Welcome to Fieldmouse class! Our teacher is Mrs Devenish, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 16 years and loves making our lessons as creative as possible. Her favourite things are cooking and being outdoors, although she doesn’t like snow very much, and is scared of spiders.

• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest school newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Max and Willow

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.
• It’s Safer Internet Day on February 10th, so this is a good opportunity for us all to talk about the way that we stay safe online. This year’s focus is on learning to use AI safely - you can find out more at saferinternet.org.uk/ 
• 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?

Our latest news:

• We have enjoyed practising and getting ready for our performance of Knock Knock. We loved learning the songs, actions and words, and loved performing the finished show. Thank you to everyone who came to watch us. 
 

 
• We had a fantastic visit to see Goldilocks at Milton Keynes Theatre. It was a great opportunity for us to watch a real production after completing our own show, and we quickly knew when we needed to laugh, clap or boo! It also linked beautifully to our English unit so we could add even more detail to our writing about Goldilocks. 
 

 
• We have enjoyed attending Forest School. We have had great fun exploring the forest, engaging in different activities and making our own snack. We particularly liked making log dogs, making magical wands, drinking hot chocolate and playing games at the end of each session.
 

 

We have been learning about... 

Maths - We have been working on our understanding of number to 10 and finding different ways to make a number. We explored our number bonds to 10 and have begun to use this knowledge to find number bonds to 20. We have also explored how we can write simple number sentences and then switch these around to find corresponding fact families.

English - This term we have been reading Gruffalo Crumble. We learnt how to follow instructions and enjoyed making different recipes. We learnt how to structure and write instructions and used these to create a Gruffalo party. We have also started to look at traditional tales. So far, we have looked at The 3 Billy Goats Gruff, The Princess and the Pea and Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. We have retold the stories through drama and puppets; we focussed on their sentences structure and using adjectives to describe characters and settings. We have also focussed on the repetitive story language in each story.

This term's topics

English - Our first unit of the term is based around the story Stanley's Stick, by John Hegley. We will write speech bubbles for characters in the story, and will then develop our ability to retell it in a variety of ways, including making mini-books to bring home. After that, we will create our own versions of the story, where we are the main characters! Following on from this, we will be shifting our focus to recounts, using the stories Ravi’s Roar and Ruby’s Worry (both by Tom Percival) to inspire our work. We will think about times in our lives when we had ‘roars’ or worries of our own and will retell these events in a series of sentences written in the past tense.

Maths - We will continue to cement our understanding of numbers greater than ten this term, working out how many tens and ones there are in each number and representing this in a variety of different ways. We will also be identifying which of these numbers are odd or even, and exploring doubling and halving. By using different methods, equipment and strategies, we will become more fluent in our number knowledge, and will then be able to use this to help us to reason about numbers and solve problems. Later in the term we will be moving on to explore the properties of 2d and 3d shapes, learning their correct mathematical names and spotting these shapes in the world around us.

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 - We will be learning all about life in India this term. It’s a huge, diverse country, so we will explore the different landscapes and habitats, from the Himalayan mountains of the north to the rainforests and deserts of the west to the bustling cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. We will investigate food, clothes, music, schools and homes, and begin to compare life in the UK with life in India. Throughout the topic we will also be developing our map skills, locating India (as well as the UK and the seven continents) on a variety of maps and globes.

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