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Ash Class 2022-2023

Welcome to the Ash Class page. We are a busy class of Reception, year 1 and year 2 children. Here you will find regular updates about our adventures! Miss Bleakley is our Class teacher and is supported by Mrs Hartness and Mrs Taylor.

Spring Term

Week Commencing 13th and 20th March 2023

Phew! What a busy couple of weeks in Ash class! We enjoyed celebrating British Science Week with lots of activities around the theme of connections. The children investigated how the size of a vehicle's wheels affects the distance it can travel, before taking part in an online workshop called 'How are tractors connected to space?' It was fab! Ask them to find out more!
We also enjoyed visits from lots of lovely and inspiring scientists/ engineers who talked about renewable energy, connections in biology and physics and even found out about connections within aircraft and flights. A huge thank you to Dr Farman, Mr Smith, Mrs Garland and Mr Stephens!! 

In Ash Class we also explored connections in nature and the seasons as part of our science learning about weather and seasons. We then used our working scientifically skills to find out more about fingerprints and even build super strong bridges using paper! It was wonderful to see the children's determination to build the strongest bridge!! 
This week we have continued our English unit about adverts and have been producing some persuasive writing. In Maths we are learning about mass. Reception have been using the balance scales to compare the mass of objects, year 1 have been measuring objects using non-standard measure and year 2 have been reading scales to measure objects in grams and kilograms. 

We enjoyed another super PE lesson in which we have been developing team game strategies and a lovely forest school session where we just missed a torrential downpour!! 

Week Commencing 6th March 2023

I'm really proud of how hard the children have worked this week. They have showed determination, resilience and a super positive attitude throughout assessment week. In addition, they have started a new English unit in which they are debating if children should be allowed to stay up late. They have also been practising measuring using the skills they learnt last week. In PE they have been using team games to develop teamwork and communication skills and it was great to see the progress they have made. Lots of Ash Class have also been enjoying gymnastics club with Mrs Griffiths! In DT we have been designing and have started making a secret project so watch this space! Years 1 and 2 in particular have been learning about using apostrophes for contractions and have been practising spelling rules for year 1 and 2. Reception have been practising reading their word wall words and are making some lovely progress!! What a busy busy week!!

Weeks commencing 20th/27th February 2023

What a busy couple of weeks in Ash Class. The children have finished and edited their final quest stories and they are fantastic! It was lovely to share them with parents at parents evening last week. In Maths we have been learning to compare lengths and measure in cm and m. The children have become experts at using a ruler! We've been enjoying team games in PE and have enjoyed playing giant hungry hippos! In the lead up to World Book Day we have been designing and making books about castles with moving parts. The children worked hard to decide on a lever or slider and carefully planned their book before finishing their masterpieces! The children enjoyed sharing them with parents at our bedtime story event. In forest school the children have been learning about micro-bugs and have been using magnifying glasses and even an underwater microscope to spot the micro-bugs on our school grounds! Year 2 in particular have been working hard during booster sessions with Mrs Passan and have been really focusing on addition and subtraction or 2 digit numbers, finding fractions of amounts and answering questions about a text. Reception have been working really hard on their writing over the last couple of weeks. They have focused on using finger spaces, forming their letters correctly and sequencing words to form sentences. We are really proud of them! I'm been very impressed with the work ethic of year 1 too this term and was pleased to see them tackle some super maths challenges independently! Well done! 

Week Commencing 6th February 2023

As always we have had a busy week in Ash Class. The children have enjoyed learning about people who would have lived in castles and the different jobs they might have done. They were great at exploring some artefacts and considering what they might have been used for. In Maths we have been learning to divide by making equal groups. Reception have also been exploring the concept of equal groups. In English the children have continued their unit about quest stories and are able to identify some of the features of quest stories and discuss characters, plot and setting. To finish this term's DT project, the children made their own musical instruments. It was great to see them think carefully about how they were going to ensure their instrument made a sound and how to join the pieces together. Reception and Year 1 had their final Balanceability session with Mrs David from Hunts SSP on Wednesday and we have been really impressed at the progress they have made! We have continued with our gymnastics sessions in PE and have been practising our balance and movement skills. We enjoyed a lovely forest school session with Mrs Tickle on Friday where we spent time watching and learning about birds. It's been a great week! 

