This week, I have had the pleasure of accompanying children to the 'Wadebridge Festival of Music and Speech'.

Children across the school have been working hard to learn a poem (some of them being over 3 pages!) and perform it to an audience in the Town Hall. The children have impressed me with their ability to perform with clarity and confidence. It takes a huge amount of determination to stand in front of a room full of strangers! The children received fantastic feedback from the judge, such as "You really started to 'lift' the words from the poem". 

Well done to all of the children who took part in the poetry performance and musical performances too. 

On Wednesday, the Year 5 and 6 boys were out of school so the girls from both year groups spent the day together completing a number of activities.

They carried out the ruler reaction activity to test their reaction times. Then, they learned how to carry out data handling using the results that they had collected. They also completed the egg drop challenge! In small groups, they designed and engineered a 'carrier' for their egg. This carrier had to prevent their egg from breaking when dropped from a height. Most of the groups were successful and managed to keep their egg intact! In the afternoon, they sketched and painted dragons.

Everyone enjoyed the day and it was wonderful to see the Year 5 and 6 girls working so well together!

Meanwhile, the boys had the opportunity to head up to the Royal Cornwall Show Ground. Here, they participated in a range of military based activities led by the coaches at DT sport as well as sports leaders/captains from Wadebridge Secondary School.

The children had the opportunity to use their team building skills, unravelling themselves from a human chain and getting themselves in height order or order of their shoe size. They had the chance to play laser tag, using their strategy skills to defend themselves within the course and plan their defensive approach to protect their base. They even had the chance to build fire and make hot chocolate!

To end the day, the children then all took part in a military obstacle course, where they had to hop, dodge, sprint and weave between obstacles, before diving under a net and army crawling through the mud. The race was on for this, competing against other schools, teams, adults and even some teachers! We are incredibly proud of our boys and felt they represented WPA well.

Here is a reminder about the two important events taking place next week...

St Piran’s Day- Tuesday 5th March
To mark the occasion of St Piran’s Day on Tuesday 5th March we will be celebrating all things Cornish and invite the children to come to school dressed in the Cornish colours black, white and gold. Gool Peran Lowen! Please note that there is also a special menu for this day. You can make your booking via ParentPay.

World Book Day- 7th March

World Book Day is taking place at our school on Thursday 7th March and we would like to celebrate this day with all things book related! Our theme this year is ‘Bedtime Stories’ and we invite your child to come to school wearing pyjamas or onesies and bring along their favourite cuddly toy and their favourite book (please name them!). We know that some children enjoy dressing as a book character on this day, so of course if your child would rather do that, then go ahead! However, we do not expect parents to go to the expense of buying new costumes.

Children will take part in reading themed activities throughout the day within their class and will be buddying up with children from other classes in the afternoon for some paired reading over some hot chocolate and biscuits.

World Book Day celebrates the joy and value of books and reading. To help get them started on their reading journey, every child receives a £1 World Book Day Book Token that can either be exchanged for one of special £1 World Book Day books or used to get £1 off any book costing £2.99 or more. You can find out more about the books at www.worldbookday.com/books-and-tokens/books/ 

See you next week! 

Mrs Lee-Elkins 

Spring 2 - Week 2 - Run, run as fast as you can!

Well a week of fun has been had in the Reception classrooms this week. Not only was the Gingerbread Man spotted on camera going through our classes, our attempts to capture him at the end of the week resulted in our classrooms being messed up. But luckily for us, the Gingerbread Man left us a little treat to congratulate us on our attempts to trap him. 

The conversations and ideas about how we could trap him really excited the children. Throughout the week, the children have been making traps, posters and even bridges to help him escape the fox. As you can imagine, the conversations and ideas that the story has sparked have been amazing. Every child has been totally immersed and a great deal of wonderful work has been completed by the children. They have been able to critically think, analyse and confidently share their ideas with each other throughout the week. We are sure the conversations will continue at home well into the weekend!

Reminders -  We change reading books on Mondays and Thursdays. Please ensure your child brings in their book bag each day as we read with the children throughout the week too. Please also ensure they bring their library books in on a Thursday. 

