Welcome to Orange Class September 2023 - July 2024
March 2024
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What a fantastic term it has been, full of wonderful learning! In our topic ‘Bright Lights, Big City’, we completed a detailed exploration of the characteristics and features of the capital city, London. This included naming and describing landmarks including identifying them on aerial photographs. We have continued our science topic ‘Seasonal Changes’ during which we learnt about the science of day and night and recognise that the seasons have varying day lengths in the UK. In English, we began the half term with a focus on the traditional tale ‘The Three Little Pigs’, writing our own versions of the story, changing the point of view, as well as up-levelling sentences and adding expanded noun phrases. More recently, we have focused on poetry, writing poems to express how animals have feelings too. To support our reading and writing, we continue to have a real focus on phonics, recapping Phase 3 and Phase 5 sounds identified in previous assessments. The children’s dedication to reading has been second to none and it is lovely to see so many of them develop a love for reading! In Maths, we developed our understanding of addition and subtraction within 20. As part of this topic, we learnt about part, whole models, writing the corresponding number sentences and fact families. We learnt about number bonds to 20, systematically finding these. Towards the end of this topic, we applied our knowledge to find related facts and solve missing number problems. In basic skills we are recapping Reception objectives to increase fluency while also applying our understanding to reasoning and problem solving. |
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February 2024
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On Wednesday 6th March we had a visit from Somerset Heritage who helped us learn all about the Great Fire of London. We were able to explore artefacts, dress up, transport water using fabric buckets and use quills and ink to write with, as they would have done over 300 years ago. |
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November 2023
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Orange class enjoyed looking at the range of books on offer at the book fair. The dinosaur books were popular with the boys and the Bluey books were popular with the girls. |
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In Orange Class today we did some art in preparation for Remembrance Day. We did some beautiful paintings of poppys. |
October 2023
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In History - we put our baby, toddler and child pictures into a timeline. |
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In Autumn A, we learnt how to log on safely to PurpleMash, exploring various topics and apps. This half term, we have started to explore pictograms to answer the question: how do we travel to school? We will then be applying our learning to 2Count on PurpleMash.
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As part of our materials topic, we went on a materials hunt around the school grounds. We recorded our findings, naming the materials that different objects were made from. We then learnt that materials can be sorted into two groups: natural and man-made. We then thought about the properties of materials, beginning to recognise that these define its use.
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