Year 2 at Heron Hill School
GENERAL INFORMATION
Pre-coronavirus information:
Start of the School Day
Please bring your child to the Upper Junior playground, via the entrance near Nursery and wait with your child outside Mrs Hudson’s classroom door from 8.45 am. The doors will open at 8.50 am. If it is raining heavily, the doors will be open for the children from 8.45 am.
We will begin the year very gently, settling the children in and focusing on their well-being and establishing routines so that children are happy and relaxed in their new classes and get to know their new teachers.
End of the School Day
Parents/carers of Mrs Hudson’s Outerside pupils should collect them from the classroom door on the Upper Junior playground. You can wait in the playground from 3.10 pm. Miss Dollard’s Yewbarrow parents/carers should wait just inside the metal pedestrian gate then collect your child from their classroom door on the Reception playground.
Snacks for Morning Break
Fresh fruit is provided for all infant children through the ‘Fruit for Schools’ scheme. There is no need to bring any other snack.
Lunch, Water and Milk
Please provide your child with a water bottle, clearly labelled with their name on it. Only water should be in the bottles, no juice/squash, etc. Research supports the need for water to refresh the brain.
School milk is available on a daily basis at a cost of approximately 23p a day (but you need to pay termly). If your child would like to have milk, email www.coolmilk.com
School meals should be ordered online by 9.30 am on the day and can be booked up to 3 weeks in advance. Our school kitchen prepares hot meals on site, providing 3 meal choices each day, including a vegetarian option. Meals cost £2.50 per day. Please remember to cancel your child’s school meal by 9.30 am if they are unwell or you will be charged for the meal. Contact the school office if you have lost or forgotten your log-in details.
Please put a cool pack inside the lunchbox during warm weather and clearly label the lunchbox with your child’s name.
Parental Involvement
We are always pleased if parents/grandparents would like to help and be involved in classroom activities. If you are able to offer your time, please fill in and return the school helper’s form or see your child’s class teacher. This will not be possible initially due to Covid-19 regulations.
Jumpers and Clothing
Please ensure ALL of your children’s clothing is clearly and permanently labelled (pen often washes out).
Physical Education
Outdoor PE lesson: Thursday afternoon
Indoor PE lesson: Friday afternoon
PE Kit
Plain white t-shirt
Dark blue or black shorts – not lycra/tight fitting or very short - no skorts
Socks
Plain black or dark blue sweatshirt, fleece or jumper
Tracksuit bottoms
Trainers
Please note that children are not allowed to wear any jewellery, including earrings, for PE. Earrings should be removed before coming to school on PE days (Thursdays and Fridays) as staff are not allowed to take them out. The school’s policy on jewellery is in accordance with Cumbria County Council’s policy which is that no jewellery should be worn in school apart from simple, working watches. If you are planning to have your child’s ears pierced please do so at the beginning of the summer holidays so that the earrings are able to be removed before returning to school in September.
Uniform and Uniform Swap
Please label everything with your child’s name. A full description of the school uniform is on the school website. An outdoor stall will be arranged on specific days if you wish to purchase anything from the school such as sweatshirts or cardigans (currently £9.00) or book bags (£4.50). The office will remind you of these days.
In order to promote recycling and re-using uniform, Friends of Heron Hill run a uniform swap on a termly basis. Items are free but if you wish, you may choose to make a small donation (which goes towards funding school visits and special events for children across the school). This is a very popular way to keep uniform costs down; watch out for information via Parentmail. You can also request items by emailing admin@heronhill,cumbria.sch.uk. If we have uniform items in stock, we will be delighted to pass them on.
Home-School Book
Please use the yellow home-school book for reading comments and to pass on any messages if you are not able to see the teacher personally. For reading, please record the date, title of book, the page your child has read to and any comment you feel is relevant, on the left hand page. Please ensure your child tells us when there is an important message in this book as we do not check home-school books every day. Your child’s teacher will also use the book to communicate other information. We would be really pleased to hear of any comments your child makes about things they have enjoyed at school and about any specific progress you notice. Please use the book for this purpose too.
