Welcome to Fox Class

2021 - 2022

Teacher: Mrs Sarah Waddington

Teacher (PM - Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays): Mrs Lucy Hill

Hello and a very warm welcome to Fox Class! 

We are all so excited to see your smiling faces back in school.  We have an exciting term of learning planned for you all and we can't wait to share it with you.  Follow the link below to see our Long Term Plan for the year, this term's Topic Web as well as our Medium Term Plans for Maths.  You will also find this year's reading and spelling lists if you wish to get ahead!

Term 5

Welcome back to Term 5.  Hopefully everyone is rested and we will have the whole class back together again.  This term we will spend some time catching up with missed learning from Term 4.  The new timetable for the first few weeks has been shared and we hope to be able to start Term 5 topics in the last few weeks - the topic web will be updated once we have completed the current learning. 

Outdoor PE for the first week will be on Friday afternoon with Mrs Hill so please wear PE kits on Friday 29th April and on the second week it will be on Wednesday with Mr Heath so please wear PE kits on Wednesday 4th May.  

Normal PE sessions will resume the following week:

Outdoor PE Kit on Tuesdays 

Indoor PE Kit on Fridays

Bridge Building

This week we had to put our skill and perseverance to the test with bridge building.  There were feelings of frustration, feelings of joy and even some tears as we battled it out to see which bridge would survive the gauntlet of a 30cm gap between the tables with various items piled on top!  Teamwork came into play an awful lot, along with skillfulness and friendship!  Please look through the photos below to see our efforts!

English

This week in English we have been studying our model text both as readers and then as writers.  The pictures below show us pulling the text apart and figuring out the structure of a portal story.  Now we will know how to structure our own stories!

WELCOME BACK!

Welcome back everyone!  It has been a joy to have everyone back, fit and healthy!  We have been busy learning our new story this week.  It's called Elf Road - ask your children to retell you the story and you will be in for quite the treat! :)  

We have also been extremely busy in the afternoons too - we have been busy going over past learning and looking at last term's assessments in detail.

So far this week we have practised the skill of summarising in reading, rounding in maths and apostrophe usage in our writing!  

Home learning activities have been set daily on Professor Assessor to ensure children keep tapping back to their previous learning so please do use these!

Finally, we have had our first recorder lesson with the wonderful Mrs Ridley.  It was amazing!  The children are already playing along to a song.  A video will be uploaded next week!  

This term our topic is Extreme Earth and our class book will be based around a book by David Wiesner called Hurricane. We will also be exploring the wordless picture book 'Flood' . The books below will help you to learn and understand more about our topic so why don't you see if you can borrow them from a local library to help you in your learning!  

Suggested books to read this term:

Hurricane Bestey

by Malorie Blackman

The Somerset Tsunami

by Emma Carroll

Swimming Against the Storm

by Jess Butterworth

A Bear Grylls Adventure: The Blizzard Challenge

by Bear Grylls & Emma McCann

Wild Weather

by Liz Gogerly & Miguel Sanchez

Home Learning

Fox Class children will have their home learning set on Fridays.  Home Learning Books must be back in school on Thursdays.  Home Learning is accessed by the link below, where you will find the spellings we have been looking at, the reading words we have practised, our words of the day for the past week, our times tables facts and any other 'extra' bits of learning that I feel your children would benefit from practising more at home.  

Please remember to keep reading with your children as much as possible and record this in their yellow reading record. 

Thank you for your continued support :) 

Home Learning - Easter Holidays

I have sent children home with a learning pack.  Please see the attached document for details.

What a term!  I feel that we have had a very bumpy term!  I have really missed the children who have been working from home and had a lovely time with the children who were left in school.  The children have all worked incredibly hard, completing assessments in the last couple of weeks, under difficult circumstances and I am so proud of each and every one of them! We have luckily been able to enjoy a couple of really fabulous activities all back together this week, including: Spiritual Day, the Commonwealth Day Baton Relay and then a wonderful Easter Service - which brought a tear to my eye!  How wonderful to be all back together in church - a very spiritually moving service.  

Please do enjoy a very restful Easter and I look forward to seeing you all in Term 5!

Outdoor Learning and Team Work

While the rest of Fox Class have been at home, trying their best to complete home learning, we took advantage of the lovely weather, teamed up with Hare Class and Hedgehog Class and headed outside to complete some learning. 

Our Year 4 children have really shone in leadership roles directing the younger children with physical activity during PE sessions and leading the children to success in scavenger hunts.  We have also planted wild flowers in the roundabout areas at school alongside, played some circle time games and mastered our use of pastels in drawing the willow tree!  

In the mornings we have continued with our Maths and English learning - completing activities on equivalent fractions and finishing our non-chronological reports.  

We have missed everyone greatly though and we can't wait to have you all back again!

Computing

We have been exploring how to use Word Processors this term.  Last week, we investigated how to edit font and this week we have been formatting images. We were surprised at how much we could change an image from the tools in the word processing program.  Some of our images looked like art masterpieces!  We played around with adding borders and changing the colours. 

