Dear Parents and Carers,

We hope you have all been enjoying the beautiful weather.

We can't believe how quickly another half term has passed. Next week is half term and school will be closed to children but staff will be in, making sure that the rooms are ready for a wider opening on June 1st.

We hope you all have a happy holiday although it may not feel any different to the previous week!

Although the numbers of key worker children attending school has steadily increased, it is strange not to have the usual noise, hustle and bustle and excitement in school and that is why we so enjoy your emails with messages and pictures showing us what you have been doing. We look forward to the time that we are all back together and can have that Global Families Carnival!

You will have now received Miss Cockburn's letter with details of the proposed opening on 1st June 2020 and a map that will give you the directions of how to arrive and leave the school site. Children who are attending school from June 1st will also receive a letter in the post detailing which group your child will be in, their  new classroom base, staggered start and pick up times and who their staff members will be.

With Reception and Key worker children returning, the school will be full and all of the teaching teams will be deployed teaching and planning learning full time. This means that we will not be able to offer online learning as some parents have enquired of us. However, we will continue to send the weekly year group emails with resources and suggestions for learning at home and this learning will mirror that being delivered to the children in school.

Each week we will send (obviously the format for Reception and Nursery children will look slightly different);

English- differentiated reading comprehensions and writing tasks 

Maths – differentiated challenges and worksheets along with top tips for how we would teach the skill in school and links to the Oak national academy. (We will also resend the visual reminders which support the children’s learning in school)

Science/History/Geography/RE – links and suggestions to meet a skill in this subject area which could be presented as a fact file, a poster or a drama/hot seating or oral presentation.

Of course don’t forget to read with your child and remind them to use their phonics skills, play phoneme spot together (ai in rain) and tricky word snap (we will resend these after half term, they are words where phonics doesn’t work such as we, he, the).

Please don’t think you need to complete all the comprehensions and maths worksheets, there will be different questions to match different skills levels and you can help your child to find the right one from them.

The weekly email will continue to give you the learning for the entire week as opposed to daily tasks, which is the practice in some schools. This reflects the way we work as a school and gives you the flexibility to engage in the learning when it is convenient for your family.

The online resource ‘Purple Mash ‘has been made free to parents.

As a staff team we have not had training so we will not be setting learning tasks but it is a safe place for children to explore different aspects of computing through games, art, music, number, literacy and science. Inside there is ‘Mini-Mash’ which has lots of Early Years resources. If you would like access to this resource, please contact Mrs Pratt by email and she will set up access for you.

Mrs Pratt can be contacted on epratt@wheatfieldsinfants.herts.sch.uk

We are really hopeful that this phase of opening will lead to a further widening of provision for our school community. Unless the government changes its guidance and allows us to increase numbers each class, we currently do not have the capacity for any more year groups.  However, we only hear of the government’s plans at the same time as you, so please bear with us.  If we are advised against opening on 1st June we will let you know our revised plans. Even if we do not open for Reception children, key worker and vulnerable children will still have a place with us from 1st June onwards.

Stay well and keep safe,

Keep Smiling

 

Miss Clare Cockburn and the staff team