St Gregory’s Primary School
Marnhull
Monday 14th September 2015
Dear Parents/Carers of children in Pilwell,
Welcome back to the start of a new school year; I hope you have had an enjoyable summer. It
has been lovely to meet those parents and carers who have been able to be on the playground
before or after school. Please do not hesitate in getting in touch with me through the school
office if you have any concerns or queries, ‘need to knows’, information to share or you would
just like to chat about your child.
Our first few days in Pilwell were spent finding about us as learners, the types of learner we are
and how we like to learn best. We have worked together on a set of Ground Rules for our
classroom and also a staged response to classroom behaviour. The children identified the
features of a safe and caring place and together, from that, we have drawn up 5 stages of
rewards for positive behaviour choices and 5 stages of consequences for negative behaviour.
The stages encourage the children to understand that “actions have consequences” and at each
stage there is always a choice which can be made; positive choices lead to positive
consequences (including lunch with the teacher, Lucky Dip, postcards home and sharing
learning with Mrs Field), negative choices lead to negative consequence (including loss of
minutes at playtime and having to do our learning in another class). The children have their
own reward cards and are busy collecting smiley face stickers for making positive behaviour
choices such as, demonstrating the school’s values, achieving well in learning and
demonstrating effort.
The children have also been given targets to work towards in reading, writing and maths for
this half term and they will be bringing home their target folders to discuss with you the
targets they are currently working on and how well they feel they are achieving them. Please
would you encourage your child to get into the habit of bringing the folder into school every
day as we refer to the targets at key points in lessons.
This half term our theme learning is focused around the period in British history known as the
Vikings, as an example of Invaders and Settlers. Using an integrated model, most of our
learning across the curriculum will use the Vikings as a hook; the plan is attached. Any home
learning about aspects of life in the past, especially the Viking period, would be useful, as the
main purpose of the theme is to understand historical concepts such as continuity and
change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to
make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and
create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses. (from the
National Curriculum)
Our PE days are Thursday (outdoor) and Friday (indoor). The children know that the expected
kit for outdoor PE is black shorts, white t-shirt, trainers and either a tracksuit or track bottoms
and a jumper for colder weather; for indoor PE black shorts and a white t-shirt. Long hair
should be tied back; please check your child has a band or tie to do this for PE and for other
lessons such as Art, Design Technology and Science.
Home learning is an important part of practising the basic skills needed for literacy and
numeracy as well as developing interest in other aspects of the curriculum. It would greatly
help your child if you could read with them every day for about 10 minutes or so. This does not
have to be their reading book – any text based reading is useful including the back of the cereal
packet! Mathletics is an on-line program which encourages basic numeracy skills and we will
be setting it up for the children to be able to access it from home; again, 10 minutes or so is a
great short, sharp daily burst which reinforces skills and knowledge. On Friday 16th October, I
would like all of the children to bring in something which they have made, drawn or written to
demonstrate their learning about the Vikings over the half term; for those creative ones, they
may want to make a model, for others a mind-map or fact file, or maybe a story or project book
– the choice is theirs.
Friday 25th September is European Day of Languages. If you are a bi-lingual parent or carer, or
have experience of living or travelling abroad, and you would like to share your knowledge and
language skills with the children, please contact me at school.
Many thanks. Here’s to a good half term of learning!
Mrs Alison Hawkes