Newsletters

Residentials

We have scheduled our residential visits for KS2 and would like to share these dates with you:

Y3 - The Pioneer Centre - Monday 11^th - Wednesday 13^th March 2024

Y4 - Folly Farm - Monday 10^th June - Wednesday 12^th June 2024

Y5&6 - Oakerwood Leisure - Monday 18^th - Wednesday 20^th March 2024

We are planning on sending out more information about these visits in the next couple of weeks to allow parents the option of spreading payment over the next few months. Please see Mrs Day in the office if this is something you would like to do.

Music Lessons

Music lessons are starting next week. Children will need their instruments on the following days:

Piano - Monday

Guitar - Wednesday

Violin - Thursday

If your child would like to learn an instrument but has not already signed up to do so, please speak to Mrs Day in the school office. Individual music lessons are offered for children from Year 3.

Chickens

Our school chickens would like to thank the Tully family for looking after them throughout the summer holidays. They are now back looking very healthy and relaxed and ready for school.

If you would like to look after our chickens during the next half term or over the Christmas holidays, please let Mrs Day know. They can be looked after at school but they do enjoy visiting new places.

Lost property

At the end of the summer term there were 37 items of unnamed lost property, which meant we were unable to reunite the items with their owners.

All the school uniform items have been washed and are now in our pre-loved uniform shop. Any other items of clothing were donated to Acorns Childrens Hospice charity shop.

PLEASE, PLEASE name all items of uniform so that we are able to get them back to their owners.

We have had a lovely first week in Reception.  We have been very impressed with how well the children have settled into school life and adapted to our class routines.  It has been really lovely watching them make new friends.  We have had a very busy week exploring our new classroom and have enjoyed Forest school, PE and library afternoons.  

I thought it might be useful to run through some of our class routines:

Wednesday - Forest School afternoon.  We have waterproof trousers in school for the children but we would be very grateful if you could remember to send your child with a waterproof coat as the weather can be very changeable.  We have some wellies in school but if you have a spare pair for your child that you are happy to leave in school that would be great.

Thursday - PE.  We have decided this year that the children will come into school in their normal school uniform and change into their PE kits for our PE lesson. This will bring Reception in line with the rest of the school and also allow the children to practise their skills at getting dressed!  You are welcome to leave your child's PE kit in school until the half term holiday.

Fridays - Green phonics book, reading and library books.  Each week your child will be bringing home their green phonics book which will have a worksheet in it detailing what we will be studying in phonics the following week.  In a couple of weeks, they will start bringing home their reading books from our Little Wandle scheme.

Each day we have snack and story prior to morning break.  We have a selection of fruit in school for the children.  If they would like to bring their own snack from home we ask that this is fresh or dried fruit or vegetables.  Any other snacks the children bring, for example yogurts or cereal bars, we encourage them to eat outside at playtime.

We check the children's book bags every day for any messages or letters for the office.  Please catch me at the beginning or end of each day if you wish to discuss anything.  Our first parents evening is due to be held before half term where we will be able to chat in more detail about your child's progress.

Next week we will be starting our autumn term topic "Into the Woods".  We would like to launch this topic with a teddy bears picnic at Forest School on Tuesday. If your child has a favourite teddy that they would like to bring into school to join in this event they would be very welcome!

From next week, on a Friday Year 2s will have homework. For maths, they will have a mental arithmetic book. With this they need to complete the next available page in pencil and return this by the following Wednesday. Also for maths, the Year 2s will have 15 minutes of TTRS to complete before the following Wednesday, this will also be set on a Friday. 

For English, they will be set spellings on a Friday to learn in preparation for a spelling test the following Friday. These will be on a paper list in a spelling book and to help them learn these they will have10 games to play on Spelling Shed. Over the next week we will be practising logging on to both TTRS and Spelling Shed so that the children know how they work.

Next week, Year 1 will be bringing home their weekly phonics homework. Please can you practise reading together the graphemes/phonemes/words and encourage your child to use their phoneme knowledge to have a go at writing the spelling words in their homework books. Return this homework book every Friday, so new learning can be added and sent back home. 

On Thursday they will be bringing home a 'shared' reading book from the school library. This book is to be enjoyed and read together. Also, they will be bringing home their 'celebration' Little Wandle book which your child will confidently be able to read to you. Please enjoy and celebrate their reading success. 

Please return the Little Wandle book on a Monday and keep the shared book until a Thursday. Then on a Thursday your child will return from school with two new books (shared and celebration book).

It has been a fantastic first week back after the holidays and I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all the children and staff. I wanted to take this opportunity to let you all know about the key days in our timetable and homework for this year. 

For this half term, our PE days will be on a Monday and a Thursday. The Monday sessions will be outdoors so please can children come in with weather appropriate additional layers as the weather gets colder and wetter.

In Kingfishers we will be sending the mental arithmetic books home with the children every Friday to be completed and returned to school the following Wednesday.

Fridays will also be our spelling days. From next week the children will be tested on the previous week's spellings and new ones will be set on SpellingsShed. We will also be setting TTRockstars on Friday and this will be 15 games to be completed by the following Wednesday as well.

Last, but by no means least, please can you read with your children as often as possible throughout the week. 

Thank you all for your welcome this week and have a great weekend.

It was lovely to welcome Y4&5 back to school this week. They have all come back refreshed after the holidays and ready to learn. We spent some time going through class routines, the timetable and our expectations for the year. It always surprises me how quickly the children settle back into school. 

Our English this half-term will be based on the Philip Ridley book, 'Krindlekrax'. This is a book about a boy called Ruskin Splinter who is desperate to be a hero, despite the fact that the idea of this makes everyone laugh. Will he get the chance to prove them wrong?

In maths, we have been recapping the children's knowledge and understanding of place value.

Homework - the children will bring their mental arithmetic books home on Fridays and this needs to be back in school the following Wednesday. They will be set 15 mins of TTRS on Fridays, which also needs to be completed by the following Wednesday. They will be given spellings on Fridays to be tested the following Friday. The children can log onto Spelling Shed to play games to help them learn these spellings.

PE - Y4 will have PE on Mondays and Thursdays, Y5 will have PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It has been an absolute pleasure to welcome our new Year 6s into the classroom this week. From a personal perspective, my Abberley journey began when this lovely group of children joined us in reception, so it feels rather full circle to see them entering their last year of primary school. Time flies!

We've had a lovely start to the week. We began by going over our new rules and routines for the year and shared some memories of summer as well as what we were looking forward to most about Year 6. A lot of our English work this half term will be based on Alfred Noyes' narrative poem 'The Highwayman'. This week we read and listened to the poem and worked in small groups to sequence and summarise the plot. 

In PE, we enjoyed our first lesson of Handball. We learnt some of the basic rules of this invasion game before progressing to some competitive 5v5 mini games.

In the afternoons, Years 3 & 4 join together for their learning. Starting next week, you will see in this section of the newsletter activities, information and any news from their sessions spent together.

Our science topic this half term is Light. We recapped our knowledge of light this week and the children carried out several mini investigations to help secure this knowledge.

In music, our topic is WWII. We listened to national anthems from different countries involved in the war and discussed any similarities and differences in terms of tempo and dynamics. We also had our first listen to some of the songs the children will be singing in their Young Voices concert. Letters were given out today about this concert along with order forms for tickets and t-shirts.