Maths- A shape hunt. (And a big thank you.)
Our Year 1s are having another lovely week in school showing off their maths skills. This week we took the children outside to go on a shape hunt. They went around the green finding different 2D shapes, then they noted down the shape, firstly by drawing it, then the name of the shape, by writing it, and the quantity of that shape, by counting each one. They did really well in this activity and followed our school rules of being, respectful, ready and safe.
As well as welcoming our Year 1s back over the last 2 weeks we have had our wonderful Mrs Boyle return too. She was unable to receive and thank you all for her lovely cards and presents before we broke up so she has asked to add this in: “I am blown away with all of your generosity. Thank you very much and I hope you all had a lovely (and restful) break.”
Reading: It’s so important!
We hope that you’re enjoying reading your child’s library book with them. We call this a ‘love of reading’ book – to do just that, encourage a love of reading for your child! Reading to and with your child can have a huge positive impact on your child’s education.
This research is a powerful message of the impact you can have when reading to/with your child:
At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.
We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!
Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.
Happy reading!
Authorfy
Authorfy is a website that we use in school to enrich the children’s reading.
Authorfy brings readers and writers closer together through exciting author videos, creative resources, downloadable book extracts and more. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, student, librarian, aspiring author or reluctant writer, there’s something for everyone on Authorfy.
In Year 3, we often use Authorfy during our Friday Book Club sessions. We’ve watched interviews with authors that we’ve learnt about and we’ve completed 10 minute challenges. It’s also a great place to look for inspiration of what to read next!
Authorfy is free for the National Year of Reading 2026!
Help at home by visiting the Authorfy website and exploring the different sections. Can you and your child complete a 10 minute challenge together? Can you find an interview from your favourite author? What book will you read next?
Our new class novel!
In Year 4, we’ve started our new class novel…
Queen of Darkness by Tony Bradman.
It links directly to our new history topic: Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
“Young Rhianna is relieved when Queen Boudica takes in her and her sister when their parents die. But there’s a darkness in Boudica that’s waiting to be unleashed and the Romans will suffer for their crimes against her. Soon, Rhianna witnesses much more than the kindness that Boudica has shown her and her sister. There’s a battle coming… and a terrible aftermath.”
Help at home: read the blurb with your child and make some predictions for what they think will happen in the story.
PE: Yoga
This half term’s PE begins with yoga. Yoga has lots of benefits including building strength, improving flexibility and coordination and being mindful.
The session looks like this:
breathing exercise
warm up stretches
learn new poses
Yoga flow (create a routine with the poses)
guided meditation
Help at home by practising Yoga at home. There are loads of videos available online!
Here’s the children having a go at these different stages of Yoga!
Topic: History
We’ve begun our new topic, History: Toys and Games. Over this half term, we will be exploring toys from the past and comparing them with the toys we enjoy today. Today, the children shared their favourite toy or game and talked about what makes it special to them. We also discussed whether their favourite toy or game might have been around when their parents or grandparents were children.
Help at home:
Please take a photo of your child with their favourite toy or game and email it to school so we can share it in class. You could also chat together about whether this toy or game is one you remember playing with when you were younger.
Bog Baby
This week, we have started our new class novel, Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis. You can read the text online here.
We will be using the text as a focus for learning reading skills such as predicting, word definitions and the author’s choice of words and writing skills such as using conjunctions (words that are used to join two sentences together including and, but, because and so).
Help at home: Reread the text with your child here. What do they like about the book? What would they like to ask the characters?
Forest School
Today, Year 6 LOVED Forest School.
Reminder: Your child NEEDS to bring a change of clothes and shoes (including socks). They were incredibly muddy and wet afterwards and needed warm school clothing to get changed into.
Reading – Viking Boy
This week in Reading, we have been focussing on our new class novel for this term: Viking Boy by Tony Bradman.
On Thursday, 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?
PE – dance
We’re focusing on dance in our first few weeks of Spring term. Dance is just moving to music. We have thought about low, medium and high movements and responded to different music this week. This week Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill really made us move in different ways.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.