Curriculum Newsletters

 Welcome to Pluto Class! 

Welcome to Pluto Class and Wincanton Primary School. 

Your teachers will be Mrs Gibson on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Mrs Hillier on Thursday and Friday. Miss Boulton is your higher level learning support assistant in Pluto Class every day.  

We also have Mrs Maddox, Miss Graddock, Mrs Rigby, Miss Gardiner and Mrs Bird supporting with special education needs within the classroom. 

This term the Learning Experience is 

The Land of the Dinosaurs. 

We will be focusing on comparing life now and life when the dinosaurs were alive, discovering different types of dinosaur and exploring people in history who have helped us to learn facts about dinosaurs. 

Please see our curriculum newsletter above for more information as to what your child will be learning throughout the term.

We will be starting to learn to read using the phonics programme Unlocking Letters and Sounds. We will learn a new Grapheme Phoneme correspondence everyday. We will learn to blend those sounds together to read words. Children will have reading books home when they can confidently blend the first set of sounds together. 

Pluto Class have their P.E. day on Wednesday. Children will need to come to school in PE kit on that day. 

We will also be going to forest school on a Wednesday afternoon. Children will need welly boots in school to wear to forest school. 

Reading within EYFS:

Your child now has a Wincanton Primary Book bag. We would like them to bring their book bag to school EVERY DAY. This is so we can give out resources and books when we need to. 

We are following Unlocking Letters and Sounds as our phonics scheme at Wincanton Primary. 

The children will be learning to link Graphemes to phonemes. They will be learning to blend sounds together to read and segment words in order to write. 

When children can confidently blend using some Phase 2 sounds we will send home a decodable reading book.

We are expecting your child to read at home at least 4 times per week. However, the more they can practise the skill of blending the more confident they will be with reading. 

We will change books once your child has read the book three times. The journey through the book should be:

1st time - Decoding (breaking words down to read them

2nd time- Fluency 

3rd time - comprehension

If you would like a book changed more regularly to engage your child at home please speak with the class teacher. 

We are also asking you to continue to support your child's reading for pleasure experience. We will visit the school library so that your child can bring home a family sharing book. This is for you to read to your child as it will not be decodable for them.

We want your child to love listening to stories but also love the journey they are on learning to read themselves. We welcome you onto their reading journey. 

Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning

The Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework states that the characteristics of effective teaching and learning describe the behaviours children need to learn. We do not only want to support the children to develop knowledge and skills but we want them to develop learning behaviours that will support them to be life long learners. 

The characteristics are:

Playing and Exploring 

Active Learning (persevering) 

Creative and Critical thinking 

So that children understand these behaviours we have 3 class dinosaurs. These are called:

Explorosaurus

Tryosaurus

Thinkosaurus.

Children will get to look after one of these dinosaurs for the day if they demonstrate one of the characteristics. 

Class Alien

We have a class alien who will be coming home with a different child each week. 1 child will be chosen on a Friday to look after the alien. The alien then spends the weekend at home with you. There is a diary to fill in with photos, drawn picture or a written diary entry. You then return the alien on Monday or Tuesday so that your child can share their adventure with the rest of the class.