Tuesday 5th March - St Piran's Day - Children are encouraged to wear black, white and gold on this day.
Thursday 7th March - World Book Day - Children can come in in their pyjamas or onesies. They can come in as a favourite book character if they would like to, but do not feel you need to spend any money on outfits. Mrs Clayson will be donning her favourite onesie for the day! 

Have a wonderful weekend.

Best wishes, 
The Reception Team 

This week our topic has been Chinese New Year and we discovered about different customs and traditions. We started our week by learning the story of how the tradition began and about the twelve animals which represent the years. We watched a short film where we learned about how people decorate their houses, wear new clothes and give red envelopes with money in for good luck.  We were intrigued to see how the whole family (including the children!) worked really hard to give the whole house a spring clean before they decorated it.

The children enjoyed learning about the delicious foods and the fabulous dancing dragons.

Demonstrating great recall, the children were able to explain the facts about the celebration.

In our guided writing, we looked at Chinese dragons and wrote words, captions and sentences to describe how the dragons looked. 

In our COOL time, we enjoyed playing in our pop-up Chinese restaurant (with real chopsticks and food!), making dragon puppets, creating lanterns, exploring Chinese music, painting Chinese symbols and much more!

Our super week was encapsulated by putting all of our creations together and performing a dragon parade around the whole school, weaving in and out of classrooms as we went!  We were delighted with the children’s enthusiasm and pride whilst exhibiting their artist flare!

Year 3 Cave Art 

Year 3 have had a busy start to Spring Term 2 - but what fun we have had!
3W welcomed Mrs Stephenson and Mrs Smerdon. Mrs Stephenson will be working on a Mon and Tuesday and Mrs Smerdon will be in class on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. 
They are looking forward to getting to know the children and meeting parents later in the term. 


We have had an Art focus this week in our Wider Curriculum lessons around the topic of the Stone Age. The children spent time studying some Cave Art images before having a go and recreating them in sketch books focusing on colour, tone and use of space. We then tea stained pieces of Art paper before adding our Cave Art designs to them. I am sure you will agree that they look fantastic!
Next week we will have a History focus  based around the Romans. 

Upcoming Dates 

St Piran’s day - Tuesday 5^th March Non-uniform black, white, gold. 

World Book Day – Thursday 7^th March ‘Bedtime Stories’ theme. Pjs , teddy and favourite book. 

Comic Relief – WB 11^th March

Bake off! Kids to bring in bake off entries on Monday (with list of ingredients) Bake sale 

Spring 2 - Week 1 - Back with a bang! 

On Wednesday, the girls were out of school taking part in ‘Our Girls Can’. They had a full day of sports, including archery, dance and laser tag. The boys stayed in school and completed a number of STEM challenges. They carried out a test of reactions and recoded the data. They were then challenged to complete the ‘egg drop’ where they engineered a carrier that would protect an egg when dropped from a height.

English
We’ve started a new unit of learning in English focusing on the book ‘Darwin’s Dragons’. This book links to our wider curriculum learning: evolution and inheritance. So far, we’ve made predictions and inferences and written a setting description of the Galápagos Islands.

Maths
This week, we’ve been learning how to convert between fractions, decimals and percentages. It’d great to bring all their knowledge together and we’re super impressed with their work ethic.

Art
We’ve continued with our Lino prints – the children have finished carving their designs and have begun to experiment with printing. Tt’s been great to see the children challenging themselves to complete two colour prints.

PE
Our PE day is now Thursday so please ensure children come to school in their PE kit on that day. This half term, the children will be doing Fitness with Mrs Reeve and Hockey with Miss Johnston.

Reminders
For homework this week, children need to complete: Homophone (pages 96 & 97 in their SPaG books and Equivalent Fractions and Decimals and Fractions, Decimals and Percentages (pages 37, 38 & 39) in their maths books. Please encourage your children to bring their completed homework books back into school as every Friday we talk through the correct answers and give out the next week's sections to be completed. 

