WELCOME TO FERN CLASS

The children settled so quickly back into the Spring term that we were able to proceed efficiently with their next learning.  They have been keen to take on the new challenges of the new year.

With our new topic 'Turn the Lights On!' in English the children have been exposed to two books 'Orion and the Dark' and 'The Dark'.  With both stories we have tried hard to extend our sentences with conjunctions such as 'but' and 'so', rather than 'and'.

Using 'Orion and the Dark' as a stimulus the children wrote sentences about why the dark is important and what you can do at night time that you cannot do in the day.  The children noticed how the second story 'The Dark' was similar, yet the character of 'The Dark' was made to initially feel not as kind.  In this story, 'The Dark' led the central character Laszlo to the basement to discover a drawer.  The children used drama to re-enact the story (in the dark) and then they had to try to persuade different 'Laszlo's to either open or not open the drawer dependent upon what they thought was in it!  The children then painted their own drawers and wrote on black paper what they thought was in the drawer.  This writing was then folded and put inside their drawers.

In maths we been learning about division.  We firstly thought about how a number can be grouped in two's, five's etc., we used counters to represent the amounts and then moved them into groups which helped us to understand how we start with a whole number and are splitting it into groups of a certain amount.  We then thought about division through sharing.  We had a given number and had to share that amount into a number of groups.  We knew that each group had to contain an equal number.

In the past week we have been re-visiting 2D shape.  We reminded ourselves of what 2D means and of the names of many 2D shapes.  Then we thought about how many sides and vertices each of these shapes had and learnt to draw them accurately on grid paper with a ruler.  We have learnt about symmetry and how some shapes have more than one line of symmetry.

In science we have thought about 'lifecycles'.  We firstly learnt about the lifecycles of ladybirds, turtles and penguins and wrote about one of these of our choice.

Next we discussed the names of different animals and their young.  We were able to name many of these accurately.  Then we thought about the human lifecycle and the different stages of this and what we can do at these stages.

It is amazing to see the fantastic home learning which is completed by many each week.  Only last week Maya had drawn her own family tree and I loved reading this.  Thank you all for the support you offer at home with daily reading and any additional learning.

Mrs Farrell            Miss Selwyn          Miss Gagliano