Meeting with Staff
If you want to speak to a member of staff, please telephone or email the office. Staff will not be able to meet with parents to receive messages on the playground before school.
Parent Consultation Evenings
You will be notified about the arrangements we will put in place in order to discuss your child’s termly report.
Home Learning
If your child brings home a home learning task, please support them in completing the activity.
READING GUIDE
Books
Your child will experience a wide range of books in school, both fiction and non-fiction. At any one time your child will have two or more reading scheme books, appropriate to their level, to read at home. Please encourage your child to read their scheme books to you and discuss the storyline, pictures and their enjoyment of what they have read. School reading scheme books should be read two or three times each to gain fluency and full understanding. It is just as important to read books to your child and discuss the stories or content or to share the reading, letting the child join in with repeated phrases or parts of the book they can manage.
Please record in the home-school reading record book when you hear your child read, with comments on fluency, understanding, intonation and expression, if appropriate.
Teachers hear all children read each week during a focused small group Guided Reading session. In addition to this, the children will read individually to teachers, teaching assistants and other adult helpers in school. It is very important that teachers and parents work together so that our children become enthusiastic, confident readers by the end of Year 2. We do encourage the children to change their books on their own so please remind your child to swap them once they have read all their books.
READING AT HOME
Please try to put aside a regular period of about 10 minutes a day to read with your child.
The following are guidelines to help your child read at home:
When children are reading encourage them to:
If your child is struggling, join in and read together. Always remain positive, patient and relaxed.
If your child is reading with some fluency look for:
Comprehension
It is vital that children not only read fluently but have a clear understanding of the text. They will need to be able to extract information and discuss preferences and underlying meanings of what they have read by the end of Year 2. So please do not just ask them to retell the story but ask specific questions, eg
Most importantly, enjoy this reading time with your child.
Spellings
You can help your child at home by ensuring they practise the sounds they are learning in phonics each week and can spell the Common Exception words for Year 1 and 2.
The Common Exception Spellings:
Year 1
the, a, do, to, today, of,
said, says, are, were, was, his,
has, I, you, your, they, be,
he, me, she, we, no, go,
so, by, my, here, there, where,
love, come, some, one, once, ask,
friend, school, put, push, pull, full,
house, our, is,
Year 2
door, floor, poor, because, find, mind,
behind, child, children, wild, climb, most,
only, both, old, cold, gold, hold,
told, every, everybody, even, great, break,
steak, pretty, beautiful, after, fast, last,
past, father, class, grass, pass, plant,
path, hour, move, prove, improve, sure,
sugar, eye, could, should, would, who,
whole, any, many, clothes, busy, people,
water, again, Christmas, money, Mr, Mrs,
parents, half, kind, bath
Plus: days of the week; months of the year; numbers to twenty; common colour words; pupil’s name and address; name and address of school.
Children will be taught to read and spell these words.
Ways to Support your Child with Writing in Year 2
The writing skills we focus on throughout Year 2 are listed in the ‘End of Year Expectation’ booklet. It is important to remember that children progress at different rates and every child is different.
The most crucial thing is to encourage and praise all of children’s attempts at writing and to involve them in enjoying writing lists, party invitations, Christmas cards etc at home. Your child’s teacher will discuss specific writing targets with you during parent consultations.
Year 2 Writing
Vocabulary (adjectives and adverbs)
We encourage the children to look for and collect words that describe settings, characters and movement, etc. We discuss their meaning, their effectiveness in the story and how they could use the same and similar words in their writing. We encourage children to use ambitious adventurous vocabulary. Though their spelling may not be accurate, these words enhance writing and make it even more enjoyable for the reader.
Conjunctions
These are words that are used to extend a sentence and enable children to develop their sentence construction, eg and, but, also, when, with, so, as, although, however, despite.
