Today marks our last day of remote learning as we all prepare for our return on Monday. I hope you are all as excited to return as we are to welcome you back!

Once more, I would like to thank you all for your support at home in what I know is a difficult and challenging task. You have all worked so hard and helped us to keep the children’s learning going throughout these past 8 weeks.

Arrangements and Important Information For Our Return

School Start and Finish Times

Year 2 Family Bubbles (children with siblings; you will know if this applies to you) will continue to come into school at 8.40am and will be collected at 3.15pm from Monday to Thursday.

The majority of Year 2 pupils will begin the school day at 9.00am and will be collected at 3.30pm from Monday to Thursday.

On Fridays, just as before we had to close, children will need to be collected at 1.15pm (or the slightly earlier time of 1.05pm for the family bubble).

PE Days

Our Year 2 PE days will continue to be on Monday and Friday. Please continue to come into school in PE kit on these days.

Water Bottles

Before lockdown, Year 2 water bottles remained in school. However, we feel it would be much more beneficial for them to be taken home at the end of every school day so that they can be washed ready for the next day. You are welcome to bring your own water bottle but make sure this is labelled with your child’s name. If you don’t want to bring your own water bottle, we have our school bottles, however, if this goes home and is not returned, we will not have any others for the children to drink from in class so please ensure it returns to school daily.

Reading Bookmarks

I know lots of you have been busy reading at home and will be needing lots of stickers/new bookmarks and certificates. As I’m sure you will appreciate, this will be an enormous job for our wonderful TAs to undertake after 8 weeks worth of reading at home and so it would be incredibly helpful if you could count up the total number of times your child has read since December 18th and write this number in your reading record so we can give out certificates more effectively. There is a maximum total of 86 days worth of stickers you may have (we only issue 1 sticker per day of reading, even if you read more than once on that day).

Bookbags

Please continue not to bring school bookbags in as this saves potential home-school transmission. All your child will need is their plastic zippy wallet with their reading book and reading record inside.

World Book Day Bookmark Competition

I have loved seeing your fantastic bookmark designs you have completed both in school and at home. For those of you who have designed one at home, please could you bring this in on Monday with your name and year group clearly written on it. Winners will be picked and announced during the week.

Homework

Homework will continue to be set on a Friday. I am going to trial sending home a Year 2 work booklet to work from and setting weekly tasks from this, rather than preparing new sheets every week. I may also send extra copies home of any tasks the children found tricky and may need some extra practice with. However, spelling words will be sent weekly or fortnightly (depending on timetables in school) and this half term I will send home times tables packs for the 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables. Please practice these as I aim for us to have weekly or fortnightly times tables tests too.

Home-School Communication

Class Dojo will remain as the primary contact medium when we return to school so if there are any questions, concerns or notices you need to tell me about, please use this to do so. If there any immediate concerns, you can always speak to me during pick up at the end of the day as well.

Can I also ask that any absences or appointments are reported to the school office, rather than/as well as to myself.

Self-Isolation and Remote Learning

If you need to self-isolate for any period once we return, please let me know as soon as possible so I can send some home learning tasks for you to complete. The Home Learning Google Drive will not be updated until I get notice that someone is needing to isolate. It will also be less detailed due to time restrictions once we return full time but will still cover the basic learning being taught in school for that period.

Award Winners

I will give out awards when we all return on Monday and will update this post with the winners when this has happened. It will be lovely to have an award assembly as a whole class again!

After this, we will return to our usual weekly golden, writing and maths awards given out on a Friday.

World Book Day Gallery

FInally, here are some pictures of our wonderful costumes from World Book Day. The children looked amazing!