Head Teacher: Miss Siobhan Leonard (BA Hons, QTS, NPQH)Address: Royds Lane, Rothwell, Leeds LS26 0BJTel: (0113) 2828182Website: www.rothwellstmarys.co.ukE-mail: head@rothwellstmarys.org.uk

Dear families,

Welcome back to school after a hopefully lovely half term break. We can’t believe we’re halfway through the school year already!

One of the main things to note for this half term is that our PE time has changed. This is to give Year Two access to the hall in order to develop their gymnastic skills using our indoor equipment. Due to this change, Year Two will now be asked to come into school in their PE kits on Mondays and Wednesdays, with their school uniforms in their bags to change into afterwards. This change will be for this half term only, as our time will go back to its regular slot after this.

With this in mind, let’s look at what we will be learning this half term.

Our topic for this half term will be ‘Life in Scutari’. In this, we will be exploring the Crimean War and what the hospitals looked like during this time. This will include a

focus on famous historical figures, such as Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, and how their innovations and actions have shaped

our modern lives Should any child want to explore this topic more at home, we always encourage extra research and would love to share what they have found.

Our R.E topic for the half term is ‘The Mass’. In this topic, we will be looking at the process of Mass, important symbols and why Mass is a celebration. This will run alongside our Lenten promises and our exploration of Holy Week and Easter. Collective Worship will be led by the children every Thursday afternoon at 2:40pm. All families are invited to come along at this time to join us in our child-led collective worship.

As always, reading remains an important part of your child’s education and is an essential aid for developing your child’s word building, vocabulary and understanding of structure and

composition. Reading at home is a great tool in helping to support your child’s understanding and interpretation of texts. Please indicate when you have read with your child in their reading record. Carrying on from last term, we will be continuing with our reading challenges for our home reading books. These must be completed before we can move any child onto a new book. As a reminder to all parents, please make sure that your child is filling out their challenge themselves. As well, to further develop their reading skill, we are asking all children to read a few pages in depth each night rather than reading the whole book at once. Thank you for your support and positive attitude towards our reading challenges so far this year, we are already seeing great strides in children’s reading comprehension!

Our SPaG work will continue to look at using different tenses in our work, using both regular and irregular verbs in the past tense. As well, we will be focusing on alternative graphemes, which will benefit children’s spelling as they begin to use words that use a wide variety of spelling rules. This will be supported by our writing in English where we will be focusing on planning, drafting, editing and publishing all our writing. To advance our writing, we will be continuing our weekly spelling test on a Monday. New spellings will be given out on a Monday for the test the following week and can be found in their spelling books.

In Maths, we are developing ‘Maths Mastery’ and mastering all mathematical concepts. In this term, we will be focusing on multiplication and division. Our main focus will be the 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables. From there we will continue to build on our fact families and understanding how the best methods for multiplication and division. As well, we will begin to develop our understanding of statistics and fractions. We continue to revise and revisit addition, subtraction and multiplication. Should you want to give further support at home, focusing on times tables would be beneficial. This includes the 2, 10 and 5 times tables. As well, we will be working with resources from White Rose Maths Hubs which are available online to support any further understanding at home or for your exploration.

Our topic in Science is ‘Use of Everyday Materials’. In this topic, we will be exploring the difference between different types of materials are, what their properties are and how they are suitable for different purposes. We will be developing our scientific understanding through carrying out scientific enquires and exploring the suitability of different materials through building structures.

As a whole school activity, we will be taking part in a Reading Week on the second week back (the week commencing the 2nd March). During this time, there will be

workshops and exciting activities surrounding reading. We will be having a dress up day on Thursday 5th March. For KS1, our outfit theme will be Julia Donaldson.

Lastly, please ensure children have an identifiable water bottle with

them in school. These will be sent home on a Friday.

We are very much looking forward to the next half term and are excited for the six weeks ahead of us!

Kindest thanks,Miss Nicholson and Mrs Mace