Time conjunctions: First, next, after that, later, then, finally etc are used to vary sentences openings and to write structured recounts.
Openers
We encourage your child to begin sentences in different ways using a range of openers or adverbs, eg Suddenly, Meanwhile, Eventually, Finally, At last, Soon, Slowly, Quietly, Hurriedly, Cautiously, Curiously.
Punctuation
We focus on the importance of punctuation and how to use it effectively in writing. In Year 2 we particularly focus on capital letters and full stops, question marks, exclamation marks, commas and inverted commas, possessive apostrophes and apostrophes to mark the omission of letters (contractions).
Handwriting
Letter and number formation are taught weekly and once children have mastered these they begin to join their letters cursively. Please encourage them to make capital letters and ascending letters taller (b, d, h, k, l, t) and to ensure that the letters g, p, q and y sit on (and not above) the line. Letter and number formation sheets were sent home in Year 1; please ask if you would like another copy.
Targets
Children will work on class and personal targets and should be able to tell you their current targets, which are recorded in their Writing and Maths books.
MATHS
To become successful mathematicians, children need to develop their thinking skills, their ability to use mental strategies and be able to apply their mathematical knowledge. Ideally, we are also trying to encourage children to enjoy maths – to have fun with numbers.
Spread the message: MATHS IS FUN!!
Maths Toolkits
These are available to buy from the school office for £4.00 and enable parents to support their children’s Maths development at home. Once your child has a toolkit, they will use it throughout their time at Heron Hill. They include practical maths resources, more ideas for maths games to play at home, maths websites and teaching approaches to calculation (Year 1-6).
Maths Facts
The following tables show key number facts that we will help your child to learn during Years 1 and 2. Children should be encouraged to use their fingers, counters or other practical materials to count and work out totals.
Please refer to the school’s website for more information on Maths calculation methods and for useful websites to support your child’s mathematical development.
Learn Its
In Year 2 we will consolidate the Reception and Year 1 Learn Its:
1 + 1 = 2 2 + 2 = 4 3 + 3 = 6 4 + 4 = 8
5 + 5 = 10 2 + 1 = 3 2 + 3 = 5 1 + 9 = 10
2 + 8 = 10 3 + 7 = 10 4 + 6 = 10 7 + 2 = 9
9 + 2 = 11 4 + 3 = 7 5 + 3 = 8 6 + 3 = 9
6 + 6 = 12 7 + 7 = 14 8 + 8 = 16 9 + 9 = 18
4 + 2 = 6 5 + 2 = 7 6 + 2 = 8
Plus counting in multiples of 2, 5 and 10 to the 12th multiple.
We will also learn the Year 2 Learn Its:
Near double facts
5+4=9 5+6=11 6+7=13 8+7=15 8+9=17
Adding 7, adding 8, adding 9
4 + 7 = 11 4 + 8 = 12 4 + 9 = 11 3 + 8 = 11
3 + 9 = 12 5 + 4 = 9 5 + 6 = 11 6 + 7 = 13
8 + 7 = 15 8 + 9 = 17 5 + 7 = 12 5 + 8 = 13
6 + 8 = 14 5 + 9 = 14 6 + 9 = 15 7 + 9 = 16
Plus counting in multiples of 3, 4 and 6 to the 12th multiple.
The Learn Its your child is focussing on will be sent home in their home-school book.
Pre-coronavirus information:
Start of the School Day
Please bring your child to the Upper Junior playground, via the entrance near Nursery and wait with your child outside Mrs Hudson’s classroom door from 8.45 am. The doors will open at 8.50 am. If it is raining heavily, the doors will be open for the children from 8.45 am.
We will begin the year very gently, settling the children in and focusing on their well-being and establishing routines so that children are happy and relaxed in their new classes and get to know their new teachers.
