours, before being cleaned and returned to the shelves for others to borrow them.

 Children will also need to bring in their reading records on the same day, as we will be checking that they have read 5 times at home. This expectation is in line with local primary schools and is also good preparation for Year 7 when they will be expected to read regularly. Parents/carers need to sign the reading record 5 times - either to say the child has read to them, or that they have seen the child reading independently. Although children often protest that 'they are too old to read to an adult', they certainly always enjoy it in school and it's a nice calming activity to do together in a busy world!

In addition to this, children can also continue to use Reading Eggspress at home. I will be monitoring this every week, but reading from 'real books' will now become the focus.  I will send home log in details for Reading Eggspress as soon as they are available.

Spellings

Spellings will be posted here every Friday, to be tested the following Friday. Children will be given their spellings in school, but will be unable to bring their book home. 

Maths Homework

All children will be given a TTRS log in, which they can access from either the app or the TTRS website.  The expectation is that children will complete at least 25 minutes a week on TTRS. 

Children will also be given a MyMaths log and will be expected to complete at least two activities a week. Both of these things will be monitored by me. 

Spellings to be tested on Friday 24th September

bargain

persuade

embarrass

criticise

correspond

appreciate

committee

government

parliament

conscience

Friday 17th September

The second week of Term 1 has been even better than week 1!! Everyone is getting into their stride and the children are even getting used to my bad jokes!

 We kicked off the week with time in the swimming pool and ended with extra play in the sunshine - in between that we did lots of work and had some laughs as well. In English, we have continued our work on 'Holes' and have looked at the main character and written a letter home to his Mum. Our Maths work included revising our knowledge of rounding numbers and negative numbers. We successfully got the laptops out in computing and in Topic, we learnt about continents, oceans and countries around the world. 

Congratulations to:

Pupils of the Week - Alissa and Vinnie

TTRS Rock Legend - Kara

Raffle Ticket Winners - Charlie C, Jacob CH and Lyla.

Please remember that children are expected to read a minimum of 4 times a week and their reading records need to be signed by a parent to say this has happened. They should be completing 25 minutes of TTRS every week and also completing the two activities on MyMaths that have been set for them.

Next week in English, we will be learning about writing non-chronological reports; in Maths we will be looking at 2d and 3d shapes and in Science, our topic will be living things. 

Spellings to be tested Friday 17th September

bruise

occupy

queue

desperate

harass

identity

aggressive

controversy

determined

foreign

Friday 10th September

Week one complete!! Giraffe Class 2021-22 are all complete superstars and it has been so lovely getting to know them this week! We spent Monday making lots of things like drawer and coat peg labels and getting used to being back at school. Since then we have been reminding ourselves about Number and Place Value in Maths and in English, we have started looking at the book 'Holes' by Louis Sachar. We learnt about in Ecology in Science and today we have had a Music lesson led by Mrs Gilpin from Mangotsfield Secondary school - she was very impressed with everyone's behaviour and enthusiasm!

Congratulations to:

Pupils of the Week - Archie and Kate

Raffle Ticket Winners - Archie, Alfie W and Charlie C

Next week, we will be swimming on Monday morning and in English we will be continuing to focus on descriptive language. Our Maths work will continue to be based around Number and Place Value and in Topic we will begin to look at slavery.