TUESDAY's HERE! 

Welcome to Smalley School, welcome to Class R!

A lovely morning was spent with 6 super smart and smiling children this morning. The children were super busy exploring their new setting, meeting their new friends and learning some of their new routines.  They enjoyed watching the heavy rain come splashing down, listening to a story about a Little Bear and singing nursery rhymes too.  Apples, carrots and milk were a great hit at snack time and the children enjoyed 'The Big Breakfast' at lunch time with sponge and custard for dessert!  Well done children, we're super proud of you and we can't wait to see you all again next week!

Welcome to our school, welcome to Class R!

The school welcomed our first group of Class R children 2022 today.  All the children looked super smart in their uniform and brought with them smiles and confidence.  The children spent the morning exploring their new setting, learning new routines and getting to know Mrs Hull and I - other special adults like Mr Fearn, Mrs Lucas, Mrs Gregory and our mid-day supervisor Mrs Evans also came to say hello to the children.  The children enjoyed their tasty dinner of chicken wrap, rice, vegetables with BBQ sauce and loved the cupcake and slices of orange for dessert!  Well done children, what a beautiful morning - we can't wait to see you again soon.

Happy Valentine's Day

What a wonderful way to start our week with two of our youngest children exchanging Valentine's Day gifts.  Thank you children for your kindness. Love from Mrs Mason & Mrs Reckless

Gold Book - Friday 11th February 2022

Florence - for her lovely Chinese rattle drum, Florence took great pride with following the instructions, making her drum, mixing red and yellow to make orange and then improving it when it did not quite make the sound she wanted it to.  Great work Florence.

Alex and Savannah for their carefully drawn tigers.  Both of the children took great care when painting the stripes onto the tiger using straight lines - great job children!

Hugo - for super perseverance when finding some of his challenges tricky, he took a deep breathe and tried again!  Well done Hugo - a great achievement.

Ruby - for the enjoyment that you get from your learning.  You always join in well and love to share what you are learning and what you are enjoying, as well as those things that make you think too. Thank you for always trying to make good choices.

Friday, 28th January 2022 - Gold Book children

Today in our Gold Book assembly, we celebrated:

Evie for her kindness.  She made a 'Get Well Soon' card for her sister, taking lots of care on her design.  She thought carefully about using her phonics to write the message - great job Evie.

Aiden for his brilliant story telling whilst reading the story of 'The Three Little Pigs'.  He turned each page of our big book carefully and confidently use language from the book to retell the story in his own words - what a super star!  Thank you too for washing up after our hot chocolate on Welly Wednesday.

Douglas for listening so carefully and confidently saying "not by the hair on my chinny chin chin!".  - super participating Douglas.

Savannah is working so hard in her phonics sessions - she listens carefully and is segmenting words now.  When an adult says the sounds, Savannah is beginning to blend - super learning.

Arlo for your writing about 'The Three Little Pigs'.  You thought carefully about how many words you wanted to write and then used your phonics to do your writing - thinking carefully what the three little pigs and the wolf said - great job Arlo!

Harvey is a super star tidy upper!  Whenever it is tidy up time, Harvey gets stuck in and works really hard to tidy the area he has chosen to clean.  Thank you so much Harvey - such an important job in our classroom - thank you.

This week, we have explored the sequence of the story 'The Little Pigs', we have been telling the story in the order thinking what came first, next, then, after that and finally.  We have been using the phrase 'Once upon a time...' and 'they all lived happily ever after'.  We have been speaking like the wolf and the three little pigs and using the story language that these characters use in the story.  We have enjoyed huffing and puffing like the wolf and doing some blow painting with watery paint, pipettes and straws.  We have learnt about different materials and discovered how bricks are made, as well as feeling how heavy a real brick is.  On Welly Wednesday, we touched 300 year old bricks at the top school and went on a neighbourhood walk to look at the different kinds of houses in the community, we found flats, semi-detached houses and bungalows.  During explore time, amongst other adventures, we have built our own houses, made homes from straw and thought about people in our own homes. 

This week, we have been looking at the long ladder letters.  This family of letters all start in the same place and travel downwards.  We had fun writing them in the ice, on the whiteboard, in the sand and shaving foam, as well as the flour.  We have also been writing CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant words) and working as a team to learn new digraphs and tricky words.  Great job children!

In our traditional story, one of the pigs made his house out of sticks.  During Welly Wednesday, we had a think about how the pig might have collected all of their sticks and made a home.  We decided to find out if our school field was a good place to find sticks.  We predicted whether we would find lots of sticks or a few sticks and then we went off to hunt for some.  We discovered that the sticks were near where the trees grew and how important it was to collect the fallen sticks and not pull them off the tree, as it may damage them.  We found sticks of all shapes and sizes, some were even taller than us!  We asked ourselves when does a stick become a branch? And is a stick the same as a twig?

Once we had collected all of our sticks, we counted them by collected handfuls, counting out 10, taking an armful, holding a pair of sticks; we then transported them into our mud kitchen, working as a team to collect them all.  What a great morning of discovery children, rounded off with a tasty hot chocolate!

Well done!

Children have been working hard with their reading at school and at home.  Here are some of the children collecting their reading certificates for their reading at home.  For every 10 reads, the children receive a certificate and are congratulated by their friends.  When the children read 50 reads, they choose a prize from the tin.  100 reads brings a gift too. Keeeeeep reading and enjoying finding our about the world we live in!

Let me tell you a story...

