Rowan Class 2024 - 2025

WELCOME TO ROWAN

Miss K Davies is the Class Teacher.

Mr Parrish teaches PE every Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.

Mrs Metcalf and Mrs Turner are our Teaching Assistants.

Mrs Turner covers the class every Thursday morning.

In Rowan class, we build on the firm foundations that have been laid in Acorns and continue to help all the children grow, not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. The children grow in wisdom through always striving to make wise choices, reflecting our Christian values and through accessing a broad and balanced curriculum. In Rowan we have many opportunities to shine whether it be in our day to day learning, performances, class trips or welcoming visitors to our class.

Our focus in English is accurate letter formation, sequencing sentences to form short narratives with a beginning, middle and end, and reading back our sentences to make sure they make sense. We are also making our sentences interesting by using describing words in addition to extending our sentences by using 'and' as well as 'but'. Our text will be The Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke; using this text we will be writing our own stories.

Reading continues to play a fundamental part in all areas of the curriculum. In class we have access to a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books which we are able to use, not only within our guided reading sessions, but also when appropriate in our curriculum lessons to support our learning. Throughout the year we engage in spotlight authors who have been chosen for their high-quality texts and will have to opportunity to listen to, read and learn more about these fantastic authors. One of our spotlight authors this year is the award-winning author and illustrator Jonny Duddle who is known for his picture books such as Pirates Next Door. Having this literacy-rich environment will encourage a positive culture of reading within our class and continue to promote the children's enjoyment of reading. If you can, please do take advantage of visiting your local library too.

Phonics is taught daily using our accredited Ready Steady Phonics scheme. We will be revisiting and identifying alternative graphemes for know phonemes as well as split-diagraphs.

Tricky words:

Phase 3 Phase 3 Tricky Words Song Say Hello To - YouTube

Phase 4 Tricky Words Song Sight Words Song for said, have, like, come, some, what, when - YouTube

How to pronounce pure sounds Phase 3 https://youtu.be/WuDgZwQoZVA

The Phonics Screening Check takes place in June and Rowan continue to be busy learning the sounds and how to apply them to support them with their reading.

In maths we continue developing our understanding of addition and subtraction but this time we will be working on number facts beyond 20, multiplication and division as well as fractions. We continue with our daily fluency session in order to embed number facts.

During our science lessons we will be exploring seasonal changes were together we will observe changes across the four seasons and also observe and describe weather associated with the seasons and how day length varies. We will be gathering all of our observations and informtation to create our own weather report!

Our religious education focus will be about the importance of the harvest, looking at what we can do and how we can help others. Our PSHE lessons will continue to explore the topics of relationships, diversity and sharing our world through our No Outsiders text. We will also be exploring how to keep our bodies clean, how we change over time - looking at growing from young to old as well as exploring different types of families and knowing who to ask for help.

Through our geography lessons we will be looking at our school grounds, exploring maps of the school and its surroundings this links closely to our history lessons where we are learning about the history of our school and within our living memory. We will be focusing on using our memory to create journey stories based on our living memory of our school grounds.

In computing we continue to focus on e-safety, using technology safely and keeping personal information private.

In our creative subjects we will be exploring simple printmaking, colour, collage and drawing with inspiration taken from our geography theme, the weather. Finally, we will enjoy developing music appreciation coupled with movement through the theme of maypole dancing.

Please note, PE continues to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays and children are to come into school on these days already dressed in their PE kits.

Homework

Homework will be set each Friday and will be due in the following Thursday. Please ensure the children's homework books are returned on a Thursday so they can be marked and the children's new homework added. Homework will consist of a personalised spelling list and and Numbots, which really helps to support their basic skills in addition and subtraction.

Please also ensure that your child reads at home at least 4 times per week. In Rowan, we expect the children to continue to be reading aloud to someone at home and for this to be recorded in their Home-School contact book.

If you would like any tips on how to support your child in reading you will find suggested strategies in the Home-School contact book.

Our door is always open, please come and see us with any concerns, no matter how small you feel they may be.

Thanks, Miss Davies, Mrs Turner and Mrs Metcalf.

Below is an example timetable for Rowan, Autumn 1. Please note this is subject to change.