Reading books

In Chestnut class children are expected to change their own books either from the colour collections in the computer suite or from the class library or from their own books at home or the local library. Generally four or five sessions (ten to twenty minutes) of reading at home a week is a good amount. Where children are reading beyond the colour collections they are ready to read by themselves but they still need to talk through what they are reading or to share a favourite or funny page with an adult in order to develop their understanding of the written word. The reading diary can be used to record all reading, allowing children to comment on their books in school and elsewhere. 
 

Homework

In addition to reading at home there are weekly spelling and maths worksheets. These contain work on the spelling focus for that week from the literacy strategy. Some children will require a lot of help and others may be happy working by themselves but it is important that all children have a go in order to keep abreast of the spelling programme. Maths homework will be based on the week’s work or anticipate the week ahead. The sheets necessarily incorporate a range of difficulty and so for some children a good try at the first third of the sheet is sufficient; gentle encouragement and reward for effort are better than a drive for perfection! Both sheets of homework are to be returned after a week – spelling every Tuesday, maths every Friday. Occasional work in other subjects like reading comprehension or topic are sent home. As a general rule maths and reading sheets get harder further down the page so please use your judgement when you think your child is really struggling: a note to this effect would be useful to me.

Story cushions

Ever popular for sitting on hard floors listening to stories! Children may keep a small cushion in school for storytime. The best ones are made by the children themselves but anything that is a reasonable size is good. The addition of a loop of ribbon or material for hanging up is really important as the cushions live in the cloakroom and need to be kept off the floor.

Teaching arrangements

Mrs Rogers is in Chestnut on from Monday to Thursday and Mr Tay is in class on Fridays.  Julie Dean will continue to teach PE every Wednesday afternoon. Please ensure that your child always has the correct kit in school including trainers for outdoors and clean pumps for indoors.

Music

Whole class violin is taught by Bev Beynon from Shropshire Music Service every Friday afternoon. Your child will be given a school violin. Please encourage them to take it out of the case and demonstrate the tune for the week and please make sure the violin is in school for every Friday. Thank you.

Themes for this term

Please let us know if we have missed any other important notes or you would like answers to queries related to Chestnut Class.