Welcome to Dormouse class! Our teacher is Mrs Jackson, who has been teaching for 16 years, and has worked at Bedwell for the last 8. Her favourite things are Lindt chocolate and reading her Kindle. She doesn’t like running very much, and is scared of spiders!

• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest school newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Shanie-Lou and Theo

Home learning ideas:

• Try to do as much maths as you can when you're out and about:
  • Keep on practicing counting whenever and wherever you can - how many cars are there in the street? How many trees in the field? How many trollies in the supermarket, players on the team or stairs on the way to bed? Our focus is on numbers from 10-20 this term, so things that come in groups of this size are ideal for counting practice.
  • Practice writing numbers in sand, salt or water, or try making numbers out of groups of pebbles.
  • Practice counting in 2s, 5s and 10s - counting in multiples as you go up or down stairs; counting in 2s as you pair up socks; totalling up everyone’s fingers and toes by counting in 5s...
• Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read - we've put together some guidance and advice on using the books your child will bring home here.  
• We follow the Read Write Inc phonics programme, and they have provided lots of guidance on supporting your child at home, which you can read here.
• Practice identifying key places on maps - a globe or a big map of the world would be great, but if you haven’t got one of those, Google Maps on a tablet or laptop is just as good (and means you can start to zoom in on some of the places we’ve talked about).
  
• Try planting seeds in the garden or a window box and talking about what happens to them. What do we need to do to help them grow? How do plants change as they grow?

Our latest news:

• We thoroughly enjoyed all the different activities in Science Week and particularly loved the construction challenges, making egg drops and K’nex helmets, as well as our session with the visiting planetarium.
 

 
• To finish off our topic we went to visit Shuttleworth. We had a fantastic day and loved the different activities we completed, many of which you can see on the opposite page We learnt about mono-planes, bi-planes and tri-planes, found out why aircraft are painted different colours to keep them camouflaged and tried on some of hats that pilots wore. We also had the opportunity to have a ride on a vintage bus and watch planes taking off, flying and landing.
  
 

 
• This term it has been our turn to take part in Forest School sessions each week. We have had great fun exploring the forest, engaging in new activities and making our own snack.
  
 

 
• We worked really hard over the past half-term to put together our Christmas Show. We took on a variety of roles and everyone had some lines to learn. We are sure you will agree that everybody did a fantastic job and the show was sensational! After finishing our own show, we headed to Milton Keynes to see how the professionals do it, watching their pantomime version of Peter Pan. We loved getting involved in the performance, cheering, booing and shouting “Ahoy Smee!” in all the right places, and our behaviour was impeccable throughout the trip.
 

We have been learning about... 

Maths - We have spent a long time learning how to tell the time and at last we think we’ve cracked it! We now know our o’clocks, half pasts, quarter to and quarter past. We are also super confident counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and are beginning to recall tables facts. Tables superstars, here we come!

Forest School  - This term it has been our turn to take part in Forest School sessions each week. We have had great fun exploring the forest, engaging in new activities and making our own snack.

English - In the first half of the term, we read and learnt all about Blue Whales. We found it fascinating learning facts about them and turning these into statements. We then drew together all our knowledge to write non-chronological reports. In the second half of term, we have been reading Julian is a Mermaid. We have learnt the difference between past and present tense and created our own stories, writing about something we would like to be.

This term's topics

English - We will start the term by focussing on realistic stories, using the story The Lost Homework, by Richard O’Neill, as our core text. We will explore the use of apostrophes for contractions and subordinating conjunctions (like when and because), and then draw on all our skills to write our own stories about losing something important. Later in the term we will switch our focus to instructions, using How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth, by Michelle Robinson, as our main text. We will investigate the way that instructions are organised and investigate the meaning of lots of new words. We will then write our own instructions for washing a tall giraffe, a pink flamingo or even an angry crocodile.

Maths - We will be focussing on division and multiplication over the next few weeks. For multiplication, we will progress from using objects and drawings to thinking about the link between multiplication, repeated addition and arrays. We will also learn how to solve two-step problems using jottings to explain our thinking. In division, we will be developing our understanding of sharing and grouping, again beginning with objects and drawings, and working towards being able to solve problems with pencil and paper methods. Finally, we will be exploring the idea of fractions, learning to find fractions of lengths, shapes, sets of objects and quantities, including finding 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4.

Science - We will be investigating and naming a variety of wild and garden plants and flowers. We will be planting seeds, exploring the way that different plants grow and thinking about the things that they need to stay healthy. As we make observations, we will also learn to name different parts of flowering plants, using words like leaf, root, petal and stem.

Humanities - We will be getting to grips with maps of the world this term, looking at lots of different maps (as well as globes and atlases), and locating key places. In particular, we will learn to quickly identify the five oceans and seven continents that cover our planet, as well as where we live and parts of the world where we have family connections.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.