Welcome to Fox class! Our teacher is Mr Roberts, who has been at Bedwell ever since he started teaching, 18 years ago. He particularly likes science, storytelling and sport, and is also our Deputy Headteacher.

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

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.  
• To learn more about the Mayans, have a look at the BBC Bitesize resources at: www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zq6svcw This includes really quick video clips that explain who the Mayans were and where they came from, and will give us a good head-start in lessons.
• Look for examples of living things growing and changing all around us - in the garden, can you spot plants sprouting and growing their first leaves? In the trees and bushes around us, can you spot chicks being fed and starting to grow? Check in with the ducks in the park - over a few weeks, how do the ducklings change and grow, becoming more independent and getting ready to fly... 
• Keeping fit, happy and healthy is always important. There are links to lots of great resources and workouts to help everyone in the family get active at www.sportengland.org/jointhemovement

Our latest news:

• Our final trip of the year saw us heading to Aldenham Country Park. We had a lovely day exploring the farm, woodland and nature trails, all of which linked in with the Life Cycles topic that we’ve been learning about in science. When we arrived, we split into two groups, with half of us going on a guided tour of the farm while the other half explored a nature trail around the 100 Acre Wood. In the farm, we got to feed chickens, rabbits, donkeys, cows and geese. We particularly enjoyed meeting the 18 piglets that swarmed around their mum and the goats that climbed up on the railings to eat out of our hands. In the woods, we decided that we definitely weren’t too old for Winnie the Pooh, and enjoyed finding the houses where Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and Owl lived. After lunch, we had a great time in the adventure playground, and then finished our day with a quick walk around the park before heading back to the coach.  
 

 
• The highlight of our Ancient Greeks topic was our trip to the British Museum. We took part in a workshop with an expert from the Museum, who showed us how we could spot particular gods, characters and stories by the clothes they wore and the objects they carried. We also got to see the priceless Parthenon Marbles first hand - and this has fed into our work on discussions, as we have begun debating whether or not they should be returned to Greece. 
 

 
• 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!
 

 
• We have been learning about the role of the police and things we can do to keep safe in our Mini Police sessions 
 
• We loved tacking part in this year's Science Week, including sessions with Falconry UK and the Dogs Trust, kite making, buggy building and our Egg Drop challenge. Those of us in Science Club have also completed our CREST Discovery Award, learning about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. 
 

We have been learning about... 

History - We’ve learnt all about the Ancient Greeks this term! We discovered that it was actually a collection of separate ’city states’, all with their own types of government, and compared life in Athens and Sparta. We read lots of myths and explored the idea of oral storytelling in the days before everyone could read and write by becoming travelling storytellers ourselves - you can see Anna retelling the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in the picture below.

English - Linking in with our Ancient Greeks topic, we began the term by exploring stories where everyday people suddenly found themselves in the middle of a mythical adventure. We read lots of myths, then explored our model text using drama and freeze-framing. We developed our ability to punctuate speech correctly, and finally planned and wrote our own tales.

This term's topics

English - Our next unit will see us exploring Warning Stories - adventures where children ignore the advice of adults and go somewhere distinctly dangerous. We will begin by reading and summarising some great examples to help us to understand this genre, and will then work in teams to create and (carefully and safely) act-out warning stories of our own, using Fairlands Park as our setting. We’ll record the key dramatic moments using ipads, and will then turn these into comic book pages using some clever apps. All of this will help us to really understand our characters, as well as giving us lots of opportunities to collect fantastic descriptive language - and that, in turn, should enable us to write some fantastic final pieces!

Maths - We will start the term by developing our understanding of shape, building (and naming) 3d shapes, matching them to 2d representations and using them to solve problems. After that, we will explore reflection and translation, working out what shapes will look like in a mirror or after they have been moved around coordinate grids. Later in the term, we will return to the topic of angles, developing our ability to measure, plot, name and calculate angles. Finally, we will return to our key calculation strategies, revising the use of written methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and using these to solve increasingly complex problems.

Science - We will extend our understanding of living things by exploring the way that different plants and animals change as they age. We will identify the stages that they pass through, comparing the life cycles of a range of mammals, insects, birds and amphibians. We will also learn about the way that babies grow and develop, both before and after birth.

Humanities - We will begin by discovering who the Mayans were, where they lived and when their civilisation existed. We will then investigate their daily lives, comparing their homes, schools, clothes, food and warriors with other historical civilisations we have already learnt about (eg. Greeks, Romans, Vikings and Normans). We will also be exploring Mayan Gods and religion and examining the way that historians can learn about lives in Mayan times. Finally, we will be exploring Mayan Art and using this to inspire our own work.

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