Term 2

French Hares have really enjoyed their ‘Movers and Shakers’ topic and have learned a great deal about a range of significant people and why they are significant.

Topic

In our History learning, we studied some significant explorers such as Vasco de Gama and Roald Amundsen, and discussed how exploration has changed over time. We have particularly enjoyed learning about a local significant person, gentleman explorer Julius Brenchley. Recently, we have learned about some famous activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Emmeline Pankhurst and Malala Yousafzai. The two ‘Little People, Big Dreams’ Advent calendars have been extremely valuable in supporting our learning in this topic and the children have often requested these books at story time.  

The topic culminated in our Experience Day, where we came dressed as a significant person, and made our own Little People Big Dreams book covers.

English

We started the term writing a persuasive poster to help us learn the four sentence types; statement, command, question and exclamation. The original model text was about Emmeline Pankhurst and her campaign for votes for women. We then adapted this to write about Rosa Parks and the campaign for equal rights for all.

Our current English topic is writing a journey story about Julius Brenchley, using adjectives to describe. The model text is based on true stories of Julius’ travels. We will then create our own journey stories, with new adventures for Julius.

Maths

In Maths, we have been working on developing a secure understanding of addition and subtraction with a range of two-digit numbers.

We have continued to work on the stem sentence, “In an addition number sentence, the whole sits next to the equals sign.”

We use a ‘putting together’ action to help us remember that when we add two parts together, the whole will increase (unless one part is zero).

For subtraction we have used a ‘taking away/taking apart’ action, with the words “In a subtraction number sentence, the whole sits before the minus sign”.

These stem sentences are particularly useful when working out how to solve questions like 17 – ? = 9; we can colour code the parts in red and whole in green to help us work out what number could be missing.

We have also continued to build our maths fluency by counting in twos, threes, fives and tens and ensuring we can speedily recall number bonds to ten.

Science

We finished off our ‘Habitats’ topic and started our new ‘Human Survival’ topic. We have looked at the human life cycle and some of the processes that occur during our lives, such as birth, growth and reproduction.

P.E.

In outdoor P.E. we have been working on ball skills for football; dribbling, passing and receiving. We have learned which part of the foot we should use for each of these skills, and played many games to help us develop the skills further.

Term 1 2025-26 

Topic

This term, our topic focus has been ‘Movers and Shakers’; learning about historically significant people who have had a major impact on the world.

We have learned about Rosa Parks, Mary Anning, Mahatma Gandhi, Emmeline Pankhurst, Joseph Lister and Neil Armstrong, using timelines and other historical sources to find out more. We are really enjoying reading the Little People Big Dreams books and have read over 25 of different ones so far!

We used Dawson’s Model of Significance, which gives five statements to help us decide who was the most significant person and who had the biggest impact on the world. These statements are:

1. They made big changes in their lifetime
2. They made lots of people’s lives better or worse
3. They changed the way people think
4. Their ideas are still used today
5. They were a good or bad role model

English

In English, we have been studying biographies. A biography is a written history of a person’s life.

First, we learned a biography of Mahatma Gandhi and how he inspired people to protest peacefully. We used story maps and actions to support our sequencing and recall of this information. Maggie Magpie reminds us daily, “If you can say it, you can write it!”

We then innovated on this to write a biography of another famous activist; Rosa Parks. We remembered to write in the past tense, in chronological order, underline titles and subheadings and include important events in each part of her life, with dates.

We have now begun a new unit; learning to write a persuasive poster using all four sentence types; command, statement, question, exclamation. Our model text is about Votes for Women, linked to our learning about Suffragettes.

Science

In Science, we have been investigating habitats. A habitat is a place where living things such as plants and animals live and includes some non-living things like rocks and water. The habitat provides all the things that the living things need to survive such as shelter, space, food and water.

We tried to identify different plants and animals by studying their features and using spotter guides.

We learned how some animals are herbivores, some are carnivores and some are omnivores. We also discussed how living things depend on one another for food and made food chains. All food chains start with a producer; a plant. Producers make their own energy using the sun.

Art

We have very much enjoyed colour mixing this term, learning how primary colours can be mixed in different quantities to produce a range of hues.

We then applied this knowledge to help us make our fundraising Christmas cards by painting trees in hues of green that we had mixed ourselves.

We thought carefully about how to apply the paint to show the texture of the branches.

When the paint had dried we added decorations using colouring pencils.

DT

In DT we have been learning how to read a recipe. We learned how to cut safely with a knife and revisited how to use a peeler to create an Apple Crisp.

Term 6 2024-25 

English:

In English this term we have been writing diary entries. First, we read and drew a story map of our model text, a diary entry from a girl called Daisy, who was a Victorian school girl. After we had identified and picked out the features of diary entries, we began to write our own.

Our first diary entry was written from the viewpoint of a child at a modern school. We described some of the things that we might do and see at school such as sitting on the carpet, going out for break time or using the interactive whiteboard.

We then recalled what we had seen as well as our knowledge of what schools were like in Victorian times to write our own diary entry from that point of view. We wrote of experiences such as writing on slate boards with chalk, being shouted at by a teacher or being punished by the dunces cap or the cane.

Maths:

In Maths, we have started to learn to tell the time with analogue clocks. We started learning about how we measure time in general such as the days of the week and the months of the year. We then learnt about o’clock times. This is when the long minute hand is pointing to the 12 on the clock face. We practised making different o’ clock times on mini clocks.

We then learnt half-past times. This is when the long minute hand is pointing to 6 and the short hour hand is half way between two numbers. We had a go at listening to a half past time and recreating it on our mini clocks.

History:

In History we have been learning about what schools were like in Victorian times. We have been recalling everything we have found out to write our answer to the enquiry question, “What was school like in the past and what is school like now?”. To answer this, we first wrote down what we have learnt about Victorian schools. We learnt that the teachers were very strict and had different punishments for the children including the cane and the dunce’s hat. Children in Victorian times had a two-hour lunch break so that they could go home and have lunch, but they didn’t have a playground, until Samuel Wilderspin came along. We then wrote about what school was like now and what we did at school, such as writing on paper with pencils and sitting in groups at tables on plastic chairs. Finally, we wrote about what school we would prefer to go to. The majority of us voted that we would like to keep things as they are!

PE:

Our topic in PE this term has been rackets, bats and balls. During this topic, we have explored and developed our control of different bats and rackets. These have included: cricket bats, tennis rackets and hockey sticks. We used lots of different sized balls and guided them around courses and the playground. We found that it was easier to use large balls and longer sticks. We later used our new skills to play games such as Kwik cricket and hockey.