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 class newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Shanie-Lou and Liam

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.
• Explore some of our local habitats and see what different living things you can find there - what differences can you see between the park, woodland, back gardens and farmers fields? What things do the animals that live in these places eat? How do they keep themselves safe? Which of them would be happy living in your garden? 
  
• Share stories, pictures, postcards and mementos from seaside trips in the past. What things did you do at the seaside? Why did you go to that particular place? If you’ve been to the seaside in different countries, think about what is similar and different about all these places. 

Our latest news:

• We learnt all about seaside environments in the summer term - so the only sensible choice for our end-of-year trip was a huge outing to the beach! Having chosen Clacton-on-Sea as our destination, we enjoyed a fabulous day at the seaside with incredible weather and lots of happy smiling faces. We built sandcastles, searched for shells and buried each other in the sand before devouring our packed lunches. In the afternoon, some of us continued building in the sand, while others got out the frisbees and beach balls for some fun games. A few of us were even brave enough to dip our toes in the sea, but as it was not very warm (and to keep everyone safe) we decided not to let the water go above our ankles. We finished off with ice cream and lollies on the seafront, before heading back to the coach. You could tell how busy our day had been by the number of us who quickly fell asleep on the way home!  
 

 
• To finish off our topic on Incredible India, we organised a fantastic India Day which included everyone in the whole of Years 1 and 2! Across the day we took part in lots of different activities and workshops, including: writing our names in Hindi, learning Bollywood dance moves and cooking Indian breads. At the end of the day we shared lots of what we had done and got to try out our homemade roti breads, dips and poppadums. It was all delicious and we all agreed that we had had a fantastic day. 
  
 

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

We have been learning about... 

English - This term’s text was How to Make Poppy’s Flapjacks. We have learnt about the structure of instructions (including ‘You will need’ lists and numbered steps), practiced following instructions and created some up of our own. We particularly enjoyed choosing different flavours and toppings for our own flapjacks.

Geography - Throughout the term we have been learning about India. We have discovered that it is an amazing, enormous country, and have really enjoyed looking at clothes and tasting foods from different parts of India.

Art  - We have looked at a variety of Indian art, including Madhabani and Rangoli patterns and spent lots of time trying to recreate our own pieces in this style.

This term's topics

English - Next half-term, we will be looking at a ‘rags to riches’ tale. Our initial text will be The Story of Pirate Tom, which we will learn by heart, using symbols and actions, so that we can use the language and structure to support our writing. We will be focussing in particular on describing characters and introducing speech. We will also continue to develop the use of accurate sentence structure and careful, consistent handwriting. We will also be looking at non-fiction texts about animals and writing a recount of our holiday news. We will continue with our Read Write Inc sessions every morning, working in small groups with others at our level to improve our phonics knowledge, ready for our Screening Check in June.

Maths - We will begin the term by exploring measurement, measuring heights, lengths and weights using a mixture of standard (metres, cm, kg) and non-standard (hands, books, marbles etc.) units. We will then move on to develop our understanding of multiplication and division, using equal groups, repeated addition, sharing, simple pictures, counting sticks and arrays to solve problems. We will introduce the idea of ‘remainders’ when dividing, and think about what to do with these ‘left over’ bits when we solve problems. We will also develop our ability to count in 2s, 5s and 10s, which will help to speed-up our working, and eventually lead to recall of our 2x, 5x and 10x tables.

Science - We will be exploring the different places where animals live and thinking about the ways in which they are adapted to suit that habitat. We will investigate the things that they eat, the way that they protect themselves and the types of homes that they make. We will focus in particular on seaside habitats and the creatures that we find there.

Humanities - In our geography lessons, we will be learning about seaside environments. We will discuss what people do when they go on seaside holidays and learn about natural and man-made features that we find in these places. We will then choose a specific seaside resort to investigate further (selected based on our own experiences) and compare this town with life in Stevenage.

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