Today, we started to read the story of 'The Three Little Pigs'.  We thought about how we felt when we saw the wolf in the story and also we predicted (guessed from the clues we had) what we thought might happen to the wolf at the end of the story.  We were very excited and didn't want the story to pause when the wolf was about to climb down the chimney!

At story time, we listened to a song about the story - here it a link for you to listen to again at home:

Happy New Year!

Welcome back to school!

What a lovely first week we have had all together.  We have enjoyed remembering what we did at Christmas time, discussing our favourite gifts and things we did with our families - we then spoke about the new year 2022.  We have learnt about the months of the year and looked again at our birthday months.  We explored the season of Winter with frosty winter walks and warm hot chocolate, ice hunting and looking at bare trees in our local area.  We enjoyed playing the game 'What time is it Mr Wolf?' and read some books with the same title.  We also enjoyed looking at different types of clocks and watches, as well as singing different versions of Hickory Dickory Dock!

It's been great to be back together children.

Celebrating success

A special thank you and well done to the children who have been in our Good Book assemblies.  We have celebrated many successes including kindness and sharing with our friends, beautiful fireworks paintings, pretty Diva lamps, writing our menus using the sounds that we can hear as we say the words out loud, super fair game playing and using our maths skills to recognise the dots on a dice without counting them (subitising), adding the totals on two dice and recalling some of our double facts.  Keep working hard Team R, keep enjoying the fun and awe of learning.

Anti-bullying week - always choose kind

In Class R, we talk a lot about kindness and what it is and how we can show it to the people, animals and environment around us every day.  We celebrate kindness in our class and spot children and adults being kind in their every day behaviour.  During this special week in school, we took time during our Circle Time, to talk about giving compliments and using our manners when someone does something nice for us.  The children thought carefully about the compliments they could give and practised saying the compliments out loud - thank you children for choosing kind.

I was also lucky this week to hear Isabella and Isabella talking about how good sharing felt.  They thought carefully about a strategy which could encourage their friends to share a toy that they wanted to use.  After deciding and being able to use the toy, they promptly gave it back after their time was up.  They then reflected on how good it had felt and then said, "Sharing is caring!" 

Girls you are so right.  Thank you.

AWESOME AUTUMN

Class R have enjoyed discovering all about the beautiful season of Autumn.  Today we went on a leaf hunt to spot all the different colours of Autumn.  We looked at the shapes and patterns that were on the leaves and chose some special ones to put on our leaf skewers.  Autumn leaves are amazing!

GOLD BOOK

A special well done to our 6 children whose work was recognised in our Gold Book assembly.  Caleb and Alfie were praised for their excellent use of description and wow words when they are talking with adults and their peers; Isabella and Savannah were praised for their kindness and friendship to others in the class; Ruby was praised for her mature attitude to her learning and how proud she is to be able to blend sounds to make words when reading and Layton was praised for his sensible choices and the way he comes in so smartly in the morning, organising himself so well.  Well done children, we are so proud of you.

ALWAYS CHOOSE KIND

To support the 'Show racism the red card' annual 'Wear red for the day' on Friday, 22nd October 2021 - Class R joined in with the rest of the school in wearing red and started to learn about what racism is and the importance of kindness.  We talked about what kindness is and how we can show it to other people.  Some children wrote kindness notes for their family, their Buddies and friends; some children gave one another compliments or thought about how to help their friends be happy when they play and talk to one another.  Thank you children.

Our Pumpkin Parade

Thank you to all the children and their families for the wonderful pumpkins

that came to school yesterday - so many different designs.

It was so lovely to see so many parents and children after school for our Pumpkin Parade - thank you for supporting our PTFA event.

THE DAY WE MET OUR BUDDIES!

Please click on the link below to see our photographs:

HARVEST TIME

This week's song and rhyme is connected to our Harvest assembly this week - please enjoy the songs - 'Tractor, Tractor' and the lyrics for 'Big Red Combine Harvester' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvJQhgPu298

Lyrics to “Big Red Combine Harvester”

Big red combine harvester,
Big red combine harvester,
Big red combine harvester,
Chug, chug, chug, chug, chugging away.

Clattering on, combine harvester,
Clattering on, combine harvester,
Clattering on, combine harvester,
Chug, chug, chug, chug, chugging away.

Cutting the corn, combine harvester,
Cutting the corn, combine harvester,
Cutting the corn, combine harvester,
Chug, chug, chug, chug, chugging away.

Threshing the corn, combine harvester,
Threshing the corn, combine harvester,
Threshing the corn, combine harvester,
Chug, chug, chug, chug, chugging away.

Big red combine harvester,
Big red combine harvester,
Big red combine harvester,
Chug, chug, chug, chug, chugging away,
Chug, chug, chug, chug, chugging away.

Well done to Beatrice, Evie, Arlo, Adam, Isabella and Esmee, who were our first six children to appear in Class R's Gold Book assembly this year.  We celebrated their beautiful artwork, growing confidence, kindness, reading skills, care and resilience.  We're very proud of you and I enjoyed sharing the news with your families.

THE SKELETON DANCE

The children in Class R have really enjoyed this 'Skeleton Dance', so I thought I'd put the link on so that you could enjoy it at home too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e54m6XOpRgU

September's Adventures in Class R - please click on the link below:

Please find attached the links that I mentioned in your child's reading diaries:

Our alphabet song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPVbJ-IaHIw

The pronunciation of the letter sounds (phonemes);

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCI2mu7URBc

The Jolly Phonics actions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVyry9jpVjI

Thank you

Welcome to Class R's page on our brand new website. 

We hope you enjoy our journey together

over the coming year.