Friday 5th November

 

Dear Squirrels,

It was lovely to see you all again after half term. I'm sure you have all grown in your week off!

As always, it's been a busy week settling back into our learning in the Squirrels' class. 

In Mantle of the Expert

The Mayor's mere suggestion that the 'ancient old oak tree' is no longer safe and requires cutting down has outraged the children. As a result, they decided to write a letter to the Mayor to persuade him NOT TO CUT DOWN THE TREE! The children had many valid reasons to support their argument... 

• The reduction in oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide was of concern to some children.  
• Concerns for the inhabitants of the tree. 
• How the local villagers would feel about cutting down a tree that has been a part of their families heritage

With these concerns in mind the children took 'posh' pens to paper and wrote a persuasive letter to the Mayor.

In Maths

Having completed our chapter on place value, column addition and column subtraction we are now moving on to a new chapter which is multiplication:

• Making equal groups.
• Identifying how many are in each group.
• Drawing equal groups (can be simple dots).
• Writing repeated addition number sentences and multiplication number sentences. 

As this is a new chapter, much the work the children have been doing has been using concrete apparatus and pictorial representations.

Please continue to work on your times tables, spellings and reading at home. 

Year 2: 2, 5 and 10 times tables

Year 3: 3, 4 and 8 times tables

Please remember that doodle maths is available for you to practise the maths we have been learning in class. DoodleLearning | Personalised Online Maths & English  

Children are welcome to change their reading books in class at the end of the day. 

Each child in class is heard by a teacher every week. This term we are working on comprehension, retrieval and inference of text which you will find pointers to on your parent teacher meeting email. 

Those children that received a KS1 (Year 2) work booklet before half term please continue to work through it and feel free to bring it in to show me when you have finished. 

Guy Fawkes: I thought some of you may like to listen to the gunpowder plot story and learn about the history of bonfire night as it is Friday 5th November.

Why did The Gunpowder Plot happen? | History KS1| BBC Teach - YouTube

On Thursday this week the children celebrated Diwali, the festival of light. The children made Rangoli patterns and learnt about the story of Rama and Sita.

You can share the story together here.

Finally, I will leave you with a glowing fire to keep you warm now that the temperature has dropped. 

See you all on Monday.

Have a super weekend!

From Miss Swain and Daphne 

Friday 22nd October

                                                          Happy Half Term 

Dear Super Squirrels,

 I hope you have enjoyed this half term as much as Daphne and I have. The things I have enjoyed are: 

. Getting to know you

.Teaching you

.Listening to your stories and ideas

.Mantel - The Ancient Oak Tree and Scaredy Squirrel

.Forest School

The things Daphne has enjoyed:

.Attention from all of you

.Ear strokes.

.When you talk to her

We have had a very busy half term. You should all be incredibly proud of yourselves. I am proud of all of you!

I will be sending home updated spelling booklets on Friday. Please just focus on five spellings at a time. Master these spellings and make sure you are able to apply them in a sentence before moving on to the next five. Everyone has progressed in their spellings. Keep up the good work. Well done and keep practising! 

Keep reading... Please do share the books you have been reading at home. It would be good to have some recommendations - so if you have enjoyed reading a particular book and would like share what you enjoyed about it, please do bring it in when you have finished reading it. 

Maths facts - ongoing practise of maths facts will always help your learning. Fluency of maths facts will enable you to learn new concepts. All the maths facts are on the Squirrels class page on the school website. 

You may like to keep a diary or a scrap book of your the things you do during half term. If you do and you would like to share it to the class, please bring it with you when we return to school.

 Wishing you and your families a very happy half term. Daphne and I will look forward to seeing you all in November!

From Miss Swain and Daphne

Friday 15th October

                                                     

                                                    

Welcome all to Squirrels' blog,

I would like to share with you the learning children have been doing so magnificently in class this week. In maths our unit on addition and subtraction is going well. Squirrels have been learning to subtract using column subtraction. As always, the children are encouraged to use concrete objects to begin with until they feel secure enough in their understanding before moving on to a pictorial representation and finally confident to apply their knowledge abstractly. They are all doing a grand job at this!

Having completed a character description using sub headings on Scaredy Squirrel, Whaddon Squirrels continue to have lots of fun in their mantle, 'The Ancient Old Oak Tree.' Unfortunately a storm struck the tree this week causing damage to two of its main branches. Thankfully our 'team' (Squirrels) of researching arboriculturists rose to the challenge of saving the tree despite the Mayor's concerns that the tree was a danger to the village and must be cut down for safety reason. As a researching team the arboriculturists have discovered ways to save the tree. 

