Autumn Term

Hello, welcome to our class blog. Usually the children are in charge of creating the blogs, but I thought it might be useful to give you all a quick update.
The children have settled into new routines and are working hard and learning quickly. We are all looking forward to the new building being finished and a bit more space. They are also beginning to think about how to look after their school in their class council meeting.
Equipment - PE kits in all week (hockey Weds and rugby Fri - can come into school in kit)
                  - water bottles, for classroom/sports use please can they have water not juice to encourage a healthy diet. (Juice is fine at break and lunch times)
                 - aprons on Thursdays for art/cooking
                  - wellies for Thursdays too as we do go out each week in all weathers.
                 - coats and a change of shoes for cold, wet weather.
Thank you for your support with the homework. The children decided they would rather do spellings at home than use learning time at school. Sometimes the words may seem easy, I follow government guldelines and teach certain spelling rules. The rule is the important bit. The aim is to get the children to use the speliings in their work, and also apply their knowledge.
Thank you all also for listening to your children read. This is greatly appreciated. Many of the children are proficient readers, so leaving them to read independently then discussing their books with them is just as beneficial.
The children are currently in the process of writing stories about their fruit characters. We have had great fun discussing plots and outcomes.
Maths is following an investigative route to come up with some rules to follow that they can understand and explain - what happens when you add, 1, 10 or 100. what happens when you times or divide a number by 10. How to count on in tens for mental arithmetic and the beginnings of balancing equations.
Topic and science have been based on food, learning the life cycle of a plant, how they grow and make our food (photosynthesis), which part of the plant we eat and the beginnings of food production by researching sugar beet. Next we will be studying healthy diets, how food is digested and looking at more local crops. We are also going to follow the lives of piglets from the smallholding along Back Street.
We have been cooking healthy snacks and studying the art of Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso, learning how to sketch still life and about the 'cubism' style.
We are beginning to learn German, mainly greetings so far, think about questioning in philosophy, dealing with anger in PSHE, investigating food in different religions including Harvest and learning the song 'food glorious food' from Oliver.
If you have any questions please come and talk to me anytime after school except Wednesdays when I run the hockey club.
TamsinYoung