Next Wednesday is the Boys Active day!

Enjoy you weekend!
Best wishes,
The Year 6 Team

Busy Bees!

This week Year 2 starting practising different techniques of folding and joining materials. They were introduced to the ‘Flange’ – A flange is a part or edge that sticks out from an object in order to keep the object in position, strengthen it, or attach it to another object. First, we explored making prisms, cuboids and cylinders out of paper. We then had a go at making a flange and attaching it to other bits of paper to make it sturdy. The children are now ready to start their Dioramas next week – if you have yet to drop in a show box, please do so on Monday.

As well as all the DT fun, we set up a science experiment! We have planted seeds but each pot has different conditions. 1 – has water, soil, light and the right temperature, 2 – has no soil, 3 – has no water, 3 – has no light and 4 – is in the fridge! We are going to keep a weekly diary on any growing progress! 

In PE we started our new units – Dance and OAA (Outdoor Adventurous Activities). In dance the children took on the role of cats, and explored different movements and levels. In OAA they were introduced to Orienteering and went on a map symbols hunt around the playground. Safe to say, a lot of fun was had!

Please note, our Eden trip is fast approaching. If you haven’t returned your slip, please do so next week. Payment via ParentPay should be on your child’s account.

You should have also received an email regarding a Rainforst Café – Wednesday 20th March, 2pm. There will be an assembly then the children will invite you into their classroom and show you their work from this term. Their will be refreshments to purchase and all money raised will go towards Rainforest animal conservation projects.

Keep up with the reading and spelling practise, and we will see you next week!

The Year 2 Team.

Spring 2 - Week 1 - Giving you a piece of their 'ART'... 

English

In English this week, we have begun our new learning journey using the text ‘The Shark Caller’ by Zellah Bethell. Throughout the learning journey, the children will cover a range of skills and knowledge in order to write a recount. The children will have the opportunity to explore a range of grammatical aspects as well as writing in a range of genres. To begin the journey, we used our VIPERS skills to unpick and understand the text. The children listened carefully to the prologue and from this answered a variety of VIPERS questions, using evidence from the text to support their answers. In the second lesson, the children were predictors. The used the books front cover, blurb, glossary and map to make predictions about the novel’s 3 different parts. Again, the children used evidence to support their answers. Next, the children had a SPAG focus, for this lesson their explored word families focusing on prefixes and suffixes using words from the text to create sentences. Next week, the children will explore the character and write character descriptions.

Maths

This week, we continued with our decimals learning journey. The children explored thousandths into decimals, thousandths on a place value chart and rounding to the nearest whole. The children have used manipulatives to support their learning and some children have been going out with Mrs Berridge and it’s lovely to see the excitement when they address a misconception. Mrs Callister has also been preparing us for fractions and percentages by putting it in our morning work! On Friday, the children were given an arithmetic paper and a reasoning paper. With their teacher, they worked their way through the booklets, making notes, asking questions, selecting best methods etc. From this, they then set themselves a target!

Wider Curriculum

In Wider Curriculum, we have begun our Art learning journey, looking at the artist Kandinsky. Throughout the learning journey the children will explore a range of media in order to create a final piece. To begin the journey, the children looked at mark making. They were given a range of objects from pine cones, to polystyrene, to buttons and more. With this object the children experimented making marks on the page. They used paint and pens to do this. Next, they selected 4 of their favourite marks and 3 they didn’t like as much and placed them in their sketch books. They thought consciously about the placement and layout before annotating with steps, thoughts and feelings.

Important dates:

·      Book fair – WB: 26^th February 2024 (All week)

·      St Piran’s day – Tuesday 5^th March 2024 – Children to wear Non-uniform black, white, gold

·      World Book Day – Thursday 7^th March 2024 - ‘Bedtime Stories’ theme. Children to wear Pjs and bring a teddy and their favourite book

A great start to a new term!

Have a lovely weekend,

Best Wishes,

Despite the endless rain this week, we have made a great start to the second half of the Spring Term and the school has been full of energy and enthusiasm!

