Spring 2

Class 1 and 2 have had a wonderful half term on our topic ‘How can we save the planet?’  We are very proud of how the children have continued to work hard, show resilience and develop their skills.

This half term we have been learning all about how we can look after the planet by reusing and recycling waste materials. The children have been very thoughtful and caring in their ideas on how to look after the world around them. They have collected litter strewn all over the playground and even gone on an organised litter pick in the local area as a way to make them more aware of looking after the environment and thinking about they do with litter. 

Over the half term we have read a variety of topic books. The children thoroughly enjoyed learning and retelling the story ‘Someone Swallowed Stanley’ by Sarah Roberts. They thought carefully about the characters thoughts and feelings throughout the story. After this, they went onto learning and writing their own version of ‘Someone Swallowed Stanley.’ We also discussed with the children how we could help save the world by recycling. They came up with some fantastic ideas about putting litter in the correct bin, switching lights off when leaving the room and planting trees. They then wrote instructions to teach everyone how to clean up the planet.  

In PE the children were excited to be superheroes saving the planet! They practiced different balances using the equipment, jumping, rolling and moving in different ways. It was great fun!

In Music, the children have continued to use the Charanga scheme to learn some well-known songs including Wind the Bobbin Up, Rock-a-bye Baby, Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed, Twinkle Twinkle, If You're Happy And You Know It and Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes. We have been very impressed with their ability to perform solo and follow different rhythms, tempo and pitches. The children have also used the glockenspiels to copy sounds directly linked to the songs. They have loved this!

In class we continue to use our new phonics programme called Little Wandle. The children have practiced a different digraph and trigraph each day and new high frequency words including longer words to learn and spell. Children continue to make steady progress and can read words more readily and are also starting to read longer sentences as a class and spell a wider choice of words. In addition to this, children take home a phonics book every week and a library book to share with a grown-up.

In Maths we have looked at continuing to embed the knowledge of what makes up 5. We have looked at odd and evens of numbers to 10 and continued to work on our understanding of composition of numbers 6-10, learning the bonds, both addition and subtraction. We also looked at 3D shapes and their properties. In addition to this, we learned about ordinal numbers (1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd.) The children enjoyed taking part in a mixture of activities to help consolidate their mathematical skills.

The half term finished with a tree planting event organised by Mrs Taylor. The children really enjoyed the experience of planting trees and working well as a big team. Even the mayor came for the event! They can’t wait to see how much the trees grow as they progress through their school life!

Overall, the children have continued to amaze us this half term with their resilience, determination and ability to continue working hard and be supportive and kind friends to their peers. We can’t wait to see what the children achieve in our final term!

Spring 1

This term we have flown to Kenya and found out about the animals and fruit found there and then compared these to animals and fruit that grow in the UK. This inspired a lot of discussion around animals we’ve seen in Britain and after fruit tasting we learnt that we all like different things.  

In literacy, we looked at the story Handa’s Surprise we learnt the story by heart and role-played, playing the different characters in the story. We then innovated it to make our own story based in the UK with British fruit and animals.  

In maths, we looked at the book We’re Going on Safari and built on our knowledge of number. We practised subsisting and developed a deeper understanding of composition of number. We learnt the meaning of 1 more and 1 less and how the number gets bigger or smaller when we add or subtract 1. We learned about height and weight with a visit to the woods to compare the length of sticks and used helium balloons to compare the height of different African animals. We were surprised the giraffe didn’t fit in the room! Using the African animals from the small world area and compared their weight using the balance scales and used our problem solving skills to help Handa balance out her shopping, making it easier to carry. 

We were inspired by the tropical fruit and sketched and used watercolour pencils to create beautiful drawings of fruit. We also learned about the artist Edward Tingatinga and created fabulous paintings of animals in this style. We've also had a go a box modelling our own African animals independently. We also had a wonderful experiences listening to African drumming and we got to have a go ourselves. It was so much fun.  

In PE we have been lucky enough to have a PE teacher from Wingfield to come and teach us. We did some exciting multi skill activities and worked on our listening skills to follow instructions. We loved it!  

This term brought Chinese New Year so we learned all about it, celebrating with a Lion Dance, Chinese food and we did some beautiful artwork, using ink and brushes to draw dragons and made ourselves lucky red envelopes.