RB             RC

                                                                                           Miss Brunt              Mrs Carby - Monday to Thursday

                                                                                                         Miss Burton - Friday 

The teaching assistants will swap between both classes each half term.

Ms Alizadeh        Ms Brennan

General Reminders

Water Bottles, Wellies, Book Bags and PE kits
Please could you ensure that your child brings a named water bottle to school every day.

We also ask that you bring in a pair of wellies, which will be kept in school, from your child's first week so they can access our outdoor learning environment. 

To help your child carry important letters and shared/guided reading books, they need to bring a St Peter's school book bag to school and not a backpack. We have limited space in our cloakrooms but each child has a designated tray for their book bag.

PE lessons kits must be kept in school on your child's peg. 

Important Dates:
Please note dates may change so keep a check on this web page. 

Monday 13th October - Phonics Workshop RC 9.05 -10.30 RB 1.30-3.00

Tuesday 21st October - Seasonal Flu Immunisations 

Thursday 23rd October - Visit to St Peter's church 

Friday 24th October - Break up for half term 

Wednesday 5th November - Reading meeting - KS1 hall 2.30pm 

Thursday 6th - RC visit to St John's church Harborne

Friday 7th November - RB visit to St John's church Harborne

Tuesday 11th November - Individual and sibling photographs

Friday 28th November -  Non-uniform day - bring a gift for Christmas fayre (details to follow) 

Friday 5th December - Christmas fayre in KS1 hall 

Monday 15th December - Christmas treats and Christmas Carols KS1 Hall 1.45pm

Tuesday 16th December - Harborne library trip RC - 9.00am RB - 9.45am

Thursday 18th December - Christmas jumper day and Christmas party  

Friday 19th December - Break up for Christmas holiday 

Tuesday 6th January - Return to school  

Our topic for this term is:

My Community 

Religious Education 

At St Peter's we use Jack in the Box which is a  children's Bible story resources designed for Early Years. It features Jack, a lovable Labrador puppet, who helps the children learn about the Big Bible Heroes of the Old Testament  and the significance  of Jesus' love for the world. We sit for worship time every week and use  interactive stories and activities which encourage the children t explore and reflect on biblical themes.

This term our stories are:

Abraham and the promise of Isaac

Moses and the burning bush 

Moses crosses the Red sea

God sends Manna to Moses and the people 

Moses obeys

Gideon is courageous 

David Prays and sings to God

David is chosen as King

David stands up to Goliath 

David and Johnathan 

Waiting for Jesus 

Gods son is born 

Angels bring good new to Shepherds

The wise men visit Jesus 

Phonics

This half term we will start Phase 1 Phonics. This is the foundational stage of the phonics teaching program, focusing on developing children's speaking and listening skills. It lays the groundwork for phonic work that begins in Phase 2. The program is divided into seven aspects, each containing three strands: Tuning in to sounds, Listening and remembering sounds, and Talking about sounds. Our activities are designed to help children listen attentively, enlarge their vocabulary, speak confidently, discriminate phonemes, reproduce audibly the phonemes they hear, and use sound-talk to segment words into phonemes. These activities are intended to continue throughout the following phases, as children need regular practice to become confident in their phonic knowledge and skills.

At St Peter's we follow Supersonic Phonic Friends. It is an education initiative created by phonics and early reading experts Anna Lucas and Emma Carey. The program employs a fully systematic synthetic phonics approach, which is designed to build children's confidence in reading and writing by developing their phonetic knowledge and skills. It's key features are engaging characters, structured lessons and  a focus on speaking and listening.

Literacy

In autumn we start work on our first spine book 'Rosie's Walk' by Pat Hutchins . We have linked out literacy learning to our Expressive Art and Design topic about different types of lines. The children will draw story maps and order the story using pictures as well as writing initial sounds for familiar characters and objects in the story. Later on in the term the children will learn the traditional tale 'The Little Red Hen'. The will memorise the story using a story map and talk for writing and will act out the story as a class. When the children are confidently retelling the story we will support them to write initial sounds and cvc words. Linked to the story the children will then learn to follow a recipe and with support will order instructions. 

Mathematics

We use White Rose Maths which is an initiative designed to enhance mathematics teaching and learning. It emphasises a comprehensive understanding of mathematical concepts rather than just rote learning, focusing on mastery and problem-solving skills. The program is into manageable steps, ensuring that children build a strong foundation before moving on to more complex topics. 

This autumn our topics are: 

Match, sort, compare - recognising and grouping similarties/differences 

Talk about measure and patterns - understanding size, patterns and language 

It's me 1,2,3 - early counting to 3

Circles and triangles - introduction to 2D shape

1,2,3,4,5 - counting, subitising, more, less and composition

Shapes with 4 sides - exploring quadrilaterals and shape attributes 

Understanding the World

This term our topic is All about me and the children will start by learning about our school community by exploring our school site and taking a trip over to the junior building. We will also explore our local area and looking for signs of autumn. Having explored change in the environment the children will then go on to learn about changes and growing. As part of this learning the children will learn how to draw and follow simple maps. We will link it to our Spine Book Rosie's Walk. The children will pretend to be Rosie and the fox and they will learn to use prepositions correctly when in conversations with each other. Later on in the term we will learn about our wider community by taking a trip to St Peter's church, St John's church in Harborne and Harborne Library.

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

As a school we use SCARF which is a whole-school approach supporting primary schools in promoting positive behaviour, mental health, well-being, resilience and achievement.  More than just a PSHE scheme of work, SCARF supports great learning every day. SCARF represents our values for children of Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience and Friendship. 

This term we will be covering:

Class and garden rules 

All about me 

What makes me special 

Me and my special people

Who can help me?

My feelings 

Bonfire night safety

I'm special, you're special 

Same and different 

Same and different families 

Same and different homes

I am caring 

I am a friend

What's safe to go onto my body

Every other week the children will take part in a My Happy Mind session. It is a NHS backed program designed to support children's mental health and well-being. It combines the latest research and technology to teach children science-backed strategies for managing stress and improving resilience in a child friendly, age appropriate way. 

Physical Development

This term in 'Get Set for P.E' the children will be eased into structured PE through a 'fantasy and adventure' theme. This unit focuses on foundational elements for a PE lesson - finding space, freezing on command, sharing equipment and working individually, with a partner, and in groups. Core movement skills are introduced such as running, jumping and skipping and introduced. 

Expressive Arts and Design

We will start the school year by learning about the famous author and illustrator Pat Hutchins. The children explore a range of Pat Hutchins books and illustrations to see if they can notice any similarities and differences.  We will focus on a couple of pages and ask the children to draw the patterns and lines they can see. 

 The children will move on to investigating different lines and producing lines of different thickness and tone using a pencil. We will teach the children how different textures are created using lines for the character’s fur and feathers. Children to have a go at re-creating the fur and feathers using a variety of drawing tools – graphic tools, hands, chalk, pens and pencils. 

Children to draw their own versions of the illustrations in a Pat Hutchins story or use templates to create their own piece of work. Children to have access to a range of different surfaces and coloured paper.

Make sure you check out our Art and DT page to see what we've been up to. 

In fortnightly guided drawing sessions, the teacher will model a variety of techniques and tools linked to the skills the children have been learning in their EAD lessons. 

Also, every week the children will take part in a music lesson. They start by learning different songs and thinking about their breathing techniques. Within this the children are taught about pitch, tempo, pulse and rhythm. They also have the opportunity to play the glockenspiel.