Worldly Day

We had a wonderful day on Thursday celebrating and learning about all things worldly as part of our Global Explorer Curriculum.  Fox Class spent the day designing a pudding for the Queen's Jubilee, tasting Spanish foods, discovering our time capsule and learning all about Kenya from a lovely parent 'Mrs Wambua'.  

Have a look through the fantastic pictures below:

While the swimmers swim...

We have been busy practising our football skills.  This week we practised controlling the ball with our feet using the inside of our feet, the outside of our feet, as well as the soles of our feet.  We also began to practise passing the ball in a controlled manner to our partner and we finished our session with a game of 'Laser Football'.  

Our Magical English Lesson

You would not believe what happened in Fox Class today.  A magical cauldron, a mystical creature called 'Luna', and a wand appeared in our class.  We were provided with a potion and a spell to make all the Foxes the most amazing magical, creative writers.  So, we got to work!  Soon, the potion was bubbling away.  All of a sudden, mist appeared!  With a sparkle and a boom, the spell had worked and inside the cauldron was a magic coin for each child which, when consumed, will make them the most creative writers!  Get eating Foxes!

I wonder what story we will be looking at this term?

The Royal Ball

The date has finally arrived!!

The children have been looking forward to this event for weeks and what a spectacular ball it was!  We even had the Queen visit us!  Royal cakes were also provided by the Royal Baker - Mrs Perry!  Thank you to all the ball gown and suit designers at home.  What a wonderful effort!  Do look through all the photos - they are fantastic!

The Bridge Visit

We were very lucky to have real life visitors in school this week.  The Bridge visited us to talk to us about how Jesus is the light of the world.  We all created our own candle holders and discussed ways in which we could also bring light to the world.  What a wonderfully kind group of children we have in Fox Class!

Dr Hopkins - Zoom Presentation

This week, we had a zoom call with a botanist from Brazil.  We had lots of questions ranging from; What is the tallest tree in the rainforest? 

What is the most poisonous plant?

Have you discovered any plants?

What is your favourite plant?

All the answers are in our Topic floor book - do please come and have a look at the answers when you get a chance!

Sewing

Over the past few weeks, we have been designing and practising our sewing skills in order to make a Christmas appliqued flag.  They have come home with the children and I am sure you would agree they are amazing!

Term 2 Week 2 

This week we have, sadly,  said another goodbye to one of our wonderful friends.  However, this is not goodbye forever as we will be maintaining contact with the family when they return back to the country of Uganda.  We are also looking forward to seeing our friend at The Royal Ball on the last day of term, when he will Zoom in, to join us!  Goodbye and Good luck in Uganda!  We will miss you!

Fox Class were very surprised on Tuesday when Mrs Irwin appeared with a pile of invitations, all wrapped up in beautiful gold ribbon!  Excitedly, the children opened their invites and were amazed to find that they had been invited to a royal ball.  With great passion, they then began discussing their outfits and we gathered lots of wonderful adjectives to describe the exquisite dresses and smart trousers and shirts that they all would be wearing.   I can't wait to see the sparkling tiaras and pocket watches that appear on the 17th December!

Aspirational Day

We had a wonderful time on Aspirational Day.  We asked some very inquisitive questions to our visiting scientists!  We had a few sessions throughout the day including a very fun whole school science show.  We also had a go at trying to build a bridge with just paper and tape.  We had some really interesting visitors too, who told us all about the stars and about communications.  The day was very "hands on" and we got to touch real space rock!  We are all aspiring now, to be the best that we can be in all areas of our lives!

Blue Peter Badges

In May, we launched our Blue Peter Climate Heroes challenge and children undertook different pledges at home and at school.  We received lots of pictures from home showing children sorting the recycling, turning the taps off when brushing their teeth, switching electronic devices off, beach litter-picking and planting bee-friendly flowers.  We continued this in school and over the summer holidays we received the badges.  These badges give children free access to over 200 attractions, including some that are local to us.  Grown-ups need to apply for the badge card before the badge will work – this is a confirmation of private details that you must do.

The link to apply for the card is given below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/blue-peter/badge-card-application

Please write the respective code in the ‘reason’ section; the code is based on the class you were in last year:

Fox Class (were Hare) = HS SP40LB CH

Resourcefulness Day

We had an amazing day working on being resourceful on Monday.  The day revolved around completing various activities that used the skills needed for being resourceful.  We completed an activity without using our voices to get ourselves into the right colour spot group (based on the colour sticker on our backs!), we had to work as part of team to build the tallest structure out of marshmallows and spaghetti, we had to talk and communicate to our friends to try and find a common thread and we all shared an embarrassing story and created a spider web around the room to show that we were all connected!  We had such a wonderful day!

Here are some quotes from the children about their resourcefulness day:

"Spiderweb taught me that we are all linked in some ways"

"Marshmallows and spaghetti was tricky but fun"

"I had to persevere even when I wanted to give up!"

