Welcome to Fox class! Our teacher is Mr Humber, who has been teaching for seventeen years, the last nine 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 had a head-start on one of our Science Week challenges, as we got to take part in the STEMPOINT Knex Challenge earlier this half-term. 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. 
 

 
• On 11th March we headed to St Andrews and St Georges church to learn about the Easter Story. We split into 4 separate groups and learnt about the Christian faith’s belief in the miracles of Jesus and the days leading up to his execution including Palm Sunday and the Last Supper. After a short snack break we then found what happened on Good Friday and Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday. We had great fun, learnt lots and thoroughly impressed the Arch Deacon! 
 
• 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. 
 

 
• With great excitement, Years 5 and 6 ventured to Hogwarts at the Harry Potter Studios in Leavesden. We started off with a creative writing workshop, where some secrets and tricks of the trade were shared with us. Then, after entering through the magical Great Hall, we were able to talk to experts about props, costumes and makeup, fly on a Nimbus 2000, walk inside the Hogwarts Express and experience the effects that were used in the films. Diagon Alley, Gringotts Bank, the Dursley’s House and the Forbidden Forest were all there for us to explore. 
 

We have been learning about... 

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! 

Art : Carnival Masks - Our first art project of the year was linked to our geography unit on Brazil. After learning about the Rio Carnival we were tasked with designing and making our own carnival mask. Each mask needed a theme (nature, fire, ice etc) and it had to be big, bright and bold, just like the masks used in the carnival. As you can see we were really successful with this!

This term's topics

English - Our first unit is based around The Misadventures of Frederick by Ben Manley. This story is written as a collection of letters between Frederick and his friend Emily, and we will use it to focus on persuasive writing techniques. We will investigate the use of hyperbole and modal verbs, and will then use these skills to write our persuasive letters to Miss Shaw. Later in the term we will return to story writing, using the story of The Watchtower by Gary Crew to explore the way that authors introduce characters. We will then experiment with different ways in which to add suspense to our writing, building up to writing exciting (and occasionally scary) descriptive recounts.

Maths - We will start the term by developing our understanding of area, estimating and calculating the space inside rectangles by multiplying side lengths. We will also learn to work backwards to find missing side lengths when given the area. After that, we will be introduced to the idea of percentages, linking these to our knowledge of fractions (using the key relationship that 1% = 1/100 = 0.01). We will learn to calculate percentages of numbers and amounts and use bar models to help us solve percentage problems. Later in the term we will be exploring 3d shapes, summarising their properties, revising key vocabulary, linking 3d models to 2d drawings and investigating nets.

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 - This half-term we will focus on geography, starting by looking at major rivers around the world and discovering why they are so significant for the people and around them. 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. Following on from this, we will be focussing on mountain environments, locating the world’s major mountains and ranges on a variety of maps. 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 on river and mountain environments around the world.

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