Maple Class - Term 5 week 1
Date: 2nd May 2025 @ 12:36pm
It has been great to welcome Maple class back, and what glorious weather we have had. We have certainly made the most of it by being outside, but children being able to go inside if they have found it too hot. The children created some brilliant dens during Explore and Learn to keep them in the shade outside.
This term our school theme is compassion and kindness to others. We also kicked off with our new key question in Maple Class - “I wonder how we could explore the world?” by reading The Train Ride written by June Crebbin. This will also be our focus book this term. We will be drawing a story map and learning story actions to go alongside the story when we read it. We will be reading the book in small groups as well as whole class throughout the term. Children have loved joining in with the repeated text. We talked about the different types of transport we use to travel and thought about how they travel – on roads, tracks in air or water. We found out about the Eurotunnel and saw what the trained looked like and how cards got onto it. We also learnt how the tunnel was built using a huge drill.
We began designing out junk model trains which we are going to make using the junk we collected at home over the holidays. We sorted our junk and decided what we would use for each part of the train.
This week we have done some brilliant independent writing, thinking about what the children may see when looking out of a train window in the countryside. On Thursday the children thought up their own sentences with their learning partners and then built up these sentences using cubes representing each word, repeating it while pointing to the cubes, and then writing down their words to form their sentences. The cubes ensured they knew how many words they needed in their sentence. We also remembered to start our sentence with a capital letter, have a finger space between each word and end it with a full stop. Children are using their phonic skills to successfully write a range of words, and can refer to the level 2 and 3 Twinkl sound mats if they need reminding of any sounds they want to write. Mrs Wood was so impressed when Mrs Duffey showed them their phonics books that she awarded them all with a Headteachers Award sticker. Great work Maple.
In maths we have been partitioning 9 and are brilliant at it. We have also been looking at all our amazing plants, which have been growing steadily over the Easter holidays. We have enjoyed comparing the lengths of our sunflowers and also the two bean plants which stayed here over the holidays. Maple children loved telling us how tall their bean plants are growing – great work, we can’t wait to hear if you get any beans on them!
In phonics we have been finished the phonics assessments we started before the Easter holidays. The children really are applying what we have learnt in our phonics lessons so well in their reading and writing. They need to continue to practice this at home to ensure this knowledge is embedded.
In forest school this week, because it was so hot and we didn’t want the children to have to put on their waterproofs so as their legs and arms were covered, we continued to tend to our plants, ensuring there are well watered. We planted some more potatoes, observed any changes to our plants. We have noticed our strawberry plants have white flowers on them – we can’t wait for them to produce some juicy strawberries! We have covered them in a netting so the cheeky birds can’t eat them before we do!
In PE this week we started learning Country Dancing! The children didn’t even realise we were doing PE and asked at the end of the day why we hadn’t done it! They did a great job at learning the steps we learnt, we based our moves on the dance Pat A Cake Polka – see if they can show you any of the moves they learnt – heel toe, shuffle shuffle, clapping with a partner – right 2,3,4, left 2,3,4, together 2,3,4, knees 2,3,4.
Friday morning we went for a gorgeous walk to visit the donkeys and alpacas and had a lovely explore in the meadow. We also had an extra PE session and learnt Korfball. We practised standing really still when we had the ball and practised throwing and catching the ball, making our way to the Korf goals to shoot and score. At the end of our session we had a match! In PSHE we read the story What The Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson and talked about the importance of speaking up when something is wrong, and when you should speak to a teacher.
What a busy week we’ve had. We hope you have a lovely long bank holiday weekend.