SPaG (Spellings, punctuation and grammar) 

Continuing with work on suffixes. Squirrels have been learning the spelling rules and applying them for the ly suffix. Interestingly, Squirrels happily performed their harvest festival rehearsal magically with lovely smiles.

In class we continue to practise spellings, handwriting, maths facts and times tables.

Please remember... you can access the Squirrel class pages on the school website. Each child also has access to Doodle learning for maths, spellings and English as well as Rising Stars for a selection of year 2 reading books. 

If you are unsure of your child's log in for Doodle, please refer to Parentmail dated 15/09/2000

As always Squirrels, have a super weekend!

From Miss Swain and Daphne 

Friday 24th September

 Happy Friday 24th September to you all,

                                                              

I hope you are all well. We have had yet another super week in the Super Squirrels class. Lots more virtual marbles in the virtual marble tin for super learning. Squirrels have been discussing positive learning behaviours and applying it to their learning. 

In Super Squirrel class this week, we have completed our unit on place value. Our new unit in maths is addition and subtraction.  

In handwriting, Squirrels have bee practising letter formation and thinking about the relative sizes of the letters. Yr 3 have been looking at the suffix 'ly' and the spelling rules that apply. Yr 2 have been busy working on their sentence structure ensuring that 'every sentence every time' is neatly written, phonetically plausible and punctuated correctly.

In our mantle the children have been using iPads and non fiction books to research which animals would live in an ancient oak tree. Squirrels were very excited to learn about the famous 'Major Oak' tree and imagine the possible stories from Sherwood Forest that it may hold. They were astounded by its size and tried to imagine its width - 11 meters! 

You can view Major Oak here. 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Hopefully the sun will continue to shine

From Miss Swain and Daphne 

  

Super Squirrels: Friday 17th September

 Welcome Super Squirrels families to the Super Squirrels class blog 2021 

 Red Squirrels (Yr2)

 Grey Squirrels (Yr 3)

Hello!

I will be updating the blog with the latest news and pictures from the Super Squirrel class. I am delighted to say that the children have settled into their new Squirrel cohort with endurance, wisdom and compassion. We have a very happy drey filled with lots of busy Squirrels. 

As a class, we discussed what our expectations of each other were. The Squirrels decided that kindness, being a good friend and a smart learner were of high importance. The Squirrels have been incredibly considerate towards their friends and have had positive attitudes towards their learning. As a result of their respect towards each other and their super attitude towards their learning the children have already earned 20 virtual marbles in their virtual marble tin. 

Some of the things we have been working on in the Super Squirrel class this week:

We have started out new mantle topic, 'The Ancient Old Oak Tree'

The children have all been squirreling away practising their times tables.

In maths the have been looking at place value Red Squirrels 2 digit numbers, Grey Squirrels  3 digit numbers.

We have started reading 'A Letter to Pluto' as a whole class which the chilldren are enjoying very much.

During handwriting and spellings Squirrels have been using their new posh pens.

The children have been learning about communion in R.E

and much much more...

On Monday the children's spelling booklets will be going home in their book bags. The spelling books have been updated this term. The highlighted spellings are the ones the children know. The blank ones are the ones the children need to practise. Could you please support your child/ren at home and encourage them to practise their spellings regularly. Please only concentrate on the next whole blank page. We will update booklets each term. 

                                          Thank you

You could try:

Rainbow writing   

Pyramid writing   

             c

            ch

            chi

            chil

           child

           childr

          childre

          children  

Writing backwards and forwards e.g.

The word children: nerdlihc  - children 

You could also try playing look, say, cover, write and check. Your child looks at the word, says the word then covers it over before having a go at writing it.

Please also remember to check the class page on the school website for maths facts to practise. There are some fun games on there.

Super Squirrels, do remember to enjoy a range of books at home as well as school.

Have a super weekend, Super Squirrels. 

See you on Monday, 

Miss Swain and Daphne

An Unexpected Early Goodbye

Hello to all you wonderful Squirrels. 

Yesterday was a bit of a surprise. It feels very strange to have finished our final week together early and not be able to do all of the fun activities we'd got planned. While I'm sad things ended so suddenly, I'm very glad we got to have an amazing final Forest School together yesterday morning (complete with a camp fire and smores of course!). 

I feel so lucky to have been Squirrels teacher for the past two years. We've had an amazing time and learned a fair bit together along the way! I hope you all keep asking questions and finding ways to make your learning fun, whether it's at home or at school next year. 

Our Squirrel class mantles have been a very special highlight for me. We did so many but the Gruffalo mantle (Autumn term 2019), Guy Fawkes mantle (Autumn term 2020) and our current Queen Raven castles mantle have been my favourites. What were yours? 

