Class News

Spring 1: Week 1

Happy New Year to all of our wonderful Reception families! We hope you had a lovely break and are feeling refreshed, recharged, and ready for an exciting half-term ahead!

Living & Learning
On Monday, we talked about how we can respect ourselves. Mrs Boulton shared lots of different examples of how we can look after our bodies, make good choices, and feel proud of who we are. Some of the children were eager to share how they respect themselves.

Ar – I respect myself when I don’t want to play someone’s game and I choose a different game to play with different people or I sit by myself.
Fin – I wear my helmet when I ride my bike.
Oy – I hold the railings when I walk to school to keep myself safe.
Meh – I respect myself when I cross the road and wait for the green light.

Maths
This week, we’ve been using our “fast eyes” to practise subitising (recognising quantities without counting) using more complex dot arrangements. The children looked carefully at the dots, took a “picture” with their eyes, closed their eyes, and then explained what they saw. We used spatial language to describe the arrangements, for example:
“There are 3 dots on the top and 2 dots on the bottom.”

Help at home:
Draw some linear and paired dot arrangements similar to the ones below for numbers 3 to 6.
Ask your child to:

1. Take a picture with their eyes
2. Close their eyes
3. Explain the arrangement
   They could even try drawing it in the air.

Literacy
Our focus story for the first two weeks is Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. On Wednesday, we talked about what we would do if we found a penguin. Some of the children’s ideas were:

If I found a penguin, I would…

Give it a hug
Ask Mummy to draw a map to help the penguin find its home
Make a cold area in the house
Help the penguin find its mummy
Be a good friend to the penguin

We’ve also been learning about Antarctica. We located England and Antarctica on a map, watched a clip from Frozen Planet, and discussed the differences between the climate in England and Antarctica.

Our word of the week was iceberg. We looked at pictures of icebergs and talked about what an iceberg is.
Help at home:
Ask your child if they can remember what an iceberg is.

Next week, we’re looking forward to learning more about winter and colder regions.

Take a look at some of this week’s winter learning in the areas of provision.
Reminder

• Library session has moved to Fridays
  Please make sure your child’s library book is returned every Friday.
• Every Thursday, we write in your child’s reading record. Please make sure you write a comment in your child’s reading record for us to celebrate in school.
• Phonics Phase 3 Stay & Learn – Wednesday 4th February
  9:00–9:20am – Phase 3 phonics presentation
  9:25–10:00am – Watch a Phase 3 phonics lesson
  Due to limited space, one adult per child may attend.

New class novel

The children have voted for their new class novel…

Anglo-Saxon Boy by Tony Bradman

It links directly to our new history topic: Romans and Anglo-Saxons.

Help at home: Read this blurb and information about the book.

An action-packed Anglo-Saxon tale of one boy’s journey to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

The story of one Anglo-Saxon boy’s journey to the Battle of Hastings in 1066: Key Stage 2 History brought to life as battle-packed adventure.
1065: Magnus is the son of Harold Godwinson, lord of the Southern Saxons and ruthlessly ambitious claimant to the throne of England. Overnight, Magnus finds himself cast centre-stage in the blood-soaked family feud that led to one of history’s most famous battles.
This is the family tragedy behind 1066: live it with Magnus, as the wolves of history close in on his Anglo-Saxon boyhood.

Reading: Viking Boy

This week in Reading, we have been focussing on our new class novel for this term: Viking Boy by Tony Bradman.

Today, we created Top Trumps cards about the characters that we have met so far. We used our retrieval and inference skills. Retrieval to create a fact file about the person and inference to rate them in each category (strength, bravery, Viking skill, loyalty and importance to the story).

We then played a game of Top Trumps. The children really enjoyed it!

Help at home: Can your child summarise what has happened in the book so far? Who are the main characters?

Welcome back!

Welcome back to the spring term and happy new year.

We hope you’ve all had a happy and healthy Christmas break and we are looking forward to another great term of learning.

Thank you from Mrs Taylor, Mrs Palmer, Mrs Simpson and Mrs Rothery for all the kind gifts and cards we received.

Living & Learning: democracy

This week in L&L, we’ve been focusing on one of our British Values – democracy. Democracy means that power is in the hands of the people.

The word democracy comes from Greek:

•  dêmos – people
•  krátos – power/rule

We’ve learnt about democracy in our country and how this works. The children were really interested in learning about the central and local government and the roles of political parties. We also discussed how we’re involved in democratic decisions at school:

We get to vote for how we use our reward time.

We get to vote for our JLT in school.

At the start of the year we got to vote for the name of our class reward points.

Democracy is important. We spoke about some reasons why…

• Law and order – we have laws that are created by and voted on by MPs we elect. We all have to follow them as they help keep us all safe.
• Freedom of speech – we have the right to say what we think about something as long as we do not say anything hurtful to others.
• Equality – living in a democracy helps us to treat each other fairly and equally.

Help at home: watch this video (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z76gr2p#zbxddp3) and discuss democracy in the UK.

Living and Learning: I know what democracy is.

During our Living and Learning lesson this week, we discussed…

• the British values
• how democracy is important
• how democracy is precious and what life would be like without it

Democracy means ‘rule by the people’.

In a democracy, like the UK, the people elect the government and have a say in how it is run.

They do this by voting in elections.

We watched this video which explains democracy in a clear and concise way:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z76gr2p#zbxddp3

At school, the children participate in votes and elections:

• voting for the Junior Leadership Team
• voting for class rewards
• voting for the new school charity

Help at home by finding out some facts about democracy in the UK.

Welcome back Year 1 – How our first day back went.

Welcome back Year 1! After a lovely Christmas / new year break our Year 1s are back and eager to get going with our half term. They have had a really  productive day today, showing off their maths, phonics and reading skills. Some have definitely been practising over the break, well done!

In maths today the year 1s learnt about shape and revisited number formation (it’s always beneficial to revisit our learning, especially after a break). They really impressed us with their number formation, some even managed to go up to 100! Our Year 1s also did a great job working with 2D shapes in class, identifying and discussing each shape.

Fire and ice

Spring term after-school clubs

Topic: art sculptures

Year 3 finished of the half term with creating their sculptures using the skills they’ve practised.

They’re abstract sculptures because they’re made up of shape, line and colour. They look fantastic and the children were very independent when creating them.

Here are some photos:

Help at home by discussing what type of colours they used.