End of the School Day
Parents/carers of Mrs Hudson’s Outerside pupils should collect them from the classroom door on the Upper Junior playground. You can wait in the playground from 3.10 pm. Miss Dollard’s Yewbarrow parents/carers should wait just inside the metal pedestrian gate then collect your child from their classroom door on the Reception playground.
Snacks for Morning Break
Fresh fruit is provided for all infant children through the ‘Fruit for Schools’ scheme. There is no need to bring any other snack.
Lunch, Water and Milk
Please provide your child with a water bottle, clearly labelled with their name on it. Only water should be in the bottles, no juice/squash, etc. Research supports the need for water to refresh the brain.
School milk is available on a daily basis at a cost of approximately 23p a day (but you need to pay termly). If your child would like to have milk, email www.coolmilk.com
School meals should be ordered online by 9.30 am on the day and can be booked up to 3 weeks in advance. Our school kitchen prepares hot meals on site, providing 3 meal choices each day, including a vegetarian option. Meals cost £2.50 per day. Please remember to cancel your child’s school meal by 9.30 am if they are unwell or you will be charged for the meal. Contact the school office if you have lost or forgotten your log-in details.
Please put a cool pack inside the lunchbox during warm weather and clearly label the lunchbox with your child’s name.
Parental Involvement
We are always pleased if parents/grandparents would like to help and be involved in classroom activities. If you are able to offer your time, please fill in and return the school helper’s form or see your child’s class teacher. This will not be possible initially due to Covid-19 regulations.
Jumpers and Clothing
Please ensure ALL of your children’s clothing is clearly and permanently labelled (pen often washes out).
Physical Education
- Indoor and outdoor PE kit is required; children should wear their kit to school on their PE days. For personal hygiene reasons, school sweatshirts and polo shirts, lycra shorts, tight fitting shorts and tights cannot to be worn for PE. No skorts. No designer labels or logos on kit, please.
- For safety, hair must be tied up – no headbands for PE.
- Trainers should only be worn on PE day, black school shoes at all other times please. Plain black, white or grey socks.
- Everything must be named.
Outdoor PE lesson: Thursday afternoon
Indoor PE lesson: Friday afternoon
PE Kit
Plain white t-shirt
Dark blue or black shorts – not lycra/tight fitting or very short - no skorts
Socks
Plain black or dark blue sweatshirt, fleece or jumper
Tracksuit bottoms
Trainers
Please note that children are not allowed to wear any jewellery, including earrings, for PE. Earrings should be removed before coming to school on PE days (Thursdays and Fridays) as staff are not allowed to take them out. The school’s policy on jewellery is in accordance with Cumbria County Council’s policy which is that no jewellery should be worn in school apart from simple, working watches. If you are planning to have your child’s ears pierced please do so at the beginning of the summer holidays so that the earrings are able to be removed before returning to school in September.
Uniform and Uniform Swap
Please label everything with your child’s name. A full description of the school uniform is on the school website. An outdoor stall will be arranged on specific days if you wish to purchase anything from the school such as sweatshirts or cardigans (currently £9.00) or book bags (£4.50). The office will remind you of these days.
In order to promote recycling and re-using uniform, Friends of Heron Hill run a uniform swap on a termly basis. Items are free but if you wish, you may choose to make a small donation (which goes towards funding school visits and special events for children across the school). This is a very popular way to keep uniform costs down; watch out for information via Parentmail. You can also request items by emailing admin@heronhill,cumbria.sch.uk. If we have uniform items in stock, we will be delighted to pass them on.
Home-School Book
Please use the yellow home-school book for reading comments and to pass on any messages if you are not able to see the teacher personally. For reading, please record the date, title of book, the page your child has read to and any comment you feel is relevant, on the left hand page. Please ensure your child tells us when there is an important message in this book as we do not check home-school books every day. Your child’s teacher will also use the book to communicate other information. We would be really pleased to hear of any comments your child makes about things they have enjoyed at school and about any specific progress you notice. Please use the book for this purpose too.
