Our RE topic for the next four weeks is based around the theme of Signs and Symbols.
We will be considering the big question Are signs and symbols important? Why? Please talk about this question with your child, looking for the signs and symbols that the children encounter on the way to and from school.
The children will learn to describe and sequence the baptism service and we will explore the different parts of the sacrament and their significance. We will focus on important symbols associated with baptism, such as the sign of the cross, white garment, font, candle, chrism and Easter candle.
Key words for the topic are: white garment, Easter candle, font, chrism, Good News
Please talk to your child about their own baptism artefacts and how they were used within their baptism.
For their RE home learning, the children are asked to design a baptism candle. Encourage your child to think about what signs and symbols they would like to include on their candle. It would be great if your child could write a key to go with their candle, that explains what each of their chosen symbols mean. Please ensure that your child takes pride in their candle as it would be lovely to make a display of them. These baptism candles should be sent into school by Wednesday 3rd November.
The Year Two children have settled very well into their new class. They are great role models to the Year 1 children and they listen to one another, have fun and are very caring. We are all enjoying learning about structures in Design and Technology, continents and oceans in Geography, the sacrament of baptism in RE and Materials All Around Us in Science. More information on the curriculum that we are covering this year can be found in the post below.
This term, through Relationship and Health Education (RHE), the children will learn about healthy relationships through the Ten: Ten Life to The Full resources.
KS1 Module One: Created and Loved by God explores the individual. Rooted in the teaching that we are created by God out of love and for love, it helps children to develop an understanding of the importance of valuing themselves as the basis for personal relationships:
Unit 1 – Religious Understanding introduces children to the story from the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus welcomed all of the little children to come to Him. The five-story sessions encourage children to understand that they are created by God out of love and for love. Children will revisit this Gospel story at the end of this Module.
Building on this knowledge, Unit 2 – Me, My Body, My Health encourages children to celebrate similarities and differences between people, including our God-given bodies and the things they enable us to do! Teaching also includes maintaining personal hygiene and the physical differences between boys and girls, including learning the names of external body parts.
Over the three sessions of Unit 3 – Emotional Well-Being, children will meet presenters Jayden and Josie and fictional character Super Susie. They will help children to understand and articulate their own changing feelings and how other people’s feelings might differ from theirs. Children will learn how they can manage their feelings and about the consequences of their actions.
Unit 4 – Life Cycles returns to the Gospel story from Unit 1, to show that God created us to follow the cycle of life and He loves us at every stage. Children will learn about the specifics of the human life cycle and celebrate how they have already changed and grown.
KS1 Module Three: Created to Live in Community explores the individual’s relationship with the wider world. Here we explore how human beings are relational by nature and are called to love others in the wider community through service, through dialogue and through working for the Common Good:
In Unit 1 – Religious Understanding children will hear the story of The Good Samaritan and will be introduced to the concept of the Trinity – God as a three in one community of love – and think about what the Trinity means for them. This is a simple teaching that we will return to in more complexity in later years. These stories show children that God made us to be in loving relationships with one another.
Unit 2 – Living in the Wider World helps children to learn about the different local and global communities that they are part of, and what rights and responsibilities come with belonging to these communities.
Year Two have had a tremendous end to their first term in the class. The children enjoyed singing along to their performances during the KS1 nativity play and were justifiably proud of the way in which they spoke their lines so clearly. They also had great fun during our Christmas party (attended by Father Christmas!), which followed a delicious Christmas lunch.
The week ended with a much more thoughtful Friday, during which the children celebrated mass with Father Francis, prayed for family and friends as they finished decorating the class Christmas tree and described what was so special about their kriskringle while exchanging gifts. A final fun experience to end the week was watching a music concert called The Night Before Christmas that has been streamed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and it was a joy to see the children soaking up this music and giggling at the antics of the Elf presenter. If you would like to rewatch the concert together, a link can be found on our Google Classroom.
Mrs Brunt and I are so very grateful for the smashing gifts and cards that we received at the end of term and would like to thank you for your continued support as we all work together to teach your wonderful children.
Have a very happy, healthy and holy Christmas and I look forward to seeing everyone again in 2021.
The children have been enjoying the story of ‘How to catch Santa’ this week and have worked hard on their writing as part of this teaching sequence, in particular thinking about writing sentences with conjunctions such as but, because, so, and as well as punctuating question sentences correctly. Having focussed on learning how to accurately draw the hands onto a clock face, in maths, we are learning how to subtract within 100, using manipulatives, 100 squares and place value strategies that explore how to subtract from the tens and ones.
As part of our art topic on Leaves, the children also created some beautiful artwork inspired by poinsettias. The children all worked so hard on this paper collage learning and if you sneak a (socially distanced) peak through the classroom window, you will be able to see their artwork, which is making us all smile.
Thank you for working with your children to write some lovely Advent prayers, which the children have been reading as part of our daily prayers.
