Welcome to Hedgehog class! Our teacher is Mrs Jackson, who has been teaching for 16 years, and has worked at Bedwell for the last 7. 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 Councillors, Lacey and Deivis 

Home learning ideas:

• 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 advice and guidance on using the books your child will bring home, here.
  
• 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.
• 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?
• We're learning about division and fractions in maths, so try sharing out food together - can we split this cake into thirds or find half of these sweets? Try different ways of sharing - cutting into portions, counting out an equal number for each person or splitting things into groups - which method makes the most sense for whatever you’re trying to do?

Our latest news:

• 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 threw ourselves enthusiastically into every aspect of this year’s Science Week. The K’nex Challenge was one of our class highlights, with us working in pairs to build a car or buggy that could safely transport a cuddly friend down a ramp. 
  
 

We have been learning about... 

English - At the start of term, we received a very unusual message in a bottle from someone who had been stranded on an island! We had no idea who it was from and spent many days thinking about who would be unlucky enough to be left on an island! This then led us on to creating our own island descriptions, as well as diary entries for our adventures in this distant land.

Yesterday morning as I gazed into the sky I saw big palm leaves and I collected a few. I put the big palm leaves inside of my den before the terrible storm arrived. Now the storm has arrived, so before it got worse I put all of my things inside my den. The palm trees swayed violently and the bigger palm trees swayed even more. I made a fire close to my den, but the big wind blew it away so I didn’t give up. I figured out a way to make it hot inside of my den. I found a brown, small basket to put my shoes in. I took the cloth of my hammock and used it as a warm blanket. I used thick palm leaves as a pillow. Enormous waves splashed on the sand.  - by Sai

Geography - We have been learning all about India and comparing life there with life here in the UK. We can name the 7 continents and 5 oceans (using our new favourite song to help us) and can talk about the different weather and landscapes found across India. We also spent time looking at Rangoli patterns and created our own versions, using polystyrene tiles which we turned into prints.

Maths - In maths we have spent a long time learning how to tell the time and at last we think we have cracked it! We now know our o’clocks, half pasts, quarter to and quarter past. We’ve even tried using the language of ‘minutes to’ and ‘minutes past’ the hour.

This term's topics

English - We will be using the fantastic story The Night Pirates to inspire our writing this term. We will begin by reading, acting-out and storyboarding the text, which sees a boy called Tom woken up in the middle of the night by a band of rough, tough girl pirates, who offer him the chance to join their adventures. We will use all the skills we have worked on this year to write in a variety of styles linked to the story, including diary entries, letters home, wanted posters, instructions and reports. Finally, we will write our own adventure stories in a similar style.  

Maths - We will be focussing on division and multiplication over the next few weeks. For multiplication, we will progress from using objects and drawings to thinking about the link between multiplication, repeated addition and arrays. We will also learn how to solve two-step problems using jottings to explain our thinking. In division, we will be developing our understanding of sharing and grouping, again beginning with objects and drawings, and working towards being able to solve problems with pencil and paper methods. Finally, we will be exploring the idea of fractions, learning to find fractions of lengths, shapes, sets of objects and quantities, including finding 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4.

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. In history, meanwhile, we will explore seaside holidays from the past and discover how they have changed over the years. We will use photos, video clips and first-hand accounts to support our learning, and will use all of this to discuss how seaside environments have changed.

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