Mars class - Brabourne Church of England Primary School

Miss Stevens, Mrs Green, Mrs Riggs, Mrs Hopkins and Mrs Graves are Mars’ teaching team. We are also fortunate to work with PE coaches – Coach Hayley and Coach Ben.

Welcome to the spring term (despite the frosty weather!). We hope you all had an exciting and enjoyable Christmas holiday.

Our Topic for both terms three and four is ‘The Seaside’. This explores the key concept of Ecology and Evolution, investigating the key question: ‘How has the seaside changed over time?’ For English, we will be reading the core texts ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson and ‘The Storm Whale’ by Benji Davies to help us explore this question. In Science, we will be learning about Animals including Humans. For R.E, we will be investigating the question: ‘What is the good news that Christian people believe Jesus brings?’ Please refer to the topic planning map on the website for more details.

The main focus for home learning in Mars class is daily reading. Please encourage your child to read each day at home; your support with this plays a huge part in your child’s progress. Please continue to record in the reading record book when you hear your child read, we celebrate with the children when they read regularly.

A homework grid with enrichment activities will be posted onto Seesaw. This is to foster a love of learning. Children should aim to complete a piece of home learning by the end of the term to present to the class. A phonics focus sheet will be sent home to encourage you to revise the sounds and tricky words for the week with your child. The home learning task for this can be sent in or uploaded to Seesaw. The focus for spelling is to continue to learn the common exception words. These are words that children should be using regularly in reading and writing. We will not be formally testing spellings each week, we would rather spelling be learnt organically, encouraging the use of words in context, such as within dictated sentences.

We would appreciate reading records in school every day. They are checked in school each morning. Children will also read to an adult regularly, which will be noted in the record.

PE will continue to be on a Wednesday and Thursday this term.

Please ensure that your children have named water bottles in school every day and also warm winter coats, hats, gloves and scarves for the cold weather. If you need to talk to one of us, we are always happy to discuss any queries or concerns. You can catch us on the gate at pick up, pop a little note in the reading record, email us (directly or through the office) or post on Seesaw.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to another happy, successful term.

Mars Team