Welcome Owls 2024-25!

Key information

Class teacher

Monday - Thursday - Miss Kirby

Thursday-Friday - Mrs Lines

Activities

PE - Monday and Wednesday

Ukulele - Friday morning

PE 

Monday and Wednesday afternoon with Activ Sport. 

As before, please come into school in your PE kit (trainers, black short/leggings/joggers, school blue PE TShirt, school jumpers/cardigans are fine as top layer, hats/sunglasses/coats depending on the weather). 

Ukulele  

Year 5 and 6 will have ukulele lessons with Joe on Friday mornings. Please make sure that your child practices their ukulele at home and brings it back to school on Friday mornings for lessons.  

Reading: 

In Owls, the main focus is on reading for pleasure and developing a love for books. Your child will be taking part in a reading challenge this half term called Bookopoly (a Monopoly style reading challenge). They will be given the challenge to broaden their reading choices and attempt to move through the whole board, as they complete each book. They will receive a prize for completing the challenge. We encourage the children to think about setting themselves challenges with their reading such as a 5, 10, 20 or 50 page challenge a day or setting a goal of reading a chapter a night. Some children may wish to read a book but might find the book challenging, it is absolutely fine for you to read the book to them (or you could take it in turns to read a page each). They will be learning so much from listening to you which will then support their writing in class. At the same time, your child will be creating their own reading journal which they review the books they have read creatively. 

Talisman 

If your child takes part in the Talisman scheme as part of their literacy, they will be working on each book in school sessions. Your child will be given the next book once all of the class-based work for that book is completed (this might be over a number of weeks). Repetition is important to build recall of sight vocabulary and we really need your support with this. Each day: Please get your child to read the words in the front of the book and then read the book aloud to you. Your child will also have a reading for pleasure book (see above). 

Timestables:  

Knowing and using timetables confidently and fluently is a fundamental part of the UKS2 curriculum and we find that children who do not know their tables lack confidence and self-esteem in maths lessons. We are having a big push on learning timestables this year and it is absolutely vital that your child is really confident in them. Your child will have access to Timestable Rockstars (TTRS) again this year and we are expecting the children to go on this regularly as part of their homework.  Your child will come home with a username and password soon. 

Homework: 

The first homework will go out on Friday 13^th September - we will explain more later on.

Water 

Please bring a water bottle into school each day, especially during hot weather. If your child forgets, we will offer cups for water in class but they need to let us know as all the water bottles are stored on the sink so we won’t know unless they say.

Breaktime snacks 

Your child is more than welcome to bring in a healthy snack such as fruit for breaktime. 

Dojos 

Dojos is the main way we will be communicating with you. Please check dojos works and let us know if you are having any technical issues and we will try our best to help. We can also be contacted via email at the following: 

kirby.g@hinstock.school                    lines.s@hinstock.school       (please note these are new to both teachers)

Best wishes 

Miss Kirby and Mrs Lines