Beech Grove Primary School
Spring Term 2025
Head Teacher Message
Welcome back to our new Autumn term. On behalf of the staff we would like to welcome you to a new school year and hope that 2024/2025 is just as brilliant as last year. It was wonderful to see our whole school community trying their very best for our children to try and reach their maximum potential. I am positive this year will be exactly the same.
Once again, I cannot thankyou enough for the tremendous efforts you went to during last year to support your children and the school. We should, as a school community be really proud of the way we continue to stick together and support one another.
I hope that you have all had the chance to relax and recharge your batteries during the summer holidays and are ready once more to attack the new school year with vigour and enthusiasm.
It is so important that our children attend regularly in order to continue to make the brilliant progress that they made last academic year. I’m positive with your continued support, our excellent teaching and well-planned curriculum and interventions, our children will continue to achieve well and try their very best in all lessons.
I continue to be amazed and am so proud of them all and the way they have started back this Autumn term. The children’s continued resilience and adaptability is absolutely outstanding.
As always, our teachers have lots of interesting activities planned for this term and hope that you will enjoy hearing what children have been working on at consultation meetings, and will support them with their homework and reading outside of school. READING is the key to EVERYTHING and unlocking the children’s true potential! Please, please, please x10000000 encourage them as much as you can with their reading at home. It really is greatly appreciated by all staff.
John Dixon
Our work for this term
English
In AS1, we follow the Read Write Inc Phonics Scheme. Children reading RWI books have daily Read Write Inc sessions pitched at their individual reading level. We will be progressing through our RWI groups, revisiting misconceptions and learning new sounds on a daily basis. The children that are in Year 1, will work towards their Phonics Screening Check in June. (Look out for the alien word homework and ask your child to teach you about ‘special friends’.
Those children who have completed the RWI scheme have daily reading comprehension and Writing lessons linked to the topic. This term, we will be learning how to extend and improve sentences using different sentence types and conjunctions to make our writing more interesting. We will have daily skills sessions focusing on pre-fixes, suffixes and spelling rules. We will be looking at information texts, retelling stories and writing alternative versions of stories with accurate punctuation and grammar.
Every afternoon, we will be using ‘Talk Through Stories’ during storytime to deepen children’s comprehension and vocabulary.
Maths
Children working at Reception level will be taught following the NCETM Mastering number programme, teaching the children to subitise (say ‘how many?’ without counting) to 5, compare numbers, count and begin to understand the composition of numbers to 5. Please encourage your child to practise their number formation and to recognise counting and making numbers within 10.
Children working at Year 1 and Year 2 level will be taught following the White Rose Maths Scheme. This term we will be further developing our number skills and formal written methods for addition and subtraction. We will be using the four operations (addition, subtraction, division and multiplication) and applying them in word problems. We will also be looking at statistics, time and money. The children will be practising their times tables regularly. By the end of year 2, children are expected to know their 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables. Please encourage your child to practise their times tables and complete their maths homework sent home each term.
Topic
Our topic for Spring 1 is ‘Space’ – This half term, we will be learning about our solar system and the Moon Landing in 1969. We will also be learning about a famous significant individual called ‘Neil Armstrong’ and what his job as an astronaut involved.
Our topic for Spring 2 is ‘Animals’– In this topic we will be learning about the difference between wild and domestic animals. We will also be learning about the five distinctive groups of animals; mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish, while making links to an animals diet; omnivore, herbivore or carnivore.
This term we will continue to model positive interactions with others and will provide regular opportunities for the children to engage in play and social interactions with others. We will discuss the skills needed to become a good friend and what to do if you want to or do not want to play with somebody We will help the children to recognise that we all have similarities and differences and we can all be friends and work/play together.
Keeping Safe and Healthy
During this term we will be focusing on how keep ourselves and others safe and healthy.
Jigsaw- We will be highlighting the importance of feeling safe and happy in a school environment and also why being unique is special. We will also be reminding children of the importance of being safe in our local area and people who help us. We will be talking about dressing appropriately for the weather (please provide warm coats, gloves, hats as the weather begins to cool, as we will be going outdoors to look at seasonal change). We regularly handwashing throughout the day and will highlight the importance of good hand hygiene and its impact on our health as a life skill.
In AS1, we want to help prepare children for adulthood and do this by working towards PFA pathways in their Education Health Care Plans. Planning is centred around the individual child. We try to include the child’s aspirations and abilities to support them to achieve their full potential. Ultimately, we want your child to live a happy and successful life and we want their time in school to be a positive experience.
Preparing for Adulthood Pathways include:
- Good health
- Friendships, Relationships & Community
- Independent Living
- Employment
Dates for your Diary
Spring Term: Monday 6th January 2025 – Friday 11th April 2025
Half Term: Monday 24th February 2025 – Friday 28th February 2025
