Please click on the button below to find a selection of learning activities for you to complete at home, if you are currently self-isolating.
Polar Bear class is part of Reception in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) with 30 fabulous children. We are taught by our class teacher, Miss Hutchinson and Mrs Homer is our lovely teaching assistant. Every other Wednesday, the wonderful Miss Martin will be teaching us due to Miss Hutchinson’s planning, preparation and assessment time (PPA), therefore, she will be out of the classroom all day.
On our webpage, you will find regular updates on our learning and useful information. Alongside our webpage, please see our class ‘Dojo’ for our regularly updated class stories and any new messages.
Please keep visiting the 'Parents' tab regularly, to view Mrs Houseman’s new updates and information.
If you have any questions or any concerns, you are very welcome to message me through 'Dojo' or via my school email: ahutchinson@dovedale.derbyshire.sch.uk.
Kind regards, Miss Hutchinson.
Summer 2
Summer 1
30th April - Lorenzo
7th May - Olivia
14th May - Isaac
21st May - Alice
27th May - Joseph
Spring 2
20th March - Ashleigh
27th March - Ben
Autumn 2
13th November - Lucas
20th November - Mila
27th November - Alex
4th December - Indie
11th December - Dakota
18th December - James
Autumn 1
25th September - Evelyn
2nd October - Noah
9th October - Ava
16th October - Emily
23rd October - Ellia
Well done to all of you! You are super Polar Bear role models!
A BIG well done to all our Home learner superstars and EleBears too!
We have adopted a polar bear from the WWF!
In Early Years, we teach our children the importance of caring for animals and our world around us!
We will receive updates and information from WWF and have received our very own 'Polo' the polar bear. Each week, our REACH star will take Polo home for the weekend to have lots of adventures with and write about them in Polo's journal. On Monday, we share all the weekend fun together!
Hello and welcome to Summer 2!
We hope you had a lovely break filled with family adventures in the beautiful sunshine!
Our knowledge block for this half term is ‘Paddington and his great big adventure!’ where we will focus on different places Paddington visits and the people who help us in these places! Please see above for our key questioning and what we hope to find out in our learning!
In Literacy, we will be focusing on a range of quality books (please see above on our front cover) which our learning will encompass. We will be providing many writing opportunities which includes creating letters to send to Paddington and writing invitations to our Teddy Bear’s picnic! Additionally, we will be continuing to develop our storytelling skills and writing skills based on stories, using our ‘Talk for Writing’ initiative. We will be making predictions, identifying the characters and the story settings and changing these aspects to our own ideas and continuing our understanding of story structure.
In the children’s writing, we will be encouraging the children to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops consistently. We will be challenging the children to extend their sentences with connectives and encouraging the children to checking their sentences. We will additionally be encouraging the children to use upper- and lower-case letters correctly which is developed further through our Handwriting sessions.
In phonics, some children will be consolidating phase 3 and progressing to phase 4. Majority of the children will continue with phase 3 learning and some children will be consolidating phase 2 learning.
In our Maths learning, we will be continuing to develop our addition and subtraction skills, using both the part-part whole model and ten frames. We will also be looking at patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, doubling and halving.
In our PE sessions, we will continue to focus on ball skills to ensure children are showing increasing control when throwing, catching, and kicking. We will also be focussing on our teamwork and preparation for Sports day by developing our multi-skills!
Please see our Knowledge Organiser above to see our learning in: Understanding the World, Expressive Arts and Design, Personal Social and Emotional Development and Religious Education. This will be available very soon!
WOW! A very busy and exciting term ahead in our last EYFS term together!
Please continue to see Dojo for updates and celebrations of our learning through the term!
Many thanks, Miss Hutchinson.
Our new learning: Paddington and his great, big adventure!
Paddington sends a message to EYFS for our Literacy Learning!
Hello and welcome to Summer 1. We hope you have had a lovely Easter and are looking forward to the Summer term!
Our knowledge block for this half term is 'Land, sea, where will the animal be?' where we will focus on animals and their habitats such as farm animals, sea creatures and jungle critters.