The children have returned to school well and attendance is looking better this week with a percentage of 95%. We are getting closer and closer to our whole school target. RW have wowed us with 100% attendance (Mon-Thu). Go RW! 

On Wednesday, the Year 6 Girls took part in Our Girls Can. The day aimed to promote diverse, challenging activities and develop girl’s confidence in and through sport. They completed three different sessions: archery, laser tag and dance. 7 primary schools in the area also took part, so it was an excellent opportunity to meet other girls from other schools that will also be going to Wadebridge School in September. The girls really enjoyed the day and they did us proud - fully taking part in every activity and giving it their all in the final dance performance!

This week my Headteacher's award has gone to Eliot for impressing us with his determination to continually improve his writing and Sidney for being a great role model. As we look towards the End of KS2 Assessments, Miss May has been supporting the children to identify their next steps to improve their writing. Our Y6 cohort is made up fantastic children (and staff!) who are working incredibly hard to achieve their absolute best. Well done Year 6! 

Next week I am looking forward to taking groups of children down to the Town Hall for the Wadebridge Speech and Music Festival. I will keep you posted with how we get on! 

Please do have a read of the blog below for the many, many events taking place this term. 

Best wishes, 

Mrs Lee- Elkins 
Acting Headteacher 

Welcome to Little Bridges

 

Let us introduce you to the team:
  
Mrs Divall                               
Big Nursery Room Lead      

Mrs O'Dwyer
Teaching Assistant

Miss Walby
Little Nursery Room Lead

Mrs Lang
Teaching Assistant

Mrs Woodman 
Teaching Assistant

Miss Brown 
Teaching Assistant

Welcome Back!

I hope that you all had a fantastic half term break. It has been great to see the children back in school today following the Inset Day and Half Term. The teachers had a busy inset day where Miss Beckett gave us some useful Maths updates and Mrs Keat shared ideas about the importance of celebrating Art within our curriculum and how we can support children to use sketchbooks to explore and showcase their learning. 

A big welcome to any new families who have joined us this term too. It's always good to see new faces around the school! I am also really excited to welcome back Mrs Stephens (previously Miss Bishop) and Mrs Smerdon, who have both returned from Maternity Leave and will be teaching in 3W.

I will write to you on Friday with my usual blog, but here is a quick update with the exciting events taking place this term.

St Piran’s Day- Tuesday 5th March

To mark the occasion of St Piran’s Day on Tuesday 5th March we will be celebrating all things Cornish and invite the children to come to school dressed in the Cornish colours black, white and gold. Gool Peran Lowen! Please note that there is also a special menu for this day. You can make your booking via ParentPay.

Book Fair- 26th February

We are pleased to announce that the Scholastic book fair will once again be held in the school library in the week beginning 26th February. The Book Fair will be open to browse and buy books every morning that week from 8am-8.30am and afterschool 3.10-3.30pm in the school hall/ Library. All classes will also have the opportunity to visit the Book Fair during the week to browse.

World Book Day- 7th March World

Book Day is taking place at our school on Thursday 7th March and we would like to celebrate this day with all things book related! Our theme this year is ‘Bedtime Stories’ and we invite your child to can come to school wearing pyjamas or onesies and bring along their favourite cuddly toy and their favourite book (please name them!). We know that some children enjoy dressing as a book character on this day, so of course if your child would rather do that, then go ahead! However, we do not expect parents to go to the expense of buying new costumes. Children will take part in reading themed activities throughout the day within their class and will be buddying up with children from other classes in the afternoon for some paired reading over some hot chocolate and biscuits. World Book Day celebrates the joy and value of books and reading. To help get them started on their reading journey, every child receives a £1 World Book Day Book Token that can either be exchanged for one of special £1 World Book Day books or used to get £1 off any book costing £2.99 or more. You can find out more about the books at www.worldbookday.com/books-and-tokens/books/ These tokens are valid from Feb 15th and will be given to the children today.