My plan for today in school was to build Queen Raven's castle using tables, boxes, pallets and whatever else we could find around the school. Maybe you could build your own castle at home at some point this week? If you're not ready for the history/castles learning to end, take a look at school activities page of Warwick Castle's website. 

Finally, I'll leave you with some photos from our Battle of Hastings history day from last week. We had a lot of fun exploring the Bayeux Tapestry, raising questions and re-enacting both the battles between Harold Godwinson's army and Harold Hardrada's, then Harold Godwinson vs. William of Normandy's army. 

Harold Hardrada's defeated army

William, Duke of Normandy, becomes William the Conqueror and King of England!

All that is left for me to say is a huge thank you to you all, both Squirrels and parents! You've all been wonderful through two very difficult years. Squirrels, in school you have never given up and you've always had great attitudes! Parents, throughout the lockdowns, home learning and the return(s) to school you've been incredibly supportive and generally brilliant. So thank you all. 

Reports will be sent out this week along with some ideas on how to keep your child's learning ticking over during the summer. 

A ParentMail will be sent out soon with details of when we can return together at Whaddon Park and say our goodbyes properly. 

I hope you all have an amazing summer holidays and you'll return to school in September ready to learn. I won't be there but I know you'll be incredible!

Lots of love, 

Miss Cartwright 

Summer Term 2 Update 3 & 4

Hello Squirrels one and all. I hope you're well and have had a good few weeks. This week you get twice the update as I was unable to publish last week's blog. 

Our mantle story has been incredibly busy. We spent the beginning of week 3 researching castle defences so we could better understand how to attack and take back Queen Raven's castle. We learnt about equipment used to attack castles in the Middle Ages. It ranged from siege towers and ladders to fire arrows, battering rams and catapults to mining underneath castles to access them from the inside or undermine their outer walls. The servants of Queen Raven agreed on a battle plan which used a battering ram at the front gates for a distraction, then mining tunnels into various rooms of the castle to attack. They wrote excellent instructions on how to attack a wooden Motte and Bailey castle. 

Queen Raven appeared on Wednesday and order her servants to ready themselves for an attack. Her servants fought boldly and bravely but unfortunately the knights inside the castle were ready for attack. The situation was looking bleak when suddenly a flaming fire arrow through the air! The servants were confused as we'd agreed in our battle plans not to use fire arrows as we wanted to reclaim Queen Raven's castle, not burn it down. Sadly the wooden walls and thatched rooves were no match for the fire arrow and the fire spread quickly. Wisely, Queen Raven commanded her servants to retreat once again to the forest. 

Although she was sad, Queen Raven commanded her servants build her a new, better castle. She'd heard of these Norman castles being built from stone. They were larger, safer and far more impressive! 

Before beginning that task, we wrote diary entries about our attempt to reclaim Queen Raven's castle and used oil pastels to draw the burning castle. That way, the story of the attack will be saved for others to learn about in the future. 

At the beginning of week 4, the servants first created a map of Queen Raven's kingdom. They spent time discussing the physical and human features of the kingdom and how it compares with modern day Britain. They then chose a prime location to build on.

Next, the servants researched Norman castles and discovered how many built in defences they had, such as arrow slits, battlements and crenellations, a portcullis and drawbridge, extremely tall and thick walls and, of course, a moat. The servants used their research knowledge to design Queen Raven's new castle. Their pictures and  blueprints (drawn onto squared paper with precise measurements labelled on) were incredible and hugely detailed! They wrote about their designs, explaining which features they had included and why for Queen Raven. We are now awaiting a verdict from Queen Raven about whether we should begin building...

SPAG

Week 3: A recap of using adjectives in a list with commas, followed by forming nouns using the -er suffix. E.g. build = builder, farm = famer, teach = teacher. 

Week 4: Using similes to describe (e.g. brave like a knight, as busy as a bee) and alliteration (e.g. Daphne dog danced and dug dreamily all day long). 

Year 2 SPAG homework is on DoodleSpell while Year 3 SPAG homework is on DoodleEnglish. 

Maths 

We have continued telling the time for the last few weeks. The children have progressed from telling the time to 5 minutes to calculating end or start times for events and duration of events. These are tricky skills but the children are showing great endurance. Please continue to do plenty of time telling with your child at home using an analogue clock face. This is a life skill that we want them to feel really confident with! 

There is maths homework on time telling on DoodleMaths. 

Next week there will be Move-Up Day on Wednesday for everyone. They will spend the day with their new teachers in their new classes.

Have a wonderful weekend Squirrels.

From Miss Cartwright