We will be focusing on using maps when reading 'What the Ladybird Heard' by Julia Donaldson. The children should be able to identify objects on the map from the story, add to it and use positional language to extend their understanding. They will then move this knowledge into our school and outdoor area to find clues from around the outdoor space by locating them on the map.
When looking at animals under the sea we will be looking at floating and sinking as well as comparing countries that are similar and different to our own.
In Maths we will be recapping on pattern and 3D shape and moving on to look at number bonds, length and using the part, part whole method to represent numbers up to 20.
In expressive arts and design we will be looking at representing animal faces along with movement to music showing expression through art and dance.
In literacy, we are focusing on writing with a capital letter and full stop, as well as using upper and lowercase letters correctly. We will do this based around the stories that we choose for each area.
In phonics a majority of the class are working on phase 3 phonics and some are recapping these sounds as well as some phase 2 sounds.
An exciting term ahead!
Our learning this term is focused around the title, ‘Get set, Grow!’. We will be learning about growing different seeds, bulbs and vegetables and caring for them, finding out about the biggest vegetable ever grown and different plants that fruit come from and even some special caterpillar friends will be visiting us so we can see the changes as they grow!
Within Literacy, we will focus on quality books (please see above), which are learning will encompass. We will be making predictions linking to our knowledge about seasons and plants, labelling plants, creating a poem about the importance of caring for living things and creating a fruit diary. We will also be applying our storytelling skills using the ‘Talk for Writing’ initiative to further our understanding about story structure, characters and settings. Mother's Day is also nearly here so the children will be reflecting on why our mummy's are so important and writing a lovely letter to say why!
Within our maths learning, we will be building on our understanding of number and quantity by exploring larger numbers and how these can be represented and developing our understanding of number bonds using ten frames and the part-part whole model.
Additionally, we will be exploring texture of materials in greater depth and developing our understanding of colour by thinking about its purpose and how they can make us feel. We will even by listening to music and thinking about what colour it represents!
In RE, we will be thinking about how different places make us feel and the reasons why and then exploring how there are special places for people of different faiths.
WOW! Lots of exciting learning ahead, we best get growing! (Sorry! It had to be done!).
Our learning this term is focused around Dinosaurs and then moving onto Fantasy. We will focus on the books; If I had a Dinosaur by Alex Barrow, Zog and the Flying Doctors and The Girl, the Bear and the Magic shoes by Julia Donaldson.
Within Literacy, we will be thinking about what we would do if we had a dinosaur and describing dinosaurs with adjectives. We will then be creating a wanted poster, sequencing stories and sending a postcard.
Within maths, we will be developing our understanding of shape, sequencing our routines and exploring weight and capacity.
Additionally, in Expressive Arts and Design, we will be exploring textures and how they feel. We will be creating our own Kadinsky inspired dinosaur artworks and printing using forks!
Hello to you all,
A few updates about the upcoming Christmas weeks!
Our Christmas production is underway! It will be set up on school money to purchase for £5 on Friday the 4th December. The password will be then sent to you the week after when it is recorded and ready to view.
Regarding outfits for the production, could we please ask if your child is a narrator to bring into school in a named carrier bag by this Friday, a Christmas jumper (preferably), Christmas dress or shirt, ready for when we film the Production. I will ensure these are returned by next Friday the 11th of December . All other costumes will be provided by ourselves.
On Friday the 11th of December it is Christmas Jumper day and the children are welcome to wear something festive on this day. This could be as simple as a tinsel crown, a festive badge, a jumper or a Christmas one-sie. If you wish to and are able to, a donation for the Save the Children charity will be collected on this day.
Regarding Christmas cards, due to the current climate, we have to place them in a box for 72 hours before we can send them home. If the children wish to send cards, please could they all be in school by Friday the 11th of December so they can be distributed the next week.
Our Christmas party will be on Thursday the 17th December where we will have some party games and a Christmas boogie! The children are welcome to come into school in their party clothes and frocks. To celebrate in full Christmas style, could all children bring 2 party food treats. that can fit in their book bag. During our party, the children will collect these to enjoy. We will provide all the children a fruit shoot to keep them refreshed for more dancing and fun!
