Headteacher: Anna Moss

07.10.23

Hello Red Class Families,

This week, we started our new topic, ‘Planet Earth’. To introduce the topic, we used dilemma-based learning where the children share ideas and opinions, listen to the ideas of others, make decisions, ask questions and problem solve. As I am the school’s chief chicken checker, our dilemma focused on the BFS chickens.

We watched a short video clip to learn some interesting facts about chickens. We discovered that chickens need to eat more in the winter, but we didn’t have enough money to buy extra pellets and corn. The children offered their pocket money to help! We then explored how we could help the planet by encouraging less waste. The children wanted to ask Mrs Barker, our school cook, if we could use any leftover food from her kitchen and we plan to visit Mrs Barker next week to ask. They also wanted to use the leftover fruit from each class fruit basket. We wondered whether our Red Class families might send in tomatoes, lettuce, pears and other delicious chicken treats. Our learning helped the children to think about how we can reduce our food waste and help others at the same time.

The theme of chickens continued as we received a parcel from Mrs Moss. It was a special book for our topic, ‘Rosie’s Walk’. We shared the book, created actions for key events and talked about vocabulary in the story. Later in the week, we created a story map to sequence key events and some of the children made their own maps in play and explore time.

In Science, we discovered that scientists use their senses to find out about the world. With this in mind, we explored the outdoor area and collected bark, soil, seeds and leaves to make a smell pot. We moved on to talking about trees and how some trees lose their leaves in the autumn. Next week, we will continue to explore other signs of autumn.

In Phonics, we concentrated on ‘ck’, ‘e’, ‘u’ and ‘r’. Our tricky words were ‘is’ and ‘I’. On Friday, we changed the home readers and group reading books. As an alternative, we can also offer eBooks so that parents have a choice of how they would like to read at home. Details about usernames and passwords for the eBooks will be sent home next week.

In Maths we started our work on subtraction and focused on finding 1 less. We used songs, stories and role play to help with this concept. We used people from school as the context for our stories. For example, Mrs Moss selling cakes at Tea and Toast and Mrs Wilson losing one leaf at a time in the wind!

In PE, we created shapes including tucked and stretched shapes and then found different ways to balance on bean bags. The children were very good at the traffic light ‘stop and go’ game during the warm-up. We also managed a full change! The biggest challenge, for most children, was taking off their blue polo shirt. Any extra help at home would be appreciated.

In PSHE, we talked about people who help us and how they are kind. We talked about the meaning of ‘kindness’ and how a simple smile is a little act of kindness. We talked about kind hands, words and eyes and why it is important to be kind.

Thank you for your parent evening slips. I will send home appointment days/times shortly. Look out for an appointment card in your child’s book bag.

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend.

Mrs Webb and Team Red Class x