News

It has been another fantastic week of learning in the Fox Class.  There has definitely been a buzz of busyness.  It is this alliteration that many of us have included in our persuasive writing.  This is only one of the features the children have used but others take into account rhetorical questions, facts, opinions and repetition.  All this helps the writer to draw their audience into the theme being written about.  In our case, we were writing to persuade our reader to think carefully about plastics and how not recycling them in the correct manner is littering our oceans.  Everyone in Fox Class was amazed and shocked at the massive garbage islands that exist around the world.  This in turn is not only polluting the seas but animals of all shapes and sizes are suffering unnecessarily.  Armed with a plethora of facts, the Fox class designed informative leaflets, posters and wrote persuasive arguments in order to highlight the public’s awareness of this subject.  It has been reassuring to hear how some of the children have taken this learning home and encouraged small changes to how their family recycle and avoid waste. 

A buzz of busyness in action!

We’ve had another brilliant week in Otter class and have all been working hard as always. In our Topic lessons this week we have been learning all about sculpture. We started our learning by making our own junk model creatures and later in the week, even had a go at making our own clay sculptures of Australian animals. In our English lessons we have been looking at a narrative called ‘The Koala Who Could’ which tells the story of a lonely koala who likes to keep everything the same. But one day when the unexpected happens, he realises that life can be very exciting and full of adventure. Year 1 and 2 have produced some brilliant sentence stacks and when all children were tasked with creating Kevin the Koala’s next adventure they had some fantastic ideas. He was headed all over Australia! Kevin was headed to Sydney Zoo, the Outback, and to climb Ayers rock. In our Maths lessons we have continued to master our division and multiplication solving. This week we have had a go at trying to independently solve using our prior learning. We have had to very carefully read and unpick the questions to help us decide whether or not to divide or multiply. Reception children have been mastering numbers nine and ten through stories and rhymes such as ‘Ten Little Dinosaurs’ and ‘Mouse Count’. They have been working hard to count one more and one less. 

The warm spring sunshine at the beginning of the week encouraged a variety of minibeasts to come out.  The children were curious to see a shimmering beetle, a big yellow butterfly and a shiny green fly. We were inspired to make some colourful minibeasts of our own to add to our spring flower display.  Can you spot them? Rachel made some pretty lavender rice which we enjoyed scooping and pouring.  It was relaxing to smell the scent of the lavender and feel the rice running through our fingers. With Easter approaching, we shared a story called ‘The Odd Egg’ and made nests using natural materials.  We decorated egg-shaped toast with jam and fruit for a delicious snack.

It has been another very busy week which ended with our Comic Relief Village Cafe.  It was great to welcome back parents, family and community friends for a well deserved cup of tea and cake of course.  We raised a fantastic £193.35   which will go towards resources and trips for the children.  Foxes thoroughly enjoyed preparing delights for the Village cafe.  The classroom was filled with an industrious buzz of excitement. Orders at the ready please we have customers waiting! The children of Fox class also enjoyed a great day out at the Sea Life Centre, where they not only learned about many of the amazing creatures of the sea but also about how they can help protect them from pollution.  This was a trip to consolidate much of the learning from our topic ‘Guardians of the Planet’ .  The children will take the information learned on Tuesday to support their writing next week when they persuade their readers to use less plastic.

We’ve had a fantastic week in Otter class and have been really focussed with our learning. We started the week outdoors on a minibeast hunt as part of our English experience learning. Unfortunately the cold weather meant most of the critters were hiding but we did still see some ants, spiders and woodlice. 

In our Maths lessons we have continued to work on our division and multiplication solving. This week we have had a go at solving a mixture of both and using our prior learning to decide whether the question wanted us to divide or multiply. Reception children have been mastering numbers nine and ten.

In our Topic lessons we have been learning lots about animals. We have looked at food chains, carnivores, herbivores and omnivores and the features of each group. Later in the week we used our five senses to go on a senses scavenger hunt. 

On Friday we celebrated Red Nose Day and had a go at designing our own red noses as well as taking part in activities such as word hunts and mazes. 

Hedgehogs have enjoyed being creative this week.  Inspired by the cheery daffodils around our fence, we worked together to paint a bright, sunny spring picture.  We went on to make our own spring flowers and to do some junk box modelling to brighten up our classroom.

We look forward to adding some minibeasts to visit the flowers of our wall display.

We enjoyed coming together and using our amazing natural spaces to notice changes in the season.  There were lots of signs of spring to spot as we walked our nature trail to the Forest School site.  To encourage us to look closely, we had a ‘mixing pot’ to collect interesting things we found loose on the floor.  Some of us found man-made materials which made us think we should do a litter pick.  We learned that some bird nests have been found to have strands of plastic woven into them. We used our collections and imaginations to make up stories that we shared with each other.  Daisies became tiny drinking cups, lichen covered bark- a goblin’s toe! Some of us created settings and came up with titles. After a moment of calm- a mindful listening exercise- we enjoyed a fast-paced game of fox and songbird tag. We closed our session with the folktale of how the pussy willow got her name.  It was interesting to pass round a willow flower, see the dusty pollen and discover how soft these catkins can be. Our next Forest School sessions will be the week beginning the 18th March.  Please make sure your child has either wellies or an old pair of trainers and a waterproof coat so they feel comfortable outside.

On Thursday Horning went crazy for books! We took part in World Book Day across the school and dressed up as our favourite book/character. Some even created a book box, with facts and details inside encouraging others to read it. Later in the afternoon we completed a book swap, wrote detailed book reviews and went reading mad. Everyone looked  amazing!!

We’ve had a brilliant week in Otter class and have been working hard as always. 

This week we celebrated World Book Day. The outfits and effort were very impressive! We took part in book swaps, created book reviews and designed our own bookmarks to encourage us all to read a little bit more. 

In our English lessons we have been working towards creating Non-Chronological reports about kangaroos. We started out by looking at a WAGOLL on wombats as we had already learnt lots about these creatures over the last few weeks. We then began unpicking the features and later in the week started to research kangaroos. We found out lots of information, did you know kangaroos are left handed! Reception children have been using their knowledge to write and record facts about wombats. 

In Maths we have been working hard to solve a mixture of multiplication and division problems. We have made sure to read the question carefully and highlight the key vocabulary before we attempted to solve it. Reception have been learning about time. We have read books such as ‘Five Minutes Peace’ to support our maths learning. At the beginning of the week the children did as many star jumps as they could in 30 seconds, next we moved on to ordering time and created sequences for what our mornings look like. We then moved on to the days of the week and tried to put them into order.

We have started our new science unit in our Topic lessons and began by learning about the five animal classifications. We looked at various animals and tried to categorise them based on visible features and our own prior knowledge.