The Courier

Some of the things the children have been learning...

We have used Goldilocks and The Three Bears to introduce our new topic – Once Upon a Time. We have written personal responses to the story and compared size. We have started to classify materials and consider how they are used in the classroom. 

We have been looking at teen numbers as a ten plus some more to reinforce place value. We have used a 100 square in our challenges and been learning to count in tens.

We have been thinking about our best friends and the things we enjoy doing together.

Some of the things the children will be learning in the weeks to come...

The next traditional tales we will be using as focus texts are Little Red Riding Hood, and The Gingerbread Man. We will be considering alternative characters and endings and decorating a gingerbread man.

In phonics we have revisited phase 3 sounds;

ai        igh       ee        oa

How to help your child...

• Share different versions of traditional tales - ask the children to try and read a page or two and identify familiar words.
• Revise the value of ‘teen’ numbers as a ten and some more.
• Practise reading bigger numbers in the environment.
• Count in tens to 100.     
• Talk about the materials that are used in our homes and their simple properties.

What’s going on next half term/ notices/information...

Children will soon be enjoying their snack outdoors at playtime. With this in mind, please consider snack size as there will be limited time.

In Year 1 this week, we have started a new topic on Superheroes. Firstly, we drew our own superheroes and wrote a caption underneath. Then, we made our own class superhero book whereby each of us created our own superheroes and wrote sentences to describe them.

In History this week, we introduced our new topic ‘Castles’. We explored and labelled the features of a castle.

This week in phonics, we have been looking at the suffix -ed and understanding that we use -ed words in past tense.

This half term in RE, we will be looking at different saints, understanding how they were special and what we can learn from them. This week, we explored St. David.

As we become independent readers, it is a lovely feeling to be totally absorbed in a book. Reading to an adult has so many benefits but the ability to relax and enjoy reading yourself sets the children up for a life-long hobby that can bring so much pleasure. The children have loved doing this this week and looking around a silent classroom with every child reading to themselves and engaged with their book was amazing.

We have had a week of measurement in Maths with a focus on measurement tools, reading scales and remembering units of measurement. We used rulers and re-capped cm/m for height and length, looked at how hot/cold things were in degrees Celsius using thermometers, played with water to learn about the capacity of different containers in ml/litres and discovered the mass of different items in g/kg. Lots of practical, hands on learning – who knew you could measure in so many different ways!

Children in 2W have been working on their bounce passes. We worked out that bouncing near to our partner meant they bent down low to catch it, while a bounce nearer to ourselves was a high catch. This improved our reactions, our agility and our readiness for team sports from Year 3 onwards!

On Wednesday 17 April, school councillors from Years 4, 5 and 6 and the rest of Year 6 met outside school at 6am to take a coach to London. When we got there, we split into two groups and our tour guides took us around the Palace of Westminster - also known as the Houses of Parliament. I found this very interesting as we got to go through the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Once we finished the tour, we did a workshop including doing a quiz and a pretend debate about banning homework, before meeting the MP for Rugby, Mark Pawsey.  – Alex T

The Palace of Westminster is where the UK Parliament meet. The UK Parliament is made up of three parts: The House of Lords, The House of Commons and the Monarch. In Parliament, new laws are debated, discussed and made. Once a year the Monarch will come into Parliament to do the state opening and once a week, the Prime Minister will come in to answer questions about how he is going to improve the UK. – Alice 

First, we visited the House of Commons which is a chamber where they debate about important topics and laws. We all thought it was very exciting to be in that chamber as most of us had seen it on TV before. Here the members of Parliament can challenge the government and give their opinions. There is an MP for every area of the UK and in total there are 650 MPs in the House of Commons. – Shayla 

It was very exciting to visit the House of Commons because we could see where the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, does his speeches. There was a grand chair at the end for the Speaker. We learnt that the Speaker would shout ‘Order!’ if there was too much talking. Then we visited the House of Lords which is where ‘life peers’ come together to discuss and agree on new laws. They’re called ‘life peers’ because they are given a membership for life and they are usually chosen for their knowledge and experience. Overall, we really enjoyed our visit to the Houses of Parliament. – Maisie