In Windmill Class our teacher is Miss Massey. 

Mrs Blundell teaches our class on a Thursday and Friday afternoon.

Mrs Rose supports the children in our class with their learning.

In Windmill class we do English, Maths, Phonics, Handwriting, Guided Reading and Reading for Pleasure every day.

We have a rolling programme with a progressive curriculum in Art, Geography, History, PSHE, PE (twice a week), Science and RE. Sometimes we block teach Computing, DT and Music.

In Windmill Class we like to celebrate all the positive behaviour children have towards their learning. This year we have named our tables (as voted by the children) after jungle animals. We have red panda, sloth, orangutan, toucan and leopard table. They earn marbles for listening, tidy tables, contributing to carpet time, fantastic work and many other attributes. These marbles link with the school values of: compassion, community, courage and curiosity. Each week the table with the most marbles gets to go in the prize bag. This encourages the children to work together as a team and be supportive of each other.

You may have already heard your child talk about ‘Learning Power Heroes’. This is a very exciting role in our class and one each child will earn (more than once). The person chosen will have shown a fantastic attitude towards their learning, tried their best and persevered. They may have overcome a challenge they’ve found tricky or simply supported others at their table and been a good friend. This person gets to sit on the learning throne all day, and help with all the everyday jobs, including delivering the register to the office and leading the line.

The expectation is that you read with your child 5 times a week. That’s including weekends, so 5 out of 7 days.

We are only sending home 2 books at a time because reading the same book multiple times encourages children to engage with a story and every time they read it they develop greater fluency and take more away from it. Re-reading the book encourages children to develop a range of different skills that together combine to make them fluent and confident readers. Re-reading the text allows them to have a greater capacity for paying attention and making sense of WHAT they have read.

Write in your child’s home reading record what book it is they are reading and when they have read.

Children will change their books on different days of the week. It’s really important that they bring their reading books every day.

In regard to bags, there is limited space in the classroom, so please be mindful of the size of bags being sent into the classroom.

Maths:

Ways to help at home:

• Counting forwards and backwards from 100.
• Counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and in 3s for the Year 2s.
• Help them to get their numbers written the right way around
• Counting to 50 for year 1 and 100 for year 2
• Learn what the numbers look like (0-50 year 1, 0-100 year 2)
• Look at coins and notes with them and play shops

Show and Tell:

Please can we ask that nothing gets brought in from home, and things only get brought in if they are a celebration of an outside achievement: for example, if it’s a sponsored bike ride or a swimming certificate.

The other exception is children bringing in a book they have enjoyed and want to share with the class. A book they can talk about and encourage others to want to read.

Term 1:

This term we have thoroughly enjoyed exploring the books Billy and the Beast and Toys in Space.

The children wrote their own stories based on Toys in Space. They innovated the story by creating their own aliens based on the character in our book 'Hoctopize'. We had lots of fun creating aliens based on bats, serpents and octopuses. 

We have been working hard to gain an understanding of numbers to 20. Using vocabulary like: part part whole, greater than, less than, equal to and comparing and ordering numbers. 

     

We enjoyed creating artwork based on Andy Goldsworthy. 

         

Children went outside and collected materials such as grass, stones, sticks and other natural elements to create art with.

They then used muted sugar paper to create artwork in their books.

 

We then created our own Andy Goldsworthy inspired art, but we used bright, bold colours on a black background.

                                 

Term 2:

To support our science learning around animals, including humans, we enjoyed a visit from 'Noah's Ark Zoo Farm'.

As part of this learning we spoke about 'animal classification' and how we classify animals. We then had lots of fun meeting a variety of different animal types and handling some animal artefacts.

          

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