Weeks commencing 23rd and 30th January 2023

What a lovely couple of weeks we've had in Ash Class! In English we have been reading Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. The children have been exploring the features of quest stories, learning about conjugating verbs into the past tense and past progressive tense and have been considering the problems and solutions the characters in the story faced. Reception have enjoyed taking part in discussions about the story and have been busy developing their writing skills over the last couple of weeks. They are continuing to learn phase 3 phonics sounds and have most of the sounds taught so far in their phonics packs so you can practise with them at home. They have been identifying sounds within words and have practised segmenting to spell. They have been encouraged to write within the continuous provision with opportunities to write on the wall, make shopping lists and write stories! In Maths we have been learning to multiply and divide. The children have been creating arrays to help them solve one step multiplication problems and they have been sharing into equal groups to solve one step division problems. They are beginning to see the links between multiplication and division. Reception have been learning about making equal groups and have been sorting equal and unequal groups. All year groups have been learning about odd and even numbers as part of our Mastering Number program. Our humanities topic this term is Castles. We have been finding out about who would live in a Norman castle and what kinds of jobs they would have. The children were learning about the hierarchy and who would have been seen as the most important. They had great fun and shared some lovely ideas about some artefacts and what they might have been used for. Turns out one of them was a musical instrument, one was used for measuring medicine and one was a bowl for catching fat while cooking over a fire! The children enjoyed a lovely Charanga music session in which they learnt to sing a new rock song after practising finding the beat and warming their voices up. In Science the children have been learning about materials. They carried out an experiment to find out the answer to a big science question- are all metals magnetic? They designed their own experiment and chose how to record their findings. I was really proud of the scientific vocabulary they used! Reception sorted objects into those that were made of metal and those that were not. They discussed the properties of metal together as a group. The children have now handed in their history projects and we are very excited to share them at our 'Walk Through Time' event next Friday. 

Week Commencing 16th January 2023

We've loved starting our DT project this week in which we will be designing and making our own musical instruments! This week we explored real musical instruments, learning the names of the different parts and exploring how they make a sound. In forest school the children were exploring the differences between the shade and being in the sunshine. They discovered that it's colder in the shade and that it's darker. They also discovered that ice melted quicker in the sunshine than in the shade! In art, the children have been learning about two artists- William Morris and Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi. They explored printing using primary colours and found out what happened when they overprinted. The children also created some lovely artist studies in their art books! Reception have been working really hard this week. In maths they have been practising subitising (recognising dots on a dice quickly) and have been finding the matching pieces of numicon. They then used the numicon to add two single digit numbers together and recorded this as a number sentence using + and =. Well done Reception! Reception have continued learning new phonics sound and have been really practising using them to write words and sentences. They have been labeling diagrams and writing simple sentences! Year 2 have recapped addition and subtraction and really focused on selecting a good method to solve problems. In SPAG we've been learning about suffixes and how they can change the meaning of words. Alongside this we revisited verbs and nouns. They learnt how to jump in tens and ones on a number line to add quickly. In PE this week we started our gymnastics unit. This week we explored rolling, starting with pencil and teddy bear rolls and moving on to forward rolls! 

Weeks Commencing 2nd and 9th January 2023

What a great start to the term. We enjoyed creative week on the first 3 days back at school and used the time to explore our new topic- Castles! We have learnt so much already about the first castles and Kings and Queens who might have lived in them. We used artefacts such as the Bayeux Tapestry to find out about the Battle of Hastings and had a debate to share who the best person to be King after the battle would be! It was great to hear the children's ideas! We also created some beautiful sunset artwork this week for an upcoming art competition. The children had free choice over the resources they used and what they included in their artwork. The finished work is lovely! We got stuck into maths and English this week as we start have started learning about money and exploring stories with quests! The children have been sequencing events in 'Lost and Found' by Oliver Jeffers and have been thinking carefully about what the characters might be thinking and feeling throughout the story. Towards the end of the week we continued our maths unit in which we are learning about money and the children also wrote some lovely recounts about their trip to Grafham.

We had a great day at Grafham Water Centre on Wednesday and took part in bouldering, low ropes and archery. The children showed great teamwork, resilience and independence and we're very proud of them! 

Autumn Term

Week Commencing 12th December 2022

What a busy week in Ash Class. The children were amazing in their Christmas Nativity performance- Born in a Barn. We're so proud of them for giving our KPA families a wonderful performance with lovely singing and loud voices! We've enjoyed lots of Christmas themes activities this week while also working hard in English and Maths! 

Week Commencing 5th December 2022

What a busy week of rehearsals we've had in Ash Class! We are very excited for you to come and watch it! We've also been busy practising and performing poetry this week. We learnt a poem called 'Spaghetti! Spaghetti!' and performed it to the rest of the class. In Maths we've been subtracting. Year 1 have really focused on subtracting by taking objects away or crossing them out on their pictorial representations. Reception have been practising recognising and writing numbers. Please continue to practise at home! In DT this week, the children have been designing Christmas cards, using the specification they made last week. They look amazing! In art, we created abstract portraits and are looking forward to finishing them next week! 

Weeks Commencing 21st and 28th November 2022

We've had a brilliant couple of weeks in Ash Class. The children have blown me away with their determination and effort throughout assessment week. They have worked so hard and I'm really really proud of them! We have also continued our English unit on letters and postcards. We have been reading Meerkat Mail and this week the children have been writing their own postcards. Reception have been brilliant and used their phonics knowledge to write their own postcards too! The children have enjoyed dance sessions with Mrs David from Hunts SSP. Their dances have been inspired by penguins and polar bears. We had a visit from Genr8 today who spoke about advent. This led to a discussion about special celebrations in other religions too. It was great to listen to the children's experiences. We have also been busy rehearsing our nativity play. The children are so funny and have been working hard to learn their lines. We can't wait for you to see it!