Last but not least, it is the last chance to purchase a school tile through school money before we go and purchase them! These are painted by the children and placed in the school, and when they come to leave us in year 6 (not for a long time – don’t worry!), it is returned to them as a lovely keepsake and memory for the children.
Phew! Sorry to give you lots of information in one go! Christmas is a very busy time!
Please don’t hesitate to message me with any queries or questions J
Many thanks, Miss Hutchinson.
Our learning this half term is focused around the title, 'In a land far away'. We will be looking at traditional and fairy tales including: The Gingerbread Man, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Cinderella and then The Elves and the shoemaker.
We will focus on the skill of storytelling, following the 'Talk for Writing' initiative. It will develop their knowledge and understanding of how a story is structured (beginning, middle and end), key story language as well as learning that all stories have characters, settings and problems that may need solving
Within our maths learning, we will be developing our understanding of number and quantity in greater depth and different ways this can be represented.
We will also be carrying out the Government baseline starting from the end of week 1. This will give us a further insight of how far the children have progressed since the first few weeks and give us further targets to work from and discuss during parents evening.
Before we know it, Christmas will be here! We will be learning about the Nativity and a cheeky elf may visit our classrooms again! We will begin rehearsals for our Christmas Production which this year will be a complete original called a ‘Covid Christmas’! So please keep your eyes peeled for children to be given their parts and lines!
For the first few weeks, our main priority is to ensure all the children settle happily into school routines and make friends within the class. All the children will also be completing a range of activities which enable us to identify their current knowledge and understanding before more formal teaching commences. This will take place through our own school Baseline. The children will also be finding out about our routines and 'REACH superhero values: Respect, Enjoyment, Achievement, Challenge and Health. We will model how these look within the school environment.
We will be learning all about ourselves, our friendships and our families. We will be developing our understanding about what makes us unique from others and that's what makes us SUPER! We will share the story of 'The Colour Monster' to understand our emotions and feelings in depth and strategies to help us with some emotions.
We will additionally explore what happens when primary colours are mixed and learn how to curl paper around a pencil to create hair for our self-portraits. We will learn more about our class animals: Polar Bears and Elephants and find out their similarities and differences.
We look forward to continually getting to know your lovely children and yourselves further over the next few weeks!
Friday 4th December
Can you believe we are already on the run up to Christmas?
This week, Christmas arrived in Polar Bear class! I hope you enjoyed the video of our Christmas classroom on Dojo! The children love decorating the Christmas tree in the Gingerbread Man House and seeing who will open the door on the advent calendars. Also, the cheeky elf keeps getting to mischief and the children are enjoying spotting this and talking about their own cheeky elves at home. So far, he has made glitter angels and eat some of my chocolate! What a cheeky elf!
On Monday, the children arrived in the classroom to glitter footprints going towards our curiosity cube and lots of objects inside such as a needle, thread and tiny shoes. The children made predictions and after some discussion, we found out the footprints belong to the elves from the story ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’. This linked to the children creating some super writing about ‘What they would do if they were an elf?’ as you can see from the photos below. Together we formed a sentence, then the children worked hard to listen to all the sounds they heard in each word and then they carefully formed the letters.
We have also enjoyed class guided reading sessions using giant books! We think the Fairy Godmother from the story ‘Cinderella’ that we learned about last week, used her magic…. Bibbety bobbety boo… and made our small reading books to a giant size! We have been using our phonic skills to decode words, spotting tricky words, discussing the setting and characters, making predictions and answering lots of comprehension questions. The children have enjoyed using my character story spoons to help tell the story!
The children became brilliant storytellers to retell the story of ‘Cinderella’ using talk for writing. They are getting more and more confident with the structure, the characters and the settings and they completed some super writing about their favourite part from the story.
In maths, the children have been focussing on quantity and finding the same, one more and one less using a range of different pictures. They are really impressing me with their number work and some children are now using number lines confidently.