Red Nose Day- Monday 11th March and Friday 15th March

Red Nose Day is back! Let's do something funny for money! Or in our case Yummy! This year, we would like to launch a ‘Red Nose Day Bake Off’ to raise money for Comic Relief. The money we raise could help put food on plates and roofs over heads, keep little ones safe and support families affected by conflict and climate change. At WPA, we are going to bake up a storm! To enter, you must send your comical creation (the funnier the better) into school on Monday 11th March. Please ensure that you include a list of ingredients with your bakes so that we can be aware of allergies. The funniest yummy bake will be awarded a prize, and then all the funny yummies will be on sale in the hall at playtimes throughout the week. Please send your child to school with 50p if they would like to buy a tasty treat.

On Friday 15th March (Red Nose Day) children are invited to come into school in non-uniform and are welcome to be in fancy dress if they choose, after all, the theme is 'Do something funny for money!', but please do not go to any extra expense. If you could like to make a donation towards comic relief on this day, you are more than welcome to send your child to school with some change, however, the bake sale is our fund raising event this year so please do not feel obligated.

Parents' Evening- Tuesday 26th March and Wednesday 27th March

We will shortly open the bookings for the 10 minute meetings so please do log on to Arbor to confirm your appointment.

This week our focus for 'Shining Stars' is PE Superstars- I look forward to updating you on Friday about who has received awards!

Many thanks,

Mrs Lee- Elkins

Acting Headteacher

Weeks 5 and 6: Cooking up a storm

English

We have been reading "The Emperor's Egg", which is all about Emperor Penguins and packed with facts about their lives, which the children have loved learning about. We discussed new vocabulary and used our retrieval skills to answer questions about the penguins. We then made a class mind map of all the information we could remember and used this to write our very own fact files all about Emperor Penguins. We discovered that Daddy Penguins hold the egg on their feet for 2 whole months whilst the Mummy goes off to swim and eat lots of fish. When she returns, the chick has been born and she feeds him her sick - they loved this! Penguins huddle together to keep warm and we had a go at doing this in the classroom - there was a surprising amount of warmth generated for those in the middle! 

Maths

We finished our learning on place value to 20 and have now been adding and subtracting with numbers within 20. The children have used a variety of concrete objects and have been using their knowledge of number bonds to 10 to help add and subtract, whilst learning number bonds to 20. Great learning Year 1, well done!

History

We have been looking at different explorers, including Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and Ernest Shackleton who attempted to be the first person to reach the South Pole. We also looked at how transport has changed over time and looked closely at how cars have changed from the past. 


DT

The children learnt about axles and wheels and used this knowledge to build their own cars, working in small groups. They tested them to see if could be pushed along a smooth surface and a rough surface before deciding what they would change next time. We had some great creations! 
We also made explorer cakes ready for our Explorer Wow Day. The children worked by the recipe, carefully weighing out the ingredients and mixing it thoroughly. They worked well in groups and the cakes were delicious! 

Geography

We were so lucky to have an actual explorer come in to talk to us about her travels to Antarctica and the Arctic. She kindly shared photographs with us showing her boat trip and some of the many animals she saw on her travels, including whales, penguins and lots of different sea birds. She also showed us some of the clothing that she wore and brought in a variety of books in that the children really enjoyed looking through. She had maps to show us her long journey down to Antarctica. The children sat beautifully and listened very carefully and they had some fantastic questions to ask at the end, including "where is your favourite place you travelled to?" and "how did you get there?" 

Computing

We continued our computing lessons using "kleki.com" paint programme and we looked at Georges Seurat who painted pictures in the pointillism style using lots of small dots to create sunflower pictures. The children concentrated very hard whilst doing these and came up with some beautiful creations. 


Reminders

Our PE days are changing to a Wednesday after half-term so please send your child into school with their PE kit on those days. 

There will be no outdoor learning for this half-term so full school uniform on Fridays please. 

Our question we will be answer next half-term will be "What's at the Bottom of our Garden?" and we can't wait to get learning! 

Have a fantastic half-term and we will see you on Monday 19th February. 

The Year One Team

Year 1 Go Exploring! 