The recordings for our Christmas play were completed on Monday and the final video with all the pieces edited together is wonderful. We are all looking forward to sharing this with you on Tuesday at 7pm. Further details on how to access this video will be sent to you early in the week.
To allow for the recommended quarantine period, the final ‘posting’ day for class Christmas cards is Tuesday, so that all the cards can be delivered on Friday, along with the exchange of our KK gifts, which should also be brought to school by Tuesday. We are all looking forward to our Christmas lunch on Thursday and the children are invited to wear a Christmas jumper and bring in Christmas hats on Thursday.
Once again, thank you for your continued patience and support as we ensure that everyone stays safe inside their own classroom bubble and close to their families at the start and end of the day.
The children have had great fun this week, learning their lines as well as the actions and songs to lots of cracking nativity songs. We have recorded groups of children in their roles and they all look wonderful in their costumes. We look forward to sharing the completed play when it goes live during the last week of term.
In a whole school competition, the children refined their speed stacking skills and it was lovely to see how their times came down as they practised more and more. This activity was done as part of our maths topic on Time and it would be great if you could continue to help your child to tell the time using an analogue clock, reading half past, quarter to and quarter past times first and leading on to reading times to five minutes.
As part of our English learning, we have started to read the book ‘How to catch Santa’. This is a great read and the children had lots of questions to ask Father Christmas, so we used their ideas to write letters to Father Christmas. I was very impressed with how the children remembered to punctuate all their sentences beautifully when they were writing to Santa!
To mark the first week of Advent, we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath and decorated our Christmas tree. The children have set each other Advent Challenges such as ‘Share a friend’ and ‘Help Mum and Dad’ and we open one of these challenges each day as part of our school journey through Advent.
As we go through Advent, one of my favourite activities is to walk around my village each Sunday afternoon as it begins to get dark and look to see how the houses are being decorated. As the weeks go by, there are more and more lights and this is a wonderful way to see just how important Jesus’s birth is in the lives of so many people around us. I wonder what the Christmas lights are like down your street? Maybe you could take a walk and find out.
As ever, we continue to be very busy in Year 2, combining a focus on Maths and English with many other areas of the curriculum.
As part of our topic focussing on People who Care, past and present, the children learned about Florence Nightingale and Saint Teresa of Calcutta as well as nurses who care for us so well today. Next, we will learn about other nurses, such as Mary Seacole.
The children had great fun creating a sculpture of a modern day nurse and we linked this to our Design and Technology topic on Structures. The children explored what makes a structure stable and the classroom is now filled with paper rollercoasters, 3D shapes made out of construction kits as well as playdough sphere structures. Following their investigations, the children concluded that a structure needs a flat and wide base in order to be both stable and strong. They are using this information well this week as we hold our Speed Stacking Competition along with the rest of the school.
We are all looking forward to enjoying Advent together and today, we will start making our classroom look much more Christmassy! Please do read our RE home learning page to find out more about what we are learning in RE between now and Christmas.
This week, the children have continued learning about Walter Tull, in particular thinking about how Armistice Day is commemorated on the 11th November every year. The children were particularly thoughtful and respectful during our class worship on Wednesday that included the two minutes silence.
The children all looked suitably spotty during Friday’s Children in Need fundraiser and they were very proud of their outfits. Well done to you all.
This week, we have also planted out onion sets, so, along with the spring bulbs that we have planted, we will keep an eye on them to see when they start to shoot.
Next week is an incredibly busy week. We will be learning new songs for our Christmas play, concentrating on the theme of Anti-Bullying during our Well-being sessions, learning about Sikhism in RE and building a five foot tall sculpture of a keyworker in Design Technology! Please do speak with your child as they go through the week to find out more about their learning,.
The children have settled beautifully in Year 2 and it was wonderful to meet with all the parents this week during our socially distanced consultations.
We have had a very busy half term, focusing especially on English and maths, but also a whole host of other areas of learning too.
Year 2
The children have been very excited by the planting that they have done outside and we are halfway through an investigation to find out what happens when plants are grown without heat (we’ve left a pansy plant in the fridge!), light (another plant is in the cupboard) and without water. The children have a number of predictions and we will find out more after the holiday.
Our pumpkin raffle was a great success and £67 was raised for the class. We will use this money to fund other planting projects as we go through the year, so thank you very much for your generosity everyone!
As part of our history learning, we are finding out about the life of Walter Tull. Our learning will culminate in a focus on Remembrance Day and how we remember our servicemen and women. This topic gives the children a great opportunity to develop a sense of time as well as promoting their enquiry skills.
As part of their Design Technology learning, the children have also been enjoying developing their sewing skills and they have created a wonderful banner to welcome everyone to the class every day.
Next half term will include many exciting new activities and I look forward to sharing them with the children.
Have a well earned break this week. The children certainly deserve it.