All the children did a fantastic job finishing their Diwali lamps as you can see from the pictures below. They carefully thought about the shape they were creating and decorated them beautifully. Please see the ‘Diwali Celebrations video’ showcasing all the learning created across the school, under the ‘Children tab’ and then ‘Dovedale videos’.
The Christmas production has been underway this week! The children are doing a fantastic job waiting for their part and listening to others. We are certainly enjoying the music and dancing included. Thank you to everyone for supporting your child to learn their lines as it really supports us with the success of the production. We are hoping to start filming next week so it won’t be long until you get to share it together!
I hope you enjoy looking at the photos below together and have a lovely weekend
Many thanks, Miss Hutchinson.
Sunday 22nd November
What a busy but fantastic two weeks we have had!
Every Monday, the children have gone into our classroom and explored our Curiosity cube to think about what story we may be learning about next. They have answered lots of questions such as; Who do you think it belongs to?, Why do you think this?, Where do you see this?, which has really deepened their thinking and I am very impressed with their articulate answers! I wonder what will appear tomorrow?
We have learned the stories, 'The Gingerbread Man', 'The Three Little Pigs' and 'Goldilocks and the three Bears' using our 'Talk for Writing' approach which as you saw from the videos on Dojo, the children did a fantastic job of becoming storytellers. They have learned about the structure of the stories and the purpose of each part, about the characters and the settings. Well done to all our Polar Bear Storytellers!
We thoroughly enjoyed going on our Welly walk to build 'houses' like the three little pigs. We thought carefully about what materials would be best and worked together in teams to build them. We also became very fast Gingerbread men running as fast as we could! The children had big smiles on their faces through the whole afternoon and we all had great fun! (I think myself and Mrs Homer had too much fun!).
The children did a fantastic job of creating poppies for the giant poppy displayed outside our school (thank you for sending plastic bottles for this) and we also created finger print poppies in red to remember the soldiers and purple to remember the animals that died in the War. The children showed so much compassion with this and wanted to create super poppies to show this. Please have a look at our window during home-time to see the fantastic job the children did!
Of course, we all thoroughly enjoyed dressing up for Children in Need! Thank you for all your donations and as you saw from the photo posted on Dojo, all the children looked super! All week we took part in Joe Wicks PE challenge for Children in Need and learned each day about Five to Thrive to support our wellbeing.
Last week, we learned about Diwali and are currently making our Diya lamps which very soon the children will be able to bring home and share with yourselves. I am very impressed with how the children have carefully shaped the salt dough and some children have thought carefully about shaping it into a raindrop shape!
As always, the children have been exploring our learning provisions in great depth which has included the children creating Mehndi patterns, practising their letter formation and applying their sounds to write words, constructing houses and wonderful places for the Three Little Pigs to live, retelling the stories in our small world, representing number and using our ICT teddy game to find how many cupcakes the teddy bear has eaten! Plus much more! I am particularly impressed how many of the children have applied their understanding of representing number and one more/one less from our maths lessons and applied it into the maths provision.
Our Government Baselines in Maths and Literacy are now finished and I was so impressed how the children listened carefully to each question and applied their learning from the last few weeks to answer the questions!
Also, it was wonderful speaking to you all for our parents meeting and talking to you about your wonderful children. Thank you again for all your support and so much positive feedback. Again, please don't hesitate to message me on Dojo if you have any further questions or queries or need any support with the next learning steps for your children that I gave you.
This week, myself and Mrs Norton are finalising our brand new and uniquely made 'Christmas play'
and we will be casting the parts this week. So please look out for the children's lines being sent home this week.
Thank you to everyone for doing lots of fantastic reading with the children at home. I can really see the children who are continually practising at home and applying their phonics skills independently. A polite reminder to please sign the children's diaries every time the children read to you so they will get their stamp and sticker for reading three times or more each week.
Thank you again for all your support and I look forward to seeing all our wonderful polar bears again tomorrow :)
Many thanks, Miss Hutchinson.
