Dear Parents,

Wow, what a busy week we have had. There have been so many things to celebrate. We started the week continuing our work on Remembrance, preparing a special wreath to lay at the foot of the oak tree on Tuesday, when we had our minute silence with the rest of KS1. It was a very special moment where we all had a chance to reflect. We have spent a lot of the week reflecting on Kindness this week, in celebration of World Kindness Day on Thursday. We read a lovely story about the Kindness Elves, and as if by magic, some Kindness Elves visited Kites classroom through the elf door. We are really excited to see how the elves might spot us being kind in the coming weeks. We finished the week celebrating Children in Need with a spot-tastic day! We enjoyed colouring Pudsey, decorating his eye patch, and even writing our own stories all about Pudsey! Friday certainly was a very busy day.

This week in phonics, the children have finished and revised all of the set 1 sounds from Read Write Inc. Next week the children will be re-grouped based on the results of their recent phonics assessment. This enables us to give each and every one of them more targeted support, to ensure they make progress in their phonics learning. You might find that your child comes home with some different books in the coming weeks to reflect their phonics levels. This week we have been focusing on:

ch sound

qu sound

ng sound

nk sound

In maths, we have been really impressed by the children’s knowledge of sharing. Throughout the week, we have been focusing on sharing several objects into 2 groups, whether this be the number of buttons on a gingerbread man, the number of cakes on a plate, or the number of animals between them and their friend. The children have really understood this topic, and it has been wonderful to see their confidence shine through.

We finished the week with a secret writing task, where the children had the opportunity to write a message in a bottle to a friend. It was lovely to see the children so passionate about writing, really thinking carefully about what they might say to compliment their friend. We are looking forward to continuing this activity next week.

We are busy in school learning the songs for our upcoming Christingle and Nativity. Please let us know if you need any support when sourcing costumes for your child’s nativity part, we would be more than happy to help, as we do have some costumes in school.

Next week we will be thinking about road safety. Here is this week’s show and tell challenge: can you make a vehicle that would be suitable for the road? This could be a drawing, junk modelling or maybe a Lego creation. We look forward to seeing them next week.

This term’s top tips!

Reading – reading with your child is one of the most powerful ways to support them to learn language. Reading anything from storybooks to articles, newspapers to audiobooks, is a great way to support children’s development. Remember, it doesn’t always have to be sitting down and reading a book, listening to audiobooks or reading a menu or a recipe is still fantastic to support children’s love of reading. If you’re stuck for ideas, on our Sonning Common Primary Instagram page, there is a fantastic video about reading activities you could do at home (you might need to scroll back a bit, as the post I am referring to is from the 25th April).

Reminders

Monday 25th November – Christingle

Friday 28th November – Non-uniform day – bring a donation for the Christmas Fair.

Tuesday 16th December – Kites Nativity performance, 2pm.

Have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday.

The Kites Team