"I need to be more independent sometimes - sometimes I ask for help with something when actually I can do it myself!"

"I've gotten better at resilience and I can share my feelings more efficiently"

"I feel more connected to everyone"

Open Afternoon

Thank you so much to all the wonderful parents, grandparents and family members that came in this afternoon.  It was such a joy to watch the children explaining all of their lovely learning to you.  I'm sure you can tell that they have enjoyed this term's topic and activities.  They absolutely loved getting the chance to sing their Harvest Festival song to you too so thank you for being such a great audience! 

Please do look through the photos below!

Homework will be sent home on Tuesday ready for the half term break!

Week Beginning 4th October 2021

We have had another successful week in Fox Class!  We were so lucky to have our visitor from the Bristol Buddhist Centre visit us on Thursday.  We were surrounded by magic bowls, incense and calmness.  The children enjoyed a meditation session (very spiritual) and explored the artefacts that Advayamati brought into our class.  They had such wonderful questions to ask. They were certainly very interested in why Advayamati had chosen to become a Buddhist!  We really are becoming Global Explorers by exploring different world religions!

We have also been looking at how to use search engines effectively in our computing this week - the children couldn't believe how many websites had their key words within them!  In Maths we have explored measurement which was great fun.  In Science - we have become scientists and we have set up an investigation involving bread!  English learning this week has involved inverted commas and trying to think of exciting alternatives to the word 'said' as well as spending time planning our own dilemma stories.  Please do ask your child to tell you their ideas for their story, as the more they can orally rehearse, the better their writing will be next week!  

Have a fun weekend!

Week Beginning 27th September

This week we have said goodbye to one of our friends as he moves on to pastures new!  We will all miss him so much but we wish him all the best on his new adventure.  

We sang our school song, The Seeds of Friendship' to send him on his way and to remind him of what great friends we have all become over the years. 

Week Beginning 20th September 2021

Another fabulous week of learning!  In our Math's learning we have moved onto column subtraction, in English we finished our persuasive letters, edited them and published them.  We can't wait to show you our completed letters at the end of term.  We found editing quite tough, as it is so tricky to spot your mistakes but we showed the big idea of resourcefulness and we collected dictionaries to help us with our spellings, used our learning partners to support us and we persevered with finding our mistakes!

In Art we designed and made our own prints (photos below) which, I have to say, needed lots of resilience.  Everyone found it quite tricky to cut string!  We have also been really lucky to have had a visit from The Bridge this week, who came into our class to talk to us about how we care for our world during our RE learning.  Swimming is also going well on Tuesdays and your children are really mastering some of the yoga moves from our indoor PE lessons! 

One last item, a letter has been sent via the school gateway regarding another exciting visit that I have planned from The Bristol Buddhist Centre to enhance everyone's learning even further!  

Have a lovely weekend! 

Week Beginning 13th September 2021

Fox Class children have had a very busy week in their math's learning.  They have been recapping column addition and deciding which strategy they may use to work out a calculation - mental strategies, doubles or even making ten?  We have spent time this week, looking at how writers may use persuasive techniques in our English lessons, so apologies if your children have become amazing at persuading you to let them have extra screen time or sweets and chocolates!  We have also started planning our own persuasive letters to the man in The Great Kapok Tree story to persuade him not to cut down the tree.  

In Science, we have been caught up in the biggest mystery of all - Who ate the biscuits?  We have had to look at fingerprints to find out the culprit.  In RE, we have been thinking about what we would do if were given one million pounds...and it was lovely to see and hear how many children would want to help someone less fortunate than themselves. You have such kind children!   We have also spent time this week becoming historians and looking at artefacts and we have even had a go at drawing our own Mayan hieroglyphics.  What an amazing week of learning! Well done everyone!

Week beginning 6th September 2021

We have had a wonderful week.  We have been busy recapping column addition in Maths, learning how to use a dictionary in English, talking about what makes us happy in RE, discussing what we think Scientists look like in Science and we have even been learning some Spanish!  Not forgetting our first swimming lesson and a lesson on Yoga poses. Photos below! 

This week it would be great if you could ask your child to retell you the story of The Great Kapok Tree - they will love explaining to you about all the animals and you might hear some lovely expression as they retell the story in their own words!  We have acted out the story this week too so you may even get some actions!

Well, what a way to start the year!  We have been so busy the last two days!  We have talked about the responsibilities we have as learners in our school, we have predicted what our class book will be about and we have made a fantastic display!  We even did a little bit of acting and we are all just so intrigued about what will happen next in our fairy tale that we have been reading at the end of the day.  

Just a couple of items to note:

1.  Please return Home Learning Books weekly on a Thursday.

2.  We are swimming on Tuesdays.  Please wear outdoor PE kit and bring your swimming kit in a bag.

3.  Indoor PE is on Fridays.  

Further details have been sent regarding PE uniform and Swimming Lessons in separate letters. 

Thank you for all your support. 

Mrs Waddington