Our Songs

Sparkle and Shine Lyrics - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrP2_JjEfH4

Somewhere Only We Know Lyrics - https://youtu.be/WIX1IHIHMh4?si=PSQBs7sUUtHHx_Vj

December

How time is flying by! 

The hallways are decorated and ready for the busy times ahead.

Dates for the festive season are as follows:

Thursday 6th December - The Big Sing at Cromwell for Year 3

Friday 6th December

‘Festive Friday’ Pupils come to school wearing Christmas clothing / hat or hair accessories and bring in a contribution for the class PTFA Christmas hamper - our colour theme is silver.

Christmas hamper raffle tickets go on sale.

Wednesday 11th December

Christingle @ 2.30pm in St Peters church.

Thursday 12th December

Christmas dinner and children can come to school wearing school uniform with a Christmas top/ hat or hair accessories

Friday 20th December

Celebration Day!

Class Christmas parties with a visit from Father Christmas.

Celebration Assembly @ 2.30pm – all welcome.

School closes for the Christmas holidays.

The half term has still been super busy in regards to learning and the children have thoroughly enjoyed making nets to build a castle - a work in progress!

We have also been looking at the human body in Science and have created a skeleton to protect and egg from a fall - several survived!

Tiger class have also thoroughly enjoyed the English unit on Big Cats and loved making lion masks this week.

Coming up, we will be finishing our Big Cat unit in English, continue with multiplication and division in Maths and be revisiting our unit on rocks in Science.

November

November is already upon us and we have lots to do in the lead up to the Christmas holidays. This month, we will have our school disco on the 7^th November, we will pay our respects on the 11^th November and be creating a poppy display in the office window facing the playground and it will also be individual photos on this day too.  

We will be finishing the unit on addition and subtraction and consolidating our learning with column method and reasoning and problem solving.  We are then moving on to statistics which will include reading bar charts, tables and pictograms as well as collecting data to create charts too.

In English, we will be writing a biography based on Malala Yousafzai and her plight for equal rights and girls to have access to schooling all around the world.

We will then begin a non-chronological report on big cats including… Tigers! I am looking forward to reading their biographies and beginning our next unit for them to learn lots of facts linking to our class name.

In RE, we are looking at where our morals come from and how our beliefs can mould these too. We will be looking at how different religions view right and wrong and how the rules are communicated and followed. RE is an important topic for open, tolerant and respectful discussions in a safe space. 

We have been doing printing techniques and looking at the artist Neil Bousfield who creates monoprints. 

The children picked up the technique brilliantly and we are looking forward to having these on display.

A lovely way to start the new half term!

October

Autumn Term is flying by and we have had a wonderful half term full of learning.

We have been learning addition and subtraction using the column method and using our prior knowledge to support mental methods. We have focused greatly on our number bonds to 10 and how these relate to 100 as this is a critical point for their learning in Maths in all areas. We have also been looking at reasoning and problem solving and how to choose the correct calculation to do. All of the children have worked incredibly hard and used concrete resources like dienes and counters to support them, especially when exchanging.

In English, we completed a narrative based on the beautiful story Stardust by Jeanne Willis. This focused on everybody being important and special in their own way and not to compare yourself to others. The children really engaged with this story and created lovely narratives based on this book too.

We then began a unit on biographies and looked at how these are structured. The children read Malala’s Magic Pencil and we have had in-depth discussions about the importance of equality in the world.  

In Music, we have listened to a multitude of ballads with some fantastic songs and the children have thoroughly enjoyed singing along and story planning an animation to link the story-telling aspect to ballads.

In RE, we have completed the unit 'what makes us human' and children have been incredibly understanding and engaged in discussions to share their opinions and views whilst respecting others too.

In PSHE, we have spent a lot of time focusing on communication, teamwork and working together.

In DT, children have spent a long time carefully planning, designing, making and evaluating their cushions which should have made their way home to you before half term. We were incredibly proud of their resilience, hard work and effort and the results showed their determination!

September

Tiger class have settled in brilliantly so far and have quickly fallen into rhythm to embrace their learning. 

We have been learning about place value in Maths with the value of each digit (up to 100 in Y2 and 1000 in Y3) being a key focus. We have used different concrete resources such as dienes, place value counters and Rekenreks to help as well as visual resources including place value charts and part-whole models. The children have been engaged and enthusiastic with this learning and have taken pride in presenting their learning too. 

In English, we have been focused on the place value of punctuation where we have looked at common and proper nouns, being verbs, regular action verbs and irregular action verbs. We will continue with this in grammar lessons moving forward as we are now beginning our English unit based on the book 'Stardust' by Jeanne Willis and Briony May Smith. This will explore a variety of emotions and ultimately focus on how everybody is amazing in their own way.

We are also reviewing Phase 5 phonics before this links into spelling. 

Each morning, children complete handwriting practice and this has already had a significant impact which many are very proud of!

In Science, we have had fun this week looking at different types of rocks: sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic and how these are formed. Next week we will be doing experiments to identify chalk and limestone and identify what makes up soil using magnifying glasses and sieves. We will also learn about how fossils are formed. 

In Music, we are focusing on ballads with some fantastic songs, including:

•  'Space oddity by David Bowie' 
• 'Unchained melody by The Righteous Brothers' 
• 'On my own by Samantha Barks' 
• 'Everything I do by Brian Adams'
• 'I will always love you by Whitney Houston' 

We will then look at the lyrics of ballads before writing and performing our own. 

In RE, we are focusing on 'what makes us human' with a focus on worldviews and how different people have different beliefs. This will include looking at spirituality and Buddhist views. The main purpose of RE is for children to develop an awareness of other's beliefs and why this is important for respect and tolerance. 

In Art, we have looked at cave art and Vincent Van Gogh. We experimented with and created using a range of materials, including paint. We looked at using techniques in painting to show texture and shape such as: impasto, sgraffito and tonking.

In French, we are learning greetings such as how to say hello, goodbye and how to introduce ourselves. 

In PSHE, we are currently looking at the 'Beginning and Belonging' unit, which focuses on building relationships, coping with new situations and different sources of support they can access such as their family, school adults and trusted people to them. 

Overall, it has been a very busy beginning to the new year and they have taken this in their stride.