Welcome to Fox Class

2021 - 2022

Teacher: Mrs Sarah Waddington

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

Teaching Assistant: Mrs Sally Irwin

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!

This term our topic is Rainforests and Fair Trade and our reading will be based around a book by Katherine Rundell, 'The Explorer'.  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:

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

The Shaman's Apprentice by Lynne Cherry & Mark Plotkin

Wild Animals of the South by Dieter Braun

Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson

Running Wild by Michael Morpurgo

Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker

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 :) 

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