Today was our Wow day to end our learning around our question "Why Go Exploring?" and Wow! we were so very impressed by the children's fantastic outfits - a big thank you goes to all our wonderful parents for their imaginative outfits. 

We started the day with a science experiment after looking at another explorer - Isambard Kingdom Brunel - who was an engineer of boats, bridges and railways. We made predications about a range of materials as to whether they would float or sink. We then tested the materials in water to see whether we were right or not. Having tested the materials, they decided wood was the best material as it was floated but it was also strong. 

Yesterday, we had baked explorer cakes - these are packed with dried fruit for energy when exploring. The children weighed out the ingredients and took it in turns to mix them together, carefully spooning the mixture into the cases. They were yummy and went down very well with everyone this afternoon. 

This afternoon, we went on a parade around the school to show off the children's amazing outfits - thank you so much for your efforts - they looked fantastic and loved showing them off to the other classes. There were cheers and clapping and many high 5s as we moved around the school! 

We loved having you all in this afternoon to celebrate our learning over the half-term. I think you'll agree, they sang beautifully! Although it's been a shorter term, we've filled it with so much learning - from continents, to explorers, to Emperor Penguins - we hope you enjoyed seeing what we've been learning. 

Have a wonderful week off and a good rest and we look forward to seeing you back in school on Monday 19th February. 

The Year One Team.

Safer Internet Day

On Tuesday 6th February it was Safer Internet Day.

This is a worldwide event which raises the children's awareness of staying safe whilst using technology.

The Year 3 children have learnt a lot about staying safe online by accessing information, playing games and creating posters.

Earlier in the term, 3B shared some of the SMART rules in assembly.

For further advice on how to keep your children safe online have a look at the latest SCOMIS newsletter by clicking the download below.

Dear Parents and Carers,

You may have noticed that we have reduced the number of observations on Tapestry recently. We have received further Tapestry training and this has been a great opportunity to reflect on how we were using this platform. As a team, we realised we were using Tapestry more as a blog and round-up of the week; however, this is the purpose of our class blog on our school website. Tapestry is used for WOW special events as a class (such as school trips and cooking) and to help celebrate key milestones and achievements of your child individually.

We continue to thoroughly enjoy you uploading your own observations of special moments and key learning and development on your child from home. We can also share this as a class in show and tell time. This supports us in celebrating the wonderful accomplishments of your child!

Tapestry will additionally be used to share important messages and information.

Thank you for your continued support.

The Reception team

Spring 1 - Week 6 - feeling artistic! 

English
Over the past week, we have completed a small unit of learning focused on performance poetry. We watched a selection of brilliant performance poets and developed our own success criteria to answer the question ‘What makes good performance poetry?’. We got into small groups and rehearsed a poem, considering our success criteria. We then performed our poems to our friends down in Year 2 – a big thank you to them for being such a great audience.

Maths
We flew through the decimal unit and we’re now linking our learning about fractions and decimals. Soon, we will learn to understand and work out percentages. 

Art
We looked at the work of Mark Hearld and Angela Harding. These two artists create beautiful prints that are inspired by nature. Taking inspiration from their work, the children sketched out their own designs. These designs had to include animals or plants or both! The children then picked their favourite design and traced this onto a linoleum block. They then began to, carefully, carve out their designs. After half term, we will use these blocks to create prints.

PE
We had our final session with Mrs Ball up at Wadebridge School’s sports hall which involved the children taking part in two circuits: a skills circuit and a fitness circuit. The children showed great enthusiasm and determination and they finished their lesson with a huge game of dodgeball which was great fun!

Reminders
For homework this week, children need to complete: Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs (pages 4, 5, 6 & 7) in their SPaG books and Written Adding and Subtracting (pages 10, 11 & 12) in their maths books. If you haven’t already – please return the permission slip for the ‘our girls can’ day on the first Monday back after half term.

Have a fantastic half term.
Best wishes,
The Year 6 Team

Spring Term 1 - Week 5 - Hear Ye, Hear Ye...