Wednesday 4th November
I know I updated you on Dojo at the end of Autumn 1 but I just wanted to share some of the fantastic learning I captured of the children exploring our learning provision at the end of last term. The children created super monsters which was inspired by the story 'The Colour Monster', used conkers to show quantity, created some super pumpkins that you may have seen on our window, used a new curling skill to create faces and explored 'Tap it' to create their own masterpieces.
I am very proud of all our wonderful Polar Bears and look forward to sharing more super learning very soon!
Our school Day
Due to the current situation, as a school we are using staggered start and end times to the day for each year group to ensure ‘bubbles’ aren’t mixed.
EYFS Morning drop off time – 9am through the Main Green Gate (near the bins).
EYFS Polar Bear class end of day pick up – 3.15pm on the playground near the grass and children will be sent from our outdoor gate.
If our Polar Bear cubs have siblings in the school, please select the earliest drop of time and let me know through ‘Dojo’ so I can arrange an adult to collect them from the correct gate.
At the end of the school day, it can be arranged for siblings to come to my classroom and be picked up with our Polar Bear cubs. Please let me and their sibling’s teacher know in advance.
School Money
You will shortly receive a text message /email about joining 'School Money'. This is our system on paying for things in school as we do not handle cash. This will include things like school milk, trips wrap-around club etc. Any questions please Dojo, email or ring the school office.
PE day
Our PE day will be every Thursday. This will include alternating indoor and outdoor PE. All PE kits will be kept on their own peg. Please can you ensure all PE clothing and footwear is labelled with your child’s full name. PE kits will be sent home every half term to be washed.
Outdoor Learning
Exploring the outdoors is a fundamental part of EYFS learning. We love to go outdoors come rain or shine, therefore, please can all children have wellies and a waterproof raincoat in school. Please can you ensure these are labelled with your child’s full name.
Water Bottles
We encourage all children to bring their own water bottles into the classrooms everyday with their full name clearly labelled on the side. Children are provided access to their own water bottles throughout the day to ensure hydration. Please could you ensure that only water is put into them and not juice! This will be returned each day to be washed and refilled for the next school day.
Milk
While the children are 4 years old, they will receive milk for free. Once your child turns 5 years old, unfortunately they will no longer receive it. If you wish for your child to continue to have milk at school, please visit: www.coolmilk.com.
Birthdays
To celebrate this special day, the birthday boy or girl can come dressed in their own clothes for the school day. If their birthday is on the weekend, they are welcome to pick the closest day to come in non-uniform!
Jewellery and Hair
To ensure the safety of your child our school policy regarding jewellery, hair and nails is as follows:-
- Jewellery can only be worn for religious purposes.
- Any recently pierced ears need to be kept covered for the advised time of six weeks.
- We recommend that children who have long hair (below their shoulders) should tie their hair back for school; however, it is essential that it is tied back for PE lessons.
- Nail varnish should be removed for the school week.
Rewards at Dovedale
At Dovedale we have a positive approach to behaviour management and use different strategies to reward positive behaviour. They are as follows: -
Smiley Chart
Both classrooms have a smiley chart. Each child starts on the green smiley face every morning and throughout the day if they show progress towards our ‘REACH Rules’, they have the opportunity to move up the chart to the silver (where a sticker will be placed on their chart) or gold smiley. The gold smiley is highly regarded and only 1 or 2 children achieve this each day. If they achieve the gold smiley they will receive a reward which may include a golden ticket or prize.
Alternatively, children who struggle to follow our ‘REACH Rules’ may have to move down on the smiley chart to have thinking time or to visit a member of SLT. This will additionally be communicated to their parents. However, they will always have the opportunity to move back up the chart before the end of the day.
If your child comes home with a smiley sticker this shows they have had a good day at school.
Sticker Charts
Children receive stickers for a wide range of reasons within the school day. As they gather stickers on their chart they will gradually be getting closer to achieving a bronze, silver and gold award. Children need to achieve 25 stickers to achieve each award.
House Points
Children across school are allocated a place in either the Gold, Sapphire, Emerald or Ruby House Team. Throughout the school day, children achieve house points for their team which are calculated at the end of every week. At the end of each half term the winning house team receives a small prize and an additional play time.
