Owl Class

Through faith, love, kindness and respect our St John's family will flourish and grow

Autumn: Term 1 and 2...Let's get bouncing!

We strive to ensure our curriculum instils a love of learning and curiosity in our children and find that a topic based approach works well.  Over the course of the year, the children will learn lots of curriculum subjects, such as history, art, music etc through a topic.  During the autumn term, our topic is called Bounce!  

We will be finding out if we can hop, skip, run, jump and bounce!  We’ll write about memorable experience, create imaginative poetry, follow instructions, write information books and design leaflets. We’ll take part in a variety of sporting activities and see if practice makes perfect. Film clips, photographs and information books will help us to investigate how animals move, and we’ll find out how exercise can affect our bodies. Our maths skills will help us to discover how far we can throw and how quickly we can run. We’ll investigate different spheres and create a beautiful, spherical art installation. Our sporting heroes will provide us with plenty of inspiration as we work together in teams and rely on each other to score points and win games.

The children will bring home a 'Knowledge Organiser'.  This contains relevant information about the current topic. It also has three key questions which the children will aim to answer by the end of the topic. Children may also wish to extend their learning beyond the knowledge organiser if they have a specific interest in the topic. Please use the knowledge organiser as a starting point for discussion and any extra study your child may wish to do at home. 

Discrete Subjects

Although many subjects are taught as part of our topic work, core subjects such as English and Mathematics are taught discretely.  The children will take part in daily Read, Write Inc sessions where the emphasis will be on phonics, reading and writing.  For these sessions, the children are taught in groups to ensure they are working at the level they are currently at.  For Maths lessons, the children are grouped by age, with Ms Jenner teaching the Year 1 curriculum and Mrs Brown teaching the Year 2 curriculum.  Religious Education is also taught as a discrete subject weekly.

P.E.

Our P.E. day is on Monday.  Please ensure your child brings their kit into school. PE bags can be stored in school on pegs through the week. P.E. will sometimes take place in the hall and sometimes outside so please ensure your children has suitable clothing, such as jogging bottoms in case the weather is cold. Please ensure that your child is not wearing any jewellery on Mondays.

Behaviour & Rewards

Children are encouraged to 'do the right thing' and are rewarded for positive behaviour. All children at St John's School are expected to follow our Golden Rules at all time. Our Golden Rules are: 

• We show love and play nicely with everybody in our school family
• We speak with kindness at all times 
• We have faith and work hard so that tricky things get easier for us
• We show respect by listening well

If, after a reminder, a child continues to break a rule, their name will be moved on our class traffic lights. All children begin each day on green and each subsequent colour (yellow, orange and red) has a number of possible consequences, such as loss of play time. If a child has to move their name, they given the opportunity to earn their way back to green by sticking to the golden rules and showing good behaviour.

The children are rewarded in class by earning 'marbles' for following the Golden Rules or for producing excellent work. When the children collect enough marbles, they can choose a gift from our marble reward box.  Every week, there is a praise assembly where children are awarded certificates for great literacy, maths and behaviour.  The children can also receive a whole class reward each term! The children choose a treat and, working as a class, they aim to fill their jar with stars.

Challenge

We believe that children enjoy a challenge and so provide additional challenges in most lessons to try to encourage children to push themselves that little bit extra.  Seeing the pride in their faces when they meet a challenge is a daily reward for us teachers!  

As well as challenges in lessons, there will also be a challenge section on homework and a termly class challenge.  Please encourage your child to take part.

Homework

All children have a homework book which they need to bring to school each Thursday and Friday.  A copy of common exception words can be found stuck on the inside front cover of the book. Please encourage your child to learn to read and write these spellings.

Year 1

Daily: children are expected to read their school book and practise reading and writing the year 1 common exception words.

Weekly: a piece of literacy or mathematics homework will be sent home each Friday.

Termly: ideas for homework are stuck in your child's homework book. Please try to encourage your child to undertake a minimum of three pieces a term.

Year 2

Daily: children are expected to read their school book, practise reading and writing common exception words and practise the 2, 5 and 10 times table.

Weekly:a piece of literacy and mathematics homework will be sent home each Friday. Children in some phonic groups will also be sent home a spelling list on a Friday. 

Termly: ideas for homework are stuck in your child's homework book. Please try to encourage your child to undertake a minimum of three pieces a term.

Every child is unique and we adapt learning to meet individual needs.  If your child is registered with the school as having specific special learning needs, please look at the links below for further information and support. Thank you.