English

In English this week, the children planned their persuasive letters. They thought carefully about the devices, skills and knowledge they needed to include in order to be successful. Then using their plans, the children wrote to His Majesty, King Charles, persuading him to place Katherine Johnson on the honours list. The children drafted, edited and improved their letters, before checking their work against their success criteria. Once checked, the children ticked off their toolkits and shared/constructed feedback with their teacher. Next week, for the final week of term, the children will begin their performance poetry learning journey, they will discuss, learn and add actions to their poems and perform for their peers.

Maths

In Maths, the children finished their second fractions learning journey and completed their end of unit assessment. We then introduced the children to their new learning journey of decimals. The children looked at decimals up to 2 decimal places. With Mrs Callister once again, ahead of the game, the children had already been exposed to these and completed the questions with confidence. This allowed great opportunities to grapple with problem solving questions and explore decimals in different contexts. On Friday, we had a skills session where the children ‘Find their weakness and destroy it’ – The children looked at a range of arithmetic questions, selected their area of focus and engaged with the challenge. Mrs Callister took a group of children off to look at %’s of an amount and Miss Beckett supported addressing ‘silly mistakes’ – The session had great purpose and lots of children had their ‘Ah Ha’ moment.

Wider curriculum

In wider curriculum, we have come to the end of our Science learning journey. The children showed off their learning in an end of unit assessment. It was amazing to see all the wonderful learning from across the past weeks, come to the surface. The children were proud of their ‘Sticky Knowledge’. Next week we will begin our DT journey.

Music

Every Wednesday, the children have had an opportunity to place a range of brass instruments under the lead of Tony our music man. The children have been exposed to different instruments and have explored reading notes and playing. We looked forward to next week, where our journey will continue.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Best wishes,

Spring 1 - Week 5 - Serious about seven

We have been learning all about the number 7 this week, and the children have taken their number formation very seriously. They filled up their whiteboards with as many number 7s as they possibly could. They absolutely loved this challenge. We extended our learning to find out all the different ways we can make the number 7. First, we used our knowledge of part-part- whole models and next we used the numicon. The children loved finding all the different ways they could add this way. 

In phonics, we have all shown how fabulous we are becoming with our reading and letter formation. Please keep reading the book that the children bring home with them in their book bags as this helps to embed the sounds that the children are currently working on at school, and encourages them to feel confident when we read as part of out phonics sessions. 

In our wider curriculum areas the children have been super busy creating clay animals and habitats, construction, writing and talking about polar animals and helping our little penguins escape from the block of ice!

Next week, we have our exciting trip to Eden. Please bring in your children at the normal time dressed in their school uniform. They will also need a waterproof coat, hat and gloves. If you have not ordered a packed lunch for that day, please ensure your child brings their own packed lunch. Also, don't forget to pack a water bottle. We will return back to school for the usual collection time of 3:10. 

We hope  you have lovely weekend.

Best wishes,

The Reception Team 

This week we have been learning about branching databases in Computing. We started off by learning how to gather data about objects by asking yes or no questions (closed). This allowed us to group them. Then we tested out some ready made branching databases to see how they work in action! We took it in turns to secretly select a picture and then used the yes/no questions to see if it was the chosen picture. Towards the end of the week we had a go at creating our own branching databases with the starting question ‘is it a fruit’. We then had to come up with further questions about texture, colour and size to create the branching database. Here is a link to have a go at home JIT5 (j2e.com)

This half term we have been thinking about pathways in our gymnastics. Each week we have learnt a new element to create our own gymnastic routines. We started making shapes with our bodies such as a pike, straddle, lying dish. Then we thought about travelling (bunny hop, snail, crocodile, frog). Then we added a balance (T- balance, battement, front support, kneeling). Lastly, we added a roll (log roll, egg, teddy, dish). After learning all 4 elements we planned a small routine to preform to the class. Each week we continued to think like gymnasts by showing tension in our bodies and pointing our toes and keeping hands straight.

Please don't forget to sign and return the trip letter for the Eden Project.

Have a good weekend,

The Year 2 Team