The Buzz

I hope you enjoyed a well deserved break over the half term and are now looking forward to arguably the busiest of all the half terms in school.

We have hit the ground running and on Tuesday the first of the year 2 transition events happened with the visit of the year 3 teachers for next year. This will happen again next Tuesday with parents able to say hello at pick up. There are several more opportunities for the children to meet the staff and they will of course visit the HJS during the new class morning in July. I am personally delighted that 119 of the year 2 pupils are moving to HJS and will continue with HPP.

We will also be mixing the current reception classes to form 4 new classes for the next few years of their education here at HPP. These new classes will be announced on the morning of the HPP new class morning so parents will be able to share the excitement of this with their children.

Aspiration for the future is so important for our children and I'm pleased that so many of you will be coming into school next week to share your different roles and jobs which you have which will interest and hopefully inspire the children. As part of the week, children will be able to come to school dressed as their future role on Friday 14th June. However, due to an assembly for reception, the children in reception and nursery can dress up on Thursday 13th June.

Finally, as you know we are in the process of moving the systems in school to Arbor, please look out for a welcome email from Arbor and follow the simple instructions to log in. This will soon replace parenthub and parent pay and will be much easier for you to manage.

Have a good weekend when it arrives.

Helen Lockey

Executive Headteacher

1C, 1Y, RP had 97% attendance before we broke up for half term

1Y had no late students

It has been wonderful to welcome everybody back this week after the half term break and we are so excited for this half term of learning.

We have started learning about our new topic of 'Summer and going on a journey'. We read the story 'Somebody swallowed Stanley' and then had a discussion about looking after our beaches and the sea. We named the sea creatures we could see in the story and discussed our favourite creature and said why. We have also been thinking about ways we can recycle and practised recycling using some of the junk modelling we have.

We have been learning about capacity in maths and took our learning outside where we explored filling containers up and then emptying them. We have been using the language 'full, half full and empty'.

We have been trying really hard to write our name too and had fun drawing a picture of what we look like. We have been thinking really hard about what letters are in our name and trying to write them correctly. We are also learning to hold our pencil correctly using the tripod grip. What a fun week!

Before half term Lenny received a Certificate of Excellence for being friendly and caring.

We all know how important talking at home is for exposing children to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas. This all helps them with their reading and to become future writers. Each week we will share an idea with you for 'talk homework' with your child.

We have been reading the story 'Somebody swallowed Stanley' this week and we have been talking about how to care for the planet. At home please talk about all the different ways you help to look after the planet. Do you recycle at home? What materials can be recycled?

Our focus text this week is ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley.’ We talked about how plastic and other unnatural items can harm wildlife by being eaten or wrapped around them. We talked about plastic and litter that can cause problems in the sea and how we can reduce the amount of waste that goes into the ocean. We created ‘no plastic’ posters. We played ‘who am I’ with different sea creatures and talked about facts about different animals.

In Maths, we have been exploring 'rekenreks' for counting. We have learnt to subitize and use one finger to move the amount of beads across in one movement.

In Phonics this week, we have been continuing to practise all of our sounds. We have been looking at pictures and trying to use our phonic knowledge to sound out the word in the pictures and write them down.

We all know how important talking at home is for exposing children to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas. This all helps them with their reading and to become future writers. Each week we will share an idea with you for 'talk homework' with your child.

This week, we have embraced the summer season and chosen the text ‘Nature’s Tiny Miracle: Bee’ by Beth Hamilton to explore the journey of the bee and write a series of non-fiction statements about these amazing creatures and their importance to the planet. We then used these to write about the lifecycle of a bee, using time adverbs to sequence these in the correct order.

In science, we have been learning about minibeasts. We have discussed what minibeasts are, where they live and what they eat. We then identified different minibeasts including spiders, beetles, bees and worms and then discussed their features.

We have begun learning about fractions in maths this week. We began by recognising a half, using various representations to develop our understanding, including halving shapes and objects in different ways. We noticed that a square can be split in half vertically, horizontally or diagonally. We then looked at recognising half of different amounts before finding these using practical resources and physically putting these into two equal groups.

In design and technology, the children have enjoyed starting their new topic on mechanisms. The children have been exposed to sliders and levers and have had a go at making their own using picture scenes.

In computing, we have been looking at algorithms and programming. We have learnt that an algorithm is a set of instructions that we give to a computer, and the importance of giving these instructions in the correct order. We then practised doing this using the various tools on the toolbar in the ScratchJr programme.

This week in geography, we have been exploring the United Kingdom, looking at the four countries that make up the UK and where these are located on a map. We then put our own map of the UK together before identifying the capital city of each and matching this with the correct country.

We hope you had a lovely half term. Year 2 was full of excitement this week as each class met our new teachers for year 3 at Hampton Junior School. We had a chance to ask some questions and had a story read to us which we loved. Our teachers will be back visiting next Tuesday afternoon and will be in the playground at 3.30 if parents/carers would like to meet them briefly in the playground.

In English this week we have started a new focus text called Meerkat Mail. This is a wonderful story of a meerkat who is fed up of living in the scorching Kalahari Desert and seeks an adventure to find the perfect place to live. Throughout his adventure he sends postcards back to his family to tell them what he has found along the way. We discussed what a postcard is and why people send them before writing our own postcard back to Sunny. We are excited to find out where is the perfect place to live.

In Maths we have been learning about statistics learning about creating and interpreting tally charts and pictograms. We have drawn our own pictographs this week and thought carefully about when and why we might use charts and graphs.

In Geography we are starting our new topic of contrasting localities. We will be focusing on a water village called Kampong Ayer which is located in Brunei. This week we spoke about where Brunei is in the world, identifying it as being on the island of Borneo, in the continent of Asia. We looked at physical and human features of Brunei and learnt a little about what life is like there. We are excited to find out more and compare life in a water village to life in Hampton.

The well being and safety of our children is everyone's responsibility. If you have concerns about a child please contact SPA on 547 5008 or out of hours on 0208 744 2442.

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Email: office.hisn@hpp.school
Website: hpp.school
Location: Hampton Infant School and Nursery, Ripley Road, Hampton, UK
Phone: 0208 979 1815