Dear Parents,

Our first full week back and we have been as busy as ever! Forest School lessons have begun for Sharks and Turtles and yoga sessions have resumed for all children on a rota basis. There are spaces in Sue Easteal's yoga club on Thursday morning, should your children be inspired to join! Our full clubs timetable started as well, including the introduction of the fencing club on Wednesday mornings.

Thank you for working with us with regards to testing and isolation, we have seen a rise in cases among children as well as staffing challenges, so it is much appreciated. Despite several reminders, a number of parents are still not wearing masks when coming into the school reception area. Unless you are exempt, it is essential that you wear a mask to protect others as you enter the building. This includes coming into reception to use the toilet, check the lost property box or speak to the school office.

Thank you to WISPA who have funded lots of new maths equipment for classroom use. The children were very excited to receive it and it means a lot less sharing of resources during maths sessions.

Another reminder about lateness. I counted 10 families coming in after the 8.55 bell on one day alone this week. I do understand that there are days when traffic is a nightmare, but learning begins as soon as the children walk into class and staff need to be in class by 8.55 so they cannot man the doors beyond that time. Persistent lateness after 9.15 can be treated as unauthorised.

Finally, if anyone has a greenhouse they are able to donate to our Forest School, we would be very grateful. We are intending to do a lot of "growing our own" this year for the school allotment, year group gardens and our playground and forest school areas.

Best wishes and stay safe.
Helen Castell

Sharks: Edie for persevering with her maths this week even though she found it very tricky, as well as for inclusivity. Charlie M for his fabulous independence. Daria for politeness.

Dolphins: Dill for persevering with his task and for sharing. Florence for being very polite and helpful. Henry M for perseverance and Edie-May S for inclusivity.

Turtles: Evie L for independence with her Little Red Riding Hood work
Frankie T for inclusivity and letting people join in with games at playtime. Rachel for independence and Henry G for politeness.

Parrots: Harrison & Evie G for politeness. Molly & Jude for including children in their games.

The children are growing up so quickly and have an obvious love of learning and thirst for new knowledge. We are so impressed with their increased maturity and fantastic attitude to work. This half term’s work will be based around the magnificent text “Moon Dragons” by Dyan Sheldon and Gary Blythe. We have introduced the text and have started to read the story. The children are already hooked and can’t wait to delve deeper into the adventure. Watch out for further dragon related fun in the coming weeks!

Maths mastery skills are developing this half term with a focus on multiplication and division. So far we have explored making equal groups, the multiplication sign and representing number sentences using arrays (rows and columns of equal groups). Ask your children to demonstrate.

Click here for this week's home learning.

Our email addresses are dolphins@writtleinfantschool.com and sharks@writtleinfantschool.com.

What a great week! We created a story path for ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ where we added pictures and key words to follow the story. We also discussed whether wolves are bad or good and created our own "Wanted" poster for 'The Wolf’! In Maths, we finished our unit of addition and subtraction within 20 and the children have really excelled. We compared number sentences using greater than and less than and used the > and < signs. In the afternoons, we began to create a digital copy of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ on the iPads using the book creator app. We also sketched some great pictures of a wolf and Little Red Riding Hood.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

Our email addresses are parrots@writtleinfantschool.com and turtles@writtleinfantschool.com.

It's been a fun week and the children really enjoyed making popcorn and finding out how the kernel pops! They all enjoyed eating the popcorn and we discussed our favourite popcorn flavours. The children learnt the poem 'Popcorn' and sang lots of popcorn songs. We listened to Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley and used our bodies to tap, clap, stamp and pat to the pulse of the music. This week we have started phase 3 phonics and for most of the children we are concentrating on writing and reading simple words. In maths we have been re-visiting numbers 1-5 and played some fun games using a tally to keep score! Next week our poem is called 'Little House' and we will be reading the 'Three Little Pigs' story. Have a great weekend.