What a busy half term it’s been in Beech Class. Thank you for all the hard work with making the amazing timelines for our History project. The children loved learning about each other’s personal histories and a wealth of historical language was generated. A special thanks to James Warner (Evas’s grandad), who shared family photos and artefacts from his life; we listened to his favourite song from the 70s and found out about phone boxes! The children prepared probing questions…..we have some future historians in Beech Class!

Next half term in History, we will be studying the life of an inspirational woman from the past and viewing her in the historical context in which she lived; I’m really excited about this one. All will be revealed in January. In Science our topic is Sound. This will give us the perfect opportunity to get the instruments out to investigate how we hear sound and how sound is measured.

In Maths Y1s will be using manipulatives to explore addition and subtraction up to 20. By manipulatives, I mean school resources such as Numicon, Dienes Base Ten and Unifix Cubes etc. However, everyday items work well too, so look out for my suggestions next half term. Nearer to February half-term, Y1s will take a look at place value up to 50, so studying number in terms of tens and ones (26 represents two tens and six ones): you could start practising this now. Place value forms the basis of all future number work.

Y2s will begin 2022 by exploring multiplication and division, so we’ll look at “groups of” and the relationship between these two operations: 2 times 3 equals six, so 6 divided by 2 is 3. At home you could start looking at groups - how many groups of 3 are there in a box of eggs? How many groups of 2 are there in the same box of eggs? This is a tricky area, so we’ll use lots of visual representations to aid understanding. After this, we’ll investigate data and be interpreting visual representations such as block graphs.

Read, Write, Inc. will continue in January, though the groups may change as a result of assessments carried out this week. Your children are encouraged to read at home every evening and change their books throughout the week. Regular reading at home has a huge impact on a child’s reading progress.

In addition to our Monday ‘Saints’ PE sessions, we’ll be starting ‘Real PE’. This scheme focuses on specific skills such as co-ordination, balance and technique. This gives the children an excellent grounding for PE and other areas of the curriculum - I believe PE is good for the brain too. In RE our topic is “Who is a Muslim and how do they live”, so we’ll be enquiring about what it’s like to be a Muslim in the UK today.

Of course, I have not covered everything here, but promise to let you know more in the new year. May I take this opportunity to wish you all a happy, healthy and peaceful festive season.

Best wishes,
​Audra Fitzgerald

Apologies to everyone for the lack of a blog last week. Mr Finch, who takes care of the blog, was off sick and didn't manage to get to the job. He must try harder.
First of all I have to say just the most enormous well done to Beech Class for their performance at the Carol Concert on Thursday night. Your lovely singing brought a tear to my eye. Luckily it was raining so no one would have known it but you really moved me.
Thank you.
It has been another busy week of fun and learning in Beech Class. I enjoyed reading their thoughtful science work thinking about the different properties of materials. Look at this great work from Frankie.

IN maths a lot of the children have been focussing on improving their counting - something you can do which will help your children enormously is practicing counting daily. From zero to twenty and back down again is essential and you might be surpised when you listen carefully how many children get a little bit woozy somewhere in the middle of the teens. If your child is confident in this bit of counting, are they equally confident counting from fity to seventy? From ninety to one hundred and ten?
ALl our children should be practicing counting every day - skip counting twos perhaps or counting in increments of one tenth from 1.5 to 2.5 and back again! There's nothing that builds familiarity with properties of number like a daily counting practice. Speaking of properties of number, I loved seeing children today using our Numicon equipment to investigate 'teens' numbers. A ten and a four to make 'fourteen'. A ten and a six to make 'sixteen'. Numicon is great stuff - you sometimes see a cheap 'knock off' version in Tiger in Exeter - if you spot it snap it up it's a wonderful tool for early mathematical investigation.

This week has had a bit of a focus on assessments - we've been seeing how far the children have come along and trying to spot what gaps we've left that need addressing. Mr Finch has been taking the children for a phonics check and has been blown away by their positive 'have a go' attitude and the progress that they have made over the first term of the year - their parents should be very, very proud of their children. I am very very pleased with the progress from every child but I particularly wanted draw attention to the wonderful raised standard in handwriting in Year One and Two. Look at this great work from Eva, her lovely even letter formation is laying the groundwork for beautiful handwriting. Well done Eva!

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this week a success - have a wonderful weekend everyone.