This term:

 In English

we are looking at the books:

• The Storm Whale by Benji Davis
• The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler
• Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

We will be looking at story writing, instructions and non-fiction texts.

In Mathematics:

Year 1's are learning Place Value to 10 and Addition and Subtraction to 10. 

Year 2’s are learning Numbers to 100 and Addition and Subtraction up to 100.

Foundation Subjects:

This term we are covering the subjects, Geography, Art and Religious Education (RE). 

In Geography we are learning all about the 7 continents and 5 oceans of the world. 

In Art we are learning about the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and painting techniques.

In RE we are investigating the question ‘How do we care for others?’

Look what we've been up to in Woodpecker Class 

Week 1 -

What a super week we have had in Kingfisher, Nightingale and Woodpecker! The children have settled in well and have shown great resilience. They have been getting to know their classmates and many new friendships have been formed. In class, we have been finding out what the children already know so that we can see what their next steps are. In the afternoons we have completed two music units of work entitled ‘Ourselves’ and ‘Toys’ and the children have been thinking about the musical elements of beat and pitch.

Week 2 -

This week in Kingfisher, Woodpecker and Nightingale we started reading our class text ‘Storm Whale’ and we have talked about the vocabulary in the story, sequenced and drawn pictures to show the main events and written some sentences to retell what the story is about. In our Maths lessons, we have started a unit on ‘Place Value’ and this has included lots of counting, writing numbers and representing numbers on Tens Frames. In Geography, we have started to learn about the continents and oceans concentrating on the continents of Antarctica and North America this week. On Wednesday, we had an Religious Education day where we had lots of discussions and completed activities around the question ‘How can we care for others?’

Week 3- 

This week in Nightingale, Kingfisher and Woodpecker, we have continued to learn about the continents and have found out more about South America, Asia and Europe. In our English lessons, we have investigated ways of making stories more interesting by using story language and adjectives and we have used these ideas to start planning an innovation for ‘The Storm Whale’ text. For Maths, the Year 1 objectives have been to count and represent objects to 10 and the Year 2 objectives have been identifying tens and ones and using a Place Value chart. We have continued with our Sounds-Write lessons and the children are excited to bring home a book to read over the next week.

Week 4 - 

This week we have read the text ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers. In English lessons, we have looked at the features of posters and made our own ‘Missing’ poster. In Maths, the Year 2’s have concentrated on partitioning numbers using the Dienes (Base 10) equipment and the Year 1’s have focused on counting on one using numberlines, cubes and games. We have concluded our ‘Continents and Oceans’ Geography topic and have been impressed with everything that the children have remembered about what they have learnt.

Week 5 - 

This week in Year 1 / 2 we started our Art Topic by learning about a Japanese artist called Yayoi Kusama. We learnt that she was known as the Princess of Polka Dots. We have had great fun creating our own piece of polka dot art inspired by her. In English, we have been pretending we are going on a holiday and need to write a list of all the things we need to pack. Some children extended themselves by learning how to use comma’s in a list. In maths, year 1’s have been learning to count backwards from 10 and one less. Year 2’s have been learning how to write the numerals as words and how to flexibly partition numbers to 100.

Week 6 - 

What a busy week we’ve had in Year 1/2 this week. In English, we have been looking at features of instructions and have been writing sentences using imperative verbs and time conjunctions. In Maths, the Year 2 objectives have been to focus on numbers to 100 in expanded form and to place 10’s to 100 on a numberline. The Year 1 objectives have been to compare groups by matching and to use the language more, fewer and the same when talking about amounts of objects. It has also been a creative week and in the afternoons we have produced our own pictures based on the work of Yayoi Kusama.