Mars class - Brabourne Church of England Primary School

Miss Stevens, Mrs Burnett, Mrs Riggs and Mrs Hopkins are the Mars class teaching team.

Welcome to a brand new school year and the Autumn term. We hope you all had an amazing and restful summer holiday, enjoying all the glorious sunshine.

Our Topic for terms one and two is ‘King and Queens’. This explores the key concept of Power and Legitimacy, investigating the key question: ‘What qualities make a successful monarch?’ For English, we will be reading the core texts ‘The Queen’s Hat’ and ‘The Queen’s Handbag’ by Steve Antony and ‘The Princess and the White Bear King’ by Tanya Robyn Batt. For Maths, we will be exploring numbers and their place value, ensuring we can count, read, write and represent numbers. In Science, we will be learning about Seasonal Changes. For R.E, we will be investigating the question: ‘Who made the world?’ 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 weekly phonics sheet will be sent home to allow children to share with you the sound of the week that we are focussing on. This will be sent home to encourage you to revise the sounds and tricky words for the week with your child. This task 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.

A homework grid with cross-curricular 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.

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 be on Thursday and Fridays this term. This will consist of Outdoor Learning with Tom on Thursday and PE on Friday with Mrs Burnett.

Please ensure that your children have named water bottles in school every day and also warm winter coats, hats, gloves and scarves for when the weather turns chillier.

If you need to talk to one of us, we are always happy to discuss any queries or concerns. You can catch us at the door at drop off or pick up, pop a little note in the reading record, post on Seesaw or email us (directly or through the office)

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

Mars Team