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Willow Class
Our wonderful Willow Class is made up of Year 1 and 2 pupils, with Mrs Tissiman as class teacher as well as, Mrs Stokes as the teaching assistant. We work hard to persevere, take risks and collaborate as we build resilience to keep going, even when things are challenging. We love challenges and enjoy celebrating our work with others.
During the autumn term, our topic is 'One Small Step', which explores . As part of our studies, we will be looking at the weather, map reading, famous landmarks from the the lives and impactof a range of amazing pioneers, such as Pablo Picasso and Florence Nightingale. In Science, we have been studying Living Things and Life Cycles - we have an exciting visit from a Falconer planned!
Class Dojo
Please follow Willow on the Class Dojo where you will find useful posts, updates and snippets. We may post pictures of the children taking part in exciting activities or send out notices.
PE days
Willow Class have weekly PE sessions on Monday and Friday. Over the term we will work on a range of ball skills and team games.
Weekly Homework
We encourage all our children to take ownership of their learning by completing some activities at home. These include:
Daily reading - this is such an important life skill and by sharing this experience, both parents and staff can celebrate the efforts of the children
Weekly spellings - this will really help children to develop confidence with their free writing, build on their phonic skills and master age appropriate common exception words.
Times Tables - It is important for the children to make links between multiplication and the direct inverse as division. This life skill will help them to develop quicker recall of the known facts, which they can then apply to problem solving activities. Therefore, over the summer term, children will take a weekly Times Tables Sticker Challenge, with 48 questions to be completed within a time limit of 6 minutes. Even though they may not finish within the time, they will see the progress they are making with their increased scores. Once a times table has been mastered, they will be awarded their special sticker and move onto the next one, so they will all be working within their own personal level.
Autumn Term 1
Autumn 1 in Willow Class
Noah’s Ark
Here is our beautiful Noah’s Ark display based on our topic about the Old
Testament. Below is one of our thoughtful prayers:
Dear God,
Thank you for creating Noah and making our world for us to live in. Please help me to be good, kind to others and listen to you just like Noah did.
Amen
World Faiths Week
During World Faiths Week, we had a great opportunity to explore world faiths and religions. Each class had to focus on a particular faith. In Willow Class we were learning all about Hinduism.
One of our favourite one was our PE lesson, when we learnt how to do a Bollywood Dance step by step! It was quite tricky, but we had lots of fun! We have also enjoyed our art activities with Mrs Clarke. We had to create henna designs on paper hands and decorated our own rangoli patterns. On our last day we had to create a fact file about Diwali. We have learnt that it is a very important religious festival for Hindus. Learning about Hinduism gave us an opportunity to have a greater understanding of this faith.
‘Beegu’, our favourite story this term
In English lessons, we have been exploring lots of stories related to Space! One of our favourite one was ‘Beegu’ by Alexis Deacon. We enjoyed looking and nouns and adjectives and creating super interesting sentences! We created our own Beegu stories using powerful vocabulary and showing creativity within our writing.
Autumn Term 2
Remembrance Poetry
In English lessons, we have been focusing on poetry. After reflection upon Remembrance Sunday, we have written our own poems. We discussed the emotions, great pride and gratitude that we have for those men and women who gave their lives during many conflicts so that we can have the life we have today.
We have worked very hard and tried our best to use all the skills that we have learnt during the week like interesting noun phrases and similes.
Children in Need
As part of our whole school celebration for Children in Need we took part in a colouring competition. We had so much fun! Some of us designed, made, and framed pictures of Pudsey Bear.
Birds of Prey experience
We had a fantastic experience as class. The Falconry Centre visited our class to fill us with amazing facts about Birds of Prey.
We had an opportunity to ask questions and learn many interesting facts about those incredible birds. We saw birds from different parts of the world like American kestrel, African owl and British barn owl.
At the end we were given an opportunity to hold a kestrel. His name was Timmy. We had to be very quiet and wear a special, thick glove as the bird had very sharp claws.
Spring Term 1
During the Spring Term, we are focusing once more on improving as English readers, writers and mathematicians. Our class story is by Sally and Darrel Odgers, called 'Jack Russell: Dog Detective' - we are looking forward to some excitement and laughs!
Our key topic focus is Geography-based and is entitled, 'Indian Spice'. We are going to be improving our map skills, learning about the continents and oceans, as well as discovering all about India - its cities, mountains, rivers; what it is like to live there, what school is like there - we are also hoping to learn more about Indian food. In fact, in Design and Technology, we are going to be designing and making our own samosas!
Spring Term 2
This term in English we will be looking at some fantastic stories linked to our India topic. One of them is going to be ‘Pattan’s Pumpkin’ by Chittagong Soundar. We will be learning lots of interesting skills around these stories to be able to write our own ones independently.
In Maths, Year 1 pupils will continue their learning about place value (within 50), then we will move on to the ext unit, about length and height. Year 2 children will be focusing on multiplication and division facts for 2, 5 and 10 times tables, then they will move on to learning about length and height.
In Science we will be exploring plants. This unit will teach the children about the structure of plants and trees and what they need to grow well. The children will engage in a variety of activities including identifying common plants and trees in the garden and in the wild.
In Geography we will be learning about the biggest cities in India and labelling them on the map. We are also going to make comparisons between two capital cities, local and native wildlife and we will find out what life is like for a child living in India.
In Design and Technology lessons we will be exploring different food that come from India. We will be learning how to prepare and make our own Indian Samosas!
In Music we will be exploring units: Inventing a Musical Story and Recognising Different sounds.
In our Religious Education lessons, we will be learning all about Lent. We will begin this term by writing our own Lenten Promises. We will think about the importance of this special time when we prepare ourselves for Easter. We will also learn about Holy Week when the children will do lots of acting out the stories to help themselves remember the important events of the week. We will also be continuing our RHSE studies.
In PE lessons the children will explore the units: Dance ‘Fog & Sunshine Washing Day’ and Gym throwing & catching, aiming games.
Another busy half term!
Summer Term 1
This term, we will be very busy, once again!
History:
In the Summer Term the children will be learning all about World War II. We will find out when and why World War II began and about the people and countries involved. In addition to this, we will discover all about evacuation and learn what it was like to live with food rationing. To enrich our learning further, we will be going to Hartlebury Castle. The children will take part in lots of different activities about life in World War II. We will be dressed as evacuees and find out how the war affected children’s lives. We will also learn about when, where and why children were evacuated in World War II.
English:
We will be exploring different stories linked to our History topic. One of them is going to be ‘The Bear who Went to War’. It is a true story of a bear cub adopted by soldiers in World War II.
Maths:
Year 1 will start learning about multiplication and division, fractions and geometry (position and direction).
Year 2 will be learning about fractions, Time and they will also start learning about statistics.
Science:
This term in Science we will be learning about the uses of different materials including wood, plastic, metal, glass, brick, paper and cardboard. The children then will be comparing the suitability of different everyday materials for different purposes. We will explore how objects made of some everyday materials can change shape and how the recycling process is able to reuse some everyday materials numerous times.
Design and Technology:
We will be making bunting together to celebrate the end of World War II. The children will be learning new skills and one of them will be joining fabric together using a running stich. we will then use our design skills to decorate it.
Religious Education:
The children will be learning about Easter. During this unit we will develop the knowledge and understanding of the stories of Easter from the New Testament and we will understand the symbols that Church uses to celebrate this special Season.
The children will also be learning about Pentecost. This unit is designed to develop our knowledge and understanding of the story of Pentecost and presence of the Holy Spirit. The unit also focuses on the way Pentecost is celebrated in the Church and Confirmation being the Sacrament of the Holy Spirit.