What a lovely start to the year. It has been lovely getting to know all of your children this week. We began with our mission statement, ‘You are precious in my eyes,’ and we thought about what this meant. We have spent a lot of the week thinking about what we want our new class to be like and how we want to grow this year -knowing and loving ourselves, God and other people. In one week, children have already really matured as they have started to reflect on themselves.

We have been thinking about rights, responsibilities and how we need to follow them so that others can learn effectively.We have been using the learning characters to find out how to be an effective learner. Children have loved hearing how Tommy Turtle learned to be brave, how Sadie Spider learned not to give up and how Cooper Crab learned to concentrate. We have been thinking about how we can do this too, so that we are optimum learners and can get those lovely learning points for our house team!

We have also started our new Science topic which is all about plants. Many children in the class are already avid growers which is lovely! We took apart a broad bean seed and looked closely at lots of different types of seeds, drawing our findings in our books. We are currently running two investigations - ‘What does a seed need in order to germinate?’ and “How much water does a plant need?’ Children have asked lots of fantastic questions already.

We have started to learn about the language of explanation in English and we will be creating our own leaflets explaining all about plants in a few weeks. Unfortunately, although most children have done their Star reading test, the library would not scan books out today, so we hope for them to have a reading book on Monday.

Notices:

Accelerated Reader

In Year 4, we normally allow children to choose from the orange AND BLUE level books in our library. This is nothing to do with the difficulty of the book, but it is about the ‘interest level.’ This means that it will have content which interests 9 year olds and above. There may be some scary bits or more complicated issues in it. If you do not wish your child to choose blue books, please let me know by Wednesday. We find they are fine for this age group and it opens up a lot more choice.

A school trip to Parkview

We are going to learn about Seed dispersal on Wednesday 18th September for the morning. Children who are normally a hot dinner will have a packed lunch made by Jackie, the cook. Others can bring their dinner in a named plastic bag. It is normal pick-up and drop-off times. The cost of the trip is £8.00 now payable on parentpay.

PE

PE times have changed! Wednesday is Yoga, Thursday is swimming and Friday is now outside PE with Mr Nay.

Swimming will start this Thursday. Children need to be at school by 8.30am. They need a plastic bag with a towel, goggles if needed and appropriate swimming costume (see letters sent home) If children have long hair or a fringe which may end up in their eyes, they need a swimming cap. Please could you send them in wearing this on Thursday morning? They do not have time to wash their hair as another class is straight in afterwards.

Induction evening is this Wednesday. Please come along to meet the team and find out all about life and learning in Year 4.

Thank you for being patient with me as get to know your faces - I am great at learning the children’s really quickly! It is such a privilege to teach your children and I am excited about the coming year.

God bless, Mrs Lyons and Mrs Mather