Meeting with Staff
If you want to speak to a member of staff, please telephone or email the office. Staff will not be able to meet with parents to receive messages on the playground before school.
Parent Consultation Evenings
You will be notified about the arrangements we will put in place in order to discuss your child’s termly report.
Home Learning
If your child brings home a home learning task, please support them in completing the activity.
READING GUIDE
Books
Your child will experience a wide range of books in school, both fiction and non-fiction. At any one time your child will have two or more reading scheme books, appropriate to their level, to read at home. Please encourage your child to read their scheme books to you and discuss the storyline, pictures and their enjoyment of what they have read. School reading scheme books should be read two or three times each to gain fluency and full understanding. It is just as important to read books to your child and discuss the stories or content or to share the reading, letting the child join in with repeated phrases or parts of the book they can manage.
Please record in the home-school reading record book when you hear your child read, with comments on fluency, understanding, intonation and expression, if appropriate.
Teachers hear all children read each week during a focused small group Guided Reading session. In addition to this, the children will read individually to teachers, teaching assistants and other adult helpers in school. It is very important that teachers and parents work together so that our children become enthusiastic, confident readers by the end of Year 2. We do encourage the children to change their books on their own so please remind your child to swap them once they have read all their books.
READING AT HOME
Please try to put aside a regular period of about 10 minutes a day to read with your child.
The following are guidelines to help your child read at home:
- read stories together
- talk about the story together, discussing characters, key events, etc
- let your children see you reading
- make shopping lists together
- help your children to read signs and labels when out together
- visit the library together and help them to choose suitable books
- share songs and rhymes
- listen to CDs of books and songs
- discuss films or television programmes with them.
When children are reading encourage them to:
- use initial sounds
- sound out whole words
- use picture clues
- make a sensible guess
- re-read a sentence for sense, or if mistakes have been made.
If your child is struggling, join in and read together. Always remain positive, patient and relaxed.
If your child is reading with some fluency look for:
- correct phrasing
- taking note of punctuation
- change of pace
- use of speaking voices
- use of expression/intonation
- full comprehension of the text.
Comprehension
It is vital that children not only read fluently but have a clear understanding of the text. They will need to be able to extract information and discuss preferences and underlying meanings of what they have read by the end of Year 2. So please do not just ask them to retell the story but ask specific questions, eg
- What is happening here?
- What might happen next?
- Can you think of a different ending?
- Why do think that happened?
- Why did the character (use the name of the character) act like this?
Most importantly, enjoy this reading time with your child.
Spellings
You can help your child at home by ensuring they practise the sounds they are learning in phonics each week and can spell the Common Exception words for Year 1 and 2.
The Common Exception Spellings:
Year 1
the, a, do, to, today, of,
said, says, are, were, was, his,
has, I, you, your, they, be,
he, me, she, we, no, go,
so, by, my, here, there, where,
love, come, some, one, once, ask,
friend, school, put, push, pull, full,
house, our, is,
Year 2
door, floor, poor, because, find, mind,
behind, child, children, wild, climb, most,
only, both, old, cold, gold, hold,
told, every, everybody, even, great, break,
steak, pretty, beautiful, after, fast, last,
past, father, class, grass, pass, plant,
path, hour, move, prove, improve, sure,
sugar, eye, could, should, would, who,
whole, any, many, clothes, busy, people,
water, again, Christmas, money, Mr, Mrs,
parents, half, kind, bath
Plus: days of the week; months of the year; numbers to twenty; common colour words; pupil’s name and address; name and address of school.
Children will be taught to read and spell these words.
Ways to Support your Child with Writing in Year 2
The writing skills we focus on throughout Year 2 are listed in the ‘End of Year Expectation’ booklet. It is important to remember that children progress at different rates and every child is different.
The most crucial thing is to encourage and praise all of children’s attempts at writing and to involve them in enjoying writing lists, party invitations, Christmas cards etc at home. Your child’s teacher will discuss specific writing targets with you during parent consultations.
