Welcome to Fox class! Our teacher is Mr Humber, who has been teaching for eighteen years, the last ten of which have been at Bedwell. He is really good at art, history and maths, and he says his favourite things are rugby and pizza!

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

Home learning ideas:

• All of the maths we’re doing this term is dependent on quick recall of tables facts, so it would be brilliant if you could work on this. 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.  
• All of the computing tasks we’ve worked on in class are available at microbit.org. There are links to the MakeCode editor we’ve been using, loads of ideas in the projects library and lots more info about these clever devices. 
• We're exploring rivers and mountains in geography. We’re disappointingly short on these in our part of Hertfordshire, so if the opportunity arrives for a visit to an interesting riverside (on the way back from a day out or just for a Sunday afternoon walk), that’d be great. If you’ve ever been to the Alps, Scottish Highlands or anywhere else mountainous, sharing your experiences (and, better still, photos) would really help us to better understand what these environments are like. 
• To support our work in science, keep a look out for examples of changing materials in everyday life. Cooking is great for this - which materials mix well together? Which dissolve in water (like salt or sugar)? Which are easy to separate (often with a sieve) and which are tricky? Can you spot any patterns in what you observe or predict what might happen next? 

Our latest news:

• We loved getting involved in this year's Sports Week, which included skateboarding, rugby, netball, athletics and our massive Sports Day. We threw ourselves into every session with great enthusiasm, and discovered lots of new passions!
 

 
• The whole school came together earlier in the term to take part in an Under the Sea themed art day. Each class produced their own pieces, including 3d coral and jellyfish, watercolour oceans and fabric prints The centre of it all came from Foxes, who created a model of a sea turtle using recycled materials like card and plastic bottles. The finished pieces came together to create a stunning display in the school entrance - if you haven’t already seen it, pop in and take a look!
 

 
• We had a head-start on one of our Science Week challenges, as we got to take part in the STEMPOINT Knex Challenge . The county-wide competition challenged us to build a space rocket, with detachable boosters and a command capsule for the crew. We worked hard in our pairs to build, test and adapt our designs over the course of the morning, with Cosmin and Michael eventually selected as our school winners. 
 

 
• We have been studying the work of the famous sculptor, Henry Moore. To begin with we found out about his life and work, before studying pictures of his sculptures and trying to work out what they represented. Before we moved onto our design phase, we visited Barclay Academy to view a real-life Henry Moore statue called ‘Family Group’. We spent some time sketching it from different angles and were very pleased with our efforts. After designing four different sculptures out of playdough, we then used modelling clay to create our final pieces of art. 
 

We have been learning about... 

English : Suspenseful Stories - In Fox class this term we have worked tirelessly to learn as much as we possibly could in preparation for our big jump to Year 6. We have been learning about suspense in English and the many techniques authors use to create this in their writing. Our stories were based on two books, The Water Tower and The Boy in The Tower - and you can read Tyler's brilliant final piece below: 

The Caretaker’s Shed 

“Let’s go to that old, abandoned caretakers hut for a laugh!” giggled Tyler. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” questioned Mason. “Are you scared?” teased Tyler.

 Moments later, the two boys were on their way towards the forest and before long they were totally lost. Hours passed, and a sense of loneliness spread through them like a poison and their stomachs growled. There was nothing they could do but press onwards further into the darkening forest which seemed to grow blacker with each passing minute. The trees towered over them like gravestones and the branches hung down like witches fingers. 

“C-c-c-can we go home now?” stuttered Mason. As they continued, a sign hung down from a twisted branch which read: DANGER! Tyler shivered and Mason gulped. The blood vessels in Tyler’s eyes popped and sweat began to run down both their backs. 

They trembled, but continued as it was too late and too dark to turn back. Tyler dragged Mason onwards until they reached a clearing. The caretakers shed came into view through a thick fog. Ivy clung to the shed walls, the windows were cracked and cobwebs stretched across the splintered roof. 

“Are we really going in there?” asked Mason. Just as Tyler was about to reply, a shadow appeared at the window and pointed at them. Behind them a twig snapped… 

By Tyler  

DT : Pillow Packets - This half-term, we were set a challenge to design and make a pillow in the shape of our favourite snacks. After working on different famous logo designs, we then had to create our chosen one from card. Once our designs and card practice piece were completed, we learnt running stitch and back stitch. Once we had mastered these stitches, we began to cut out our designs in felt, before stitching them to one side of our packets. Finally we turned our packets inside out and using a back stitch we sewed up each side of our packet, leaving one side open so that will could fill it with stuffing. As you can see our finished products are fantastic and we couldn’t wait to take them home! 

This term's topics

English - Our next unit will see us exploring descriptive writing, using The Watertower by Gary Crew as our core text. We will explore the characters, write sections of dialogue and then investigate the way the author uses figurative language to create tension. We will finish by writing a recount of a suspenseful event, using illustrations from the text as inspiration. After that, we will shift our attention to explanations, building our lessons around The Lost Book of Adventure. We will explore the use of bullet points, colons and relative clauses to present information clearly. We will then write our own explanations, telling someone how to stay safe in a dangerous place.

Maths - We will be exploring the ideas of perimeter and area, learning what these terms mean and exploring different ways to measure them. We will discover how to calculate the area and perimeter of shapes made from rectangles, and will then use this understanding to solve problems. After that, we will return to our core calculation strategies, extending our understanding of multiplication and division and working out what to do when calculations leave a remainder. We will also investigate the use of inverse calculations to find starting values and check answers. Finally we will be developing our understanding of time, making sure we can tell the time accurately and solve timetable problems.

Science - We will begin by looking at different ways in which we can sort and group materials. We will then investigate the way that materials change when mixed with water - which dissolve, which float, which form a paste… and why? We will explore the way that we can separate mixtures and learn about the difference between reversible and irreversible changes.

Humanities - We will continue to explore rivers and mountains over the next few weeks. We will look at different parts of river systems, understanding how they are formed, how they change over time, and how they interact with the landscapes they travel through (linking in with our next DT project). Following on from this, we will be focussing on mountain environments, locating the world’s major mountains and ranges on a variety of maps and globes. We will discover the ways in which mountain ranges are formed and the reasons why they are found in particular parts of the world. We will round-off our unit by exploring the impact that humans are having (both positive and negative) on river and mountain environments around the world.

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