Welcome to Rabbit class! Our teacher is Mrs Wren, who has been teaching at Bedwell for two years. She is really good at music and English, and wants to make her lessons fun, interactive and memorable.  

• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest class newsletter
• Meet our School Councillors, Ariya and Joe

Home learning ideas:

• We’re working on tables facts this term, so it would be brilliant if you could work on learning these at home. 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. 
• Our English topic is a great excuse to watch lots of science fiction films and TV shows, and then to compare them to the stories we’ve read in class. While you’re there, try collecting lots of great language to describe the strange planets and creatures that turn up on screen...  
• We’re learning about water in Geography. We're disappointingly short on big rivers in our part of Hertfordshire, so if the opportunity arrives for a visit to an interesting lake or riverside (on the way back from a day out or just for a Sunday afternoon walk), that’d be great - we’d love to hear about it (and share some photos) in class.
  
• Investigate what magnets stick to - fridge magnets work fine, and you can investigate lots of different materials around the house. Try different metals and help your child discover that magnets only stick to some of them (mostly iron and steel).
• You can have a go at coding in Scratch by heading to scratch.mit.edu or downloading the Scratch app. There are loads and loads of tutorials, ideas and examples of other people’s work available on the Scratch site. 
  

Our latest news:

• On the penultimate Friday of term we visited Celtic Harmony Camp in Hertford to support our history topic, which has focussed on life in Ancient Britain. We spent the day travelling from the Stone Age to the Iron Age by completing a series of workshops associated with each period. After an engaging introduction by Finbar (our guide through history) we learnt about Stone Age tools with a demonstration of flint knapping. We then tried this technique ourselves, using it to craft an arrow head. Next up we delved into the Bronze age, learning how they made pottery and crafting our own pot. Finally we moved into the Iron Age, where we milled our own flour and made bread. Before we left we were invited into the Chieftain's round house for Celtic story telling. Finbar was on fine form and even if we had no idea what was going on in some of the stories, we fell about laughing at his crazy antics before heading home!  
 

 
• Earlier this year we visited Hazard Alley in Milton Keynes, an immersive and interactive town that teaches about the dangers that we might face in everyday life. During the visit we worked in small groups and visited lots of settings, including a house to talk about fire safety, a train track to discuss the dangers of railway lines, a shop to talk about stealing and a lake to learn about water safety. During the visit we all had the opportunity to make a 999 call, which was both scary and great practice. 
 

 
• 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 thoroughly enjoyed getting involved in Science Week. A particular highlight was our visit from Falconry UK, who bought an array of birds, such as kookaburras, owls and falcons into school. We learnt so much about these magnificent creatures and were able to ask and answer lots of interesting questions. 

We have been learning about... 

English - In our daily English sessions we have been crazy about report writing. After learning about different genres of non-fiction texts and the structure of non-chronological reports we started to build up the skills in order to write our own. Below is Sophia’s final piece of writing which we were all impressed by. She worked hard to use formal language, conjunctions and technical language, in order to make her writing as exciting and detailed as possible.

Without a doubt, Ice Dragons are one of the most unique species of dragon that has ever existed. These dragons are extremely elusive and rarely seen by humans. 

Appearance 

Many dragon experts believe that Ice Dragons have changing translucent scales that change colour when they are hunting. This species’ fangs are covered in poisonous liquid. Furthermore these dragons have long tails that reach five metres in length and long sharp horns that can be used to charge their prey. 

Habitat 

Scientists have discovered where the Ice Dragon lives and have found out that it resides in more than one place. Most Ice Dragons live in the Blue Mountains in Nigeria, but a small group can also be found further away near Antarctica. The Ice Dragons nest is made from rocks, seaweed and ice because it likes to be cold at all times. During the day this dragon can be found underneath the sea searching for food. 

Feeding 

The diet of the Ice Dragon is varied and rather unexpected. Its favourite food is human flesh as it provides the dragon with valuable energy. Furthermore this species is known for devouring ants, and can eat up to six million in a day. In addition to these foods, Ice dragons consume fish that only grow to full size in the Spring.  

Art - We have learnt about lots of different art styles this term. First we studied Pop Art, experimenting with body form and colour to create a Keith Haring style portrait - check out our class display on the right. Next up was clay work. As we have been learning to write dragon reports in English we combined this with learning how to sculpt and manipulate clay to create dragon eyes. We then learnt how to make slip to attach scales and horns.

This term's topics

English - Our next fiction topic focuses on Science Fiction stories, so expect our writing to be full of aliens, robots, space ships and time travellers! We will be exploring different ways that feelings are shown in writing, including through description and the use of emotive language. We will continue to develop our use of speech, punctuating it correctly and using short bursts of dialogue to show what characters are thinking or to move the plot forward. We will also be developing our use of short sentences to add drama and tension. In our reading lessons, meanwhile, we will be developing our predicting, summarising and detective skills, looking for those key clues that show us how characters feel and what they are likely to do next.  

Maths - Our main focus at the start of term will be on multiplication and division strategies. We will start by revising strategies to x and ÷ by 10, 100 and 1000, and will then learn to use formal written methods to multiply and divide 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers (solving calculations like 34 x 4 or 84 ÷ 6). Later in the term we will be returning to the topic of time, recognising how days, weeks, months and years are linked and then learning to read and write the times shown on analogue clocks (with hands). Throughout the term, we will also continue to practice and learn our tables facts, aiming to complete our Star (x2, x5 and x10 tables) and Superstar (x3, x4 and x6 tables) by the time we start Year 4.

Science - We will be exploring different types of forces, including pushes, pulls, gravity and friction, and thinking about the way that these affect the way that objects move in different situations. We will design and carry out fair tests to see which materials create the most friction, and to discover which materials stick to magnets. We will also investigate different ways in which we can measure forces.

Humanities - Water is all around us and vital to every type of life, and in this topic we will be learning about the way that the Water Cycle means that it is constantly being reused and recycled. We will locate the world’s major oceans, seas and rivers on a variety of maps, and discuss the difference between fresh water and sea water (and why it matters). We will also investigate the impact of water on environments, both shaping landscapes and affecting the growth of many towns and cities.

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