Year 2 Writing
- In Year 2 children will gain experience of many different kinds of writing throughout the year, including story writing, letters, recounts of trips, non-fiction skills such as writing captions, labelling and writing their own facts.
- Over the year, your child will become very familiar with the terms ‘vocabulary, conjunctions, openers and punctuation’. We focus heavily on grammatical terms, what they mean and how they can use them effectively to improve their writing. The following skills, used effectively, can have the largest impact on their writing:
Vocabulary (adjectives and adverbs)
We encourage the children to look for and collect words that describe settings, characters and movement, etc. We discuss their meaning, their effectiveness in the story and how they could use the same and similar words in their writing. We encourage children to use ambitious adventurous vocabulary. Though their spelling may not be accurate, these words enhance writing and make it even more enjoyable for the reader.
Conjunctions
These are words that are used to extend a sentence and enable children to develop their sentence construction, eg and, but, also, when, with, so, as, although, however, despite.
Time conjunctions: First, next, after that, later, then, finally etc are used to vary sentences openings and to write structured recounts.
Openers
We encourage your child to begin sentences in different ways using a range of openers or adverbs, eg Suddenly, Meanwhile, Eventually, Finally, At last, Soon, Slowly, Quietly, Hurriedly, Cautiously, Curiously.
Punctuation
We focus on the importance of punctuation and how to use it effectively in writing. In Year 2 we particularly focus on capital letters and full stops, question marks, exclamation marks, commas and inverted commas, possessive apostrophes and apostrophes to mark the omission of letters (contractions).
Handwriting
Letter and number formation are taught weekly and once children have mastered these they begin to join their letters cursively. Please encourage them to make capital letters and ascending letters taller (b, d, h, k, l, t) and to ensure that the letters g, p, q and y sit on (and not above) the line. Letter and number formation sheets were sent home in Year 1; please ask if you would like another copy.
Targets
Children will work on class and personal targets and should be able to tell you their current targets, which are recorded in their Writing and Maths books.
MATHS
To become successful mathematicians, children need to develop their thinking skills, their ability to use mental strategies and be able to apply their mathematical knowledge. Ideally, we are also trying to encourage children to enjoy maths – to have fun with numbers.
Spread the message: MATHS IS FUN!!
Maths Toolkits
These are available to buy from the school office for £4.00 and enable parents to support their children’s Maths development at home. Once your child has a toolkit, they will use it throughout their time at Heron Hill. They include practical maths resources, more ideas for maths games to play at home, maths websites and teaching approaches to calculation (Year 1-6).
Maths Facts
The following tables show key number facts that we will help your child to learn during Years 1 and 2. Children should be encouraged to use their fingers, counters or other practical materials to count and work out totals.
Please refer to the school’s website for more information on Maths calculation methods and for useful websites to support your child’s mathematical development.
Learn Its
In Year 2 we will consolidate the Reception and Year 1 Learn Its:
1 + 1 = 2 2 + 2 = 4 3 + 3 = 6 4 + 4 = 8
5 + 5 = 10 2 + 1 = 3 2 + 3 = 5 1 + 9 = 10
2 + 8 = 10 3 + 7 = 10 4 + 6 = 10 7 + 2 = 9
9 + 2 = 11 4 + 3 = 7 5 + 3 = 8 6 + 3 = 9
6 + 6 = 12 7 + 7 = 14 8 + 8 = 16 9 + 9 = 18
4 + 2 = 6 5 + 2 = 7 6 + 2 = 8
Plus counting in multiples of 2, 5 and 10 to the 12th multiple.
We will also learn the Year 2 Learn Its:
Near double facts
5+4=9 5+6=11 6+7=13 8+7=15 8+9=17
Adding 7, adding 8, adding 9
4 + 7 = 11 4 + 8 = 12 4 + 9 = 11 3 + 8 = 11
3 + 9 = 12 5 + 4 = 9 5 + 6 = 11 6 + 7 = 13
8 + 7 = 15 8 + 9 = 17 5 + 7 = 12 5 + 8 = 13
6 + 8 = 14 5 + 9 = 14 6 + 9 = 15 7 + 9 = 16
Plus counting in multiples of 3, 4 and 6 to the 12th multiple.
