Welcome to Badger class! Our teacher is Miss Wood, who is now entering her second year at Bedwell. She brings lots of new ideas with her, and is really keen to make our lessons as active and engaging as possible.

• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest class newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Lexi and Leo

Home learning ideas:

• As always, tables facts will be really important to us this term, so it would be brilliant if you could work on learning these at home. Focus on one table at a time and try:
  • Making-up rhymes to help remember number facts (“4 x 6 is 24, bears growl and lions roar!”) 
  • Looking for numbers in that table in the world around you - on doors, car number plates, in phone numbers or when you’re out shopping. 
  • Writing-out tables with finger paints, chalk or water-on-tarmac, or make them from playdoh. 
  • Chanting, singing, whispering... Say tables out loud together whenever you have the chance. 
• Each week we are set spellings to learn. Click here for guidance on strategies you can use to support your child in learning these at home.  
• Our English topic is a great excuse to watch lots of science fiction films and TV shows, and then to compare them to the stories we’ve read in class. While you’re there, try collecting lots of great language to describe the strange planets and creatures that turn up on screen...
  
• We’re learning about water in Geography. We're disappointingly short on big rivers in our part of Hertfordshire, so if the opportunity arrives for a visit to an interesting lake or riverside (on the way back from a day out or just for a Sunday afternoon walk), that’d be great - we’d love to hear about it (and share some photos) in class.
• You can have a go at coding in Scratch by heading to scratch.mit.edu or downloading the Scratch app. There are loads and loads of tutorials, ideas and examples of other people’s work available on the Scratch site. 
• Investigate what magnets stick to - fridge magnets work fine, and you can investigate lots of different materials around the house. Try different metals and help your child discover that magnets only stick to some of them (mostly iron and steel).
  

Our latest news:

• On the penultimate Friday of term we visited Celtic Harmony Camp in Hertford to support our history topic, which has focussed on life in Ancient Britain. We spent the day travelling from the Stone Age to the Iron Age by completing a series of workshops associated with each period. After an engaging introduction by Finbar (our guide through history) we learnt about Stone Age tools with a demonstration of flint knapping. We then tried this technique ourselves, using it to craft an arrow head. Next up we delved into the Bronze age, learning how they made pottery and crafting our own pot. Finally we moved into the Iron Age, where we milled our own flour and made bread. Before we left we were invited into the Chieftain's round house for Celtic story telling. Finbar was on fine form and even if we had no idea what was going on in some of the stories, we fell about laughing at his crazy antics before heading home!  
 

  
• To celebrate World Book Day, we got into costume, dressing-up as our favourite storybook characters. We were really impressed with the range of characters and stories on show, with everything from Elmer the Elephant and Little Red Riding Hood to Willy Wonka and Wednesday Addams! We also had an army of Harry Potters (as well as lots of Rons and Hermiones), a palace of Disney princesses and enough superheroes to take on even the most fearsome of villains!
 

  
• Back in January we visited Hazard Alley in Milton Keynes, an immersive and interactive town that teaches about the dangers that we might face in everyday life. During the visit we worked in small groups and visited lots of settings, including a house to talk about fire safety, a train track to discuss the dangers of railway lines, a shop to talk about stealing and a lake to learn about water safety. During the visit we all had the opportunity to make a 999 call, which was both scary and great practice.
  
 

 
• We thoroughly enjoyed getting involved in Science Week. A particular highlight was our visit from Falconry UK, who bought an array of birds, such as kookaburras, owls and falcons into school. We learnt so much about these magnificent creatures and were able to ask and answer lots of interesting questions. 
 

We have been learning about... 

English - In English, we have been working really hard on our non-chronological reports this half term. We started by looking at a report on dragons. Over time, we have learnt that reports need a title, introduction, sub-headings and a conclusion. Recently, we have been researching an animal that we find interesting to write our own report on, with some of our favourites including pythons, pandas, owls and gorillas!

Art - We have learnt to shape and link clay this term, creating dragon eyes to link in with the dragon reports that we read:  

History - In our topic this term, we have been learning all about the Romans conquering Britain. We looked at how the Roman Empire started, and what the Romans bought over to us, that we still use today. It was so interesting to learn that roads, calendars and coins were something that the Romans started!

This term's topics

English - Our next fiction topic focuses on Science Fiction stories, so expect our writing to be full of aliens, robots, space ships and time travellers! We will be exploring different ways that feelings are shown in writing, including through description and the use of emotive language. We will continue to develop our use of speech, punctuating it correctly and using short bursts of dialogue to show what characters are thinking or to move the plot forward. We will also be developing our use of short sentences to add drama and tension. In our reading lessons, meanwhile, we will be developing our predicting, summarising and detective skills, looking for those key clues that show us how characters feel and what they are likely to do next.  

Maths - Our main focus at the start of term will be on multiplication and division strategies. We will start by revising strategies to x and ÷ by 10, 100 and 1000, and will then learn to use formal written methods to multiply and divide 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers (solving calculations like 34 x 4 or 84 ÷ 6). Later in the term we will be returning to the topic of time, recognising how days, weeks, months and years are linked and then learning to read and write the times shown on analogue clocks (with hands). Throughout the term, we will also continue to practice and learn our tables facts, aiming to complete our Star (x2, x5 and x10 tables) and Superstar (x3, x4 and x6 tables) by the time we start Year 4.

Science - We will be exploring different types of forces, including pushes, pulls, gravity and friction, and thinking about the way that these affect the way that objects move in different situations. We will design and carry out fair tests to see which materials create the most friction, and to discover which materials stick to magnets. We will also investigate different ways in which we can measure forces.

Humanities - Water is all around us and vital to every type of life, and in this topic we will be learning about the way that the Water Cycle means that it is constantly being reused and recycled. We will locate the world’s major oceans, seas and rivers on a variety of maps, and discuss the difference between fresh water and sea water (and why it matters). We will also investigate the impact of water on environments, both shaping landscapes and affecting the growth of many towns and cities.

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