Links News
Friday 13th September, 2024
Dear Links Families,
It’s been a truly delightful week at school, filled with vibrant energy and enthusiasm. The children have been engaged in a variety of exciting learning activities that have sparked curiosity and creativity across the board. The children are eager to learn all about their new topics and are excited to talk to us about their learning.
Here is a little snippet of what the children will be learning about this half term.
Nursery
Our topic in Nursery this half-term is, 'Marvellous Me'. The children will be exploring a range of areas of learning with an all about me theme. They will be; learning daily Nursery routines, painting self-portraits, drawing and talking about their family and engaging in exciting story times. The children enjoyed listening to 'The Family Book' by Todd Parr and 'Peace At Last' by Jill Murphy. Joining in on daily rhyme times to support early Phonics,singing Nursery rhymes such as, 'The Wheels on the Bus' and 'Incy Wincy Spider'. They have also enjoyed learning new number songs such as, 'Five Little Ducks' to help them count to five.
Reception
This term Reception our topic is 'Marvellous Me'. We will spend lots of time getting to know each other, building friendships and exploring! The children will also learn all about themselves, their families and their communities
We began our adventure by reading our core book ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea' learning about families, routines and our community. We also will explore ‘The Colour Monster’, which helped us talk about all our feelings surrounding starting Reception. We will spend some time learning about our families with another of our Core books 'So Much' and the children will create some family pictures for our class family display.
In Maths, we will build on previous experiences of numbers from their home and nursery environments, and further develop their Subitising and counting skills. They will explore the composition of numbers within 5. They will begin to compare sets of objects and use the language of comparison.
Year 1
Our topic this half term in Year 1 is ‘All About Me’. We will be learning and naming our body parts in Science, drawing our self portraits in Art and learning all about our local area, Tooting in Geography. Our core books in English are Rosie’s Walk and Naughty Bus. We even plan to go on our own bus trip around Tooting, although we hope we don’t get a naughty bus!
Year 2
This term in Year 2, we are learning about the Great Fire of London. Our core book in English is Vlad and the Great Fire of London. The children have enjoyed learning about the Great Fire of London, through the eyes of a rat! The fire started in a bakery on Pudding Lane, so in History we will be looking at the History of bread and in Design Technology, we will be making bread, from scratch.
In Science we will be learning about animals, including humans. Our first lesson was about how animals change over time. In RE, they are learning about Harvest Festivals.
Year 3
This half term, our geography topic is all about volcanoes. We will be learning about the layers of the Earth, how volcanoes are formed, where they are located and about some famous volcanoes. This links nicely with our DT project where we will be designing, making, evaluating and erupting our own 3D volcanoes! In music, we are learning about pulse vs rhythm using the bamboo tamboo. We are also very excited to start our first Spanish topic too!
Year 4
We are all looking forward to a fun filled half term. The children are already getting excited about swimming next week, which we know they'll enjoy.
We will also be learning about the Ancient Egyptians, thinking about their way of life, including mummification. This will feed into their reading, writing and D & T where they will be making canopic jars. In maths, a big focus will be times tables getting the children ready for June. The children have begun learning about States of Matter, thinking about how particles move in solids, liquids and gas.
Year 5
This half term, Year 5 will be learning about the Victorian era in history. We will be looking at how Queen Victoria became the monarch and how people of different social classes lived. As a part of this topic, we will also be exploring the novel, Street Child in English, and writing our very own diary entry and biography, based on the life of the main character, Jim Jarvis. In maths, we will be building our foundational skills of place value and addition and subtraction, applying these to solve reasoning and problem solving questions. In science, we are exploring the properties of materials and determining which materials are appropriate for a range of purposes. In PSHE, we have started the year by learning about the different Zones of Regulation, and will continue to learn how we can use our toolbox of strategies to regulate our emotions when needed. Looking forward to an exciting term ahead!
Year 6
In Year 6 we will be learning all about World War II for this first half term. We will be: learning about the History and important events that took place; writing in English from different people's perspectives; sketching and drawing in Art- propaganda from the war and much more!
Maths Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) -
This week your child received their first KIRF sheet to take home. The sheet will have on it the key mathematical facts that we want the children to learn for this half term. It has on it some ideas, games and questions you can use at home to promote the learning of these facts. Ideally, we would like you to practise these daily with the children; this could be on the way to school, in the car, before bedtime or whenever you have the chance. We know that by practising these skills, children find other maths tasks easier to complete as they can recall facts instantly. This sheet will be in addition to the maths homework the children receive weekly and will also be uploaded to google classroom.
Please click on this link for more information why Links is championing KIRFs
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QmEO8JGu2YwhMMfRhr-tth3vAhJ296FS0aBJlK8iEwo/edit
Music lessons
Over the coming year, all children from Yr 1 - 6 will participate in weekly specialist music lessons delivered by a Merton Music Foundation tutor. The children will be taking part in the following lessons:
Year 1- general musicianship
Year 2 - general musicianship/ glockenspiel
Year 3 - bamboo tamboo
Year 4 - violin
Year 5 - ukulele
Year 6 - trumpet
At the end of the project, if your child wishes to continue learning their instrument, this may be possible in school or at one of the Music Centres run by Merton Music Foundation. As an In2Music Continuer, they will be entitled to a 40% discount off the cost of lessons and a reduced fee for instrument hire next year.
MacMillan Cake Sale
We will be hosting a MacMillan cake sale on Friday 27th September to raise money for those living with cancer.
We will be selling cakes at breaktime, instead of our Friday tuck shop. Children in our Early Years, as well as our older years will be able to buy a cake for £1, to enjoy at breaktime.
On the subject of cake, we would love all you bakers to donate any cakes, biscuits and wonderful creations for this event. Please could all delicious treats be dropped into school first thing on Friday morning.
If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact
Links Tuck Shop
Great news, Links Tuck Shop is back! Every Friday playtime, children from years 1-6 can buy a healthy snack for 80p (we have had to raise the price inline with our stock provider) The children can enjoy healthy snacks such as: Bear Snacks, apple crisps, popcorn and dried fruit.
Please remember to bring the correct change, if possible and to keep it in a purse to ensure it is safe. Quite often children lose their money when loose in their school bags and coats.
Links Values Award
Links Value Winners - 13th September 2024
This week’s Values Awards go to:
- Nursery - Amelia, for her wonderful self-portrait and use of language to label what she had painted.
- Reception - Mohamed, for being enthusiastic about all areas of his learning.
- 1T - Issa, for settling in so well and following the new routines.
- 1W - Logan, for being an excellent role model in class and demonstrating all of our Links Values.
- 2KB - Amira, for her active participation in all our activities this week.
- 2EJ - Dominic, for a fantastic piece of work on comparing present day London to 1666.
- 3B - Chase, for being an excellent role model by following our school rules.
- 3T - Pawel, for always being ready, respectful and safe and continually demonstrating the Links Values.
- 4M - Josephine, for starting the year with such a fabulous attitude towards learning.
- 4P - Adam Z, for a terrific start to the year and for always engaging with his learning.
- 5GP - Levi, for making a great start to the school year and having pride in his presentation.
- 5M - Shivi, for always demonstrating all Links Values and working hard in every lesson.
- 6G - Maja, for being very kind and responsible.
- 6P - Anneke, for her great, responsible attitude towards learning this week.
Today, all of our Links Value winners joined Mrs Anderson and Mrs Murray for Hot Chocolate Friday! This is our new incentive to celebrate our Links Values winners.
House Points
The house points have reset and the competition is back on!
For all our new families, we have 4 houses, red, blue, green and yellow. We use house points for taking pride in their achievements, the sharing and recognition of good work, teamwork, positive attitude and positive behaviour.
The house point totals for this week are….
Yellow House - 143
Green House - 135
Red House - 113
Blue House - 112
Congratulations to Yellow House who are this week’s winners!
Weekly Attendance
This week’s attendance figures for each class are:
- Reception - 87.5%
- 1T - 93.5%
- 1W - 92%
- 2KB - 84.7%
- 2EJ - 98.7%
- 3B - 92%
- 3T - 97.8%
- 4M - 99.1%
- 4P - 96.4%
- 5GP - 94.8%
- 5M - 97.2%
- 6G - 92.4%
- 6P - 98.7%
Congratulations to 4M who all achieved the highest attendance this week.
Lincoln the Bear will be spending next week in Year 4, where he will be learning about the Ancient Egyptians.
95% Attendance Raffle
This week’s tickets go to 2EJ, 3T, 4M, 4P, 5M and 6P. At the end of the term, we will draw the winning ticket and that class will win a special treat.
Have a lovely weekend
The Links Team