The Learn Its your child is focussing on will be sent home in their home-school book.
Behaviour/Reward System
Key Stage 1 classes operate the Sun/Raincloud/Thundercloud system and Golden Time treats. Every child starts each new day on the sun. If a child has behaved in a way that means their name has been moved onto the thundercloud at any time during the week, they will lose some of their Golden Time (an extra five minutes play on Friday afternoon). Classes can also earn an extra Golden Time afternoon reward by collecting 50 marbles in a jar. Children can earn stickers or house points for making an extra effort with their class work, for showing consideration to others or for being extra helpful.
Spoken Language (Speaking and Listening)
This is a vital part of English and maths. A child cannot be expected to write about something unless they are able to talk about it. We give the children lots of opportunities to share their experiences throughout the whole curriculum – through paired, group and whole class speaking. We also give the children opportunities to listen both to us and to one another. Listening can be hardest thing to learn for many children!
Spoken Language (Speaking and Listening)
This is a vital part of English and Maths. A child cannot be expected to write about something unless they are able to talk about it. We give the children lots of opportunities to share their experiences throughout the whole curriculum – through paired, group and whole class speaking. We also give the children opportunities to listen both to us and to one another. Listening can be hardest thing to learn for many children!
Family Group Point System
All children at Heron Hill are put into one of four ‘family groups’ which are named after Kendal’s bridges – Miller, Nether, Romney and Victoria. The children stay in this family group through their Heron Hill years and will be in the same family group as their brothers and/or sisters. Once a term we will have a family day, when the children will work on a special topic with other children from their family group, who will be from years Reception to Year 6. When children are rewarded for good work or behaviour, the point will go towards their family group and at a half-termly assembly the family group with the most points is celebrated. Points from sports days and other activities also go towards the family group. Whole school family days will be dependent on current Government guidelines in relation to Covid-19.
Key Stage 1 classes operate the Sun/Raincloud/Thundercloud system and Golden Time treats. Every child starts each new day on the sun. If a child has behaved in a way that means their name has been moved onto the thundercloud at any time during the week, they will lose some of their Golden Time (an extra five minutes play on Friday afternoon). Classes can also earn an extra Golden Time afternoon reward by collecting 50 marbles in a jar. Children can earn stickers or house points for making an extra effort with their class work, for showing consideration to others or for being extra helpful.
Spoken Language (Speaking and Listening)
This is a vital part of English and maths. A child cannot be expected to write about something unless they are able to talk about it. We give the children lots of opportunities to share their experiences throughout the whole curriculum – through paired, group and whole class speaking. We also give the children opportunities to listen both to us and to one another. Listening can be hardest thing to learn for many children!
Spoken Language (Speaking and Listening)
This is a vital part of English and Maths. A child cannot be expected to write about something unless they are able to talk about it. We give the children lots of opportunities to share their experiences throughout the whole curriculum – through paired, group and whole class speaking. We also give the children opportunities to listen both to us and to one another. Listening can be hardest thing to learn for many children!
Family Group Point System
All children at Heron Hill are put into one of four ‘family groups’ which are named after Kendal’s bridges – Miller, Nether, Romney and Victoria. The children stay in this family group through their Heron Hill years and will be in the same family group as their brothers and/or sisters. Once a term we will have a family day, when the children will work on a special topic with other children from their family group, who will be from years Reception to Year 6. When children are rewarded for good work or behaviour, the point will go towards their family group and at a half-termly assembly the family group with the most points is celebrated. Points from sports days and other activities also go towards the family group. Whole school family days will be dependent on current Government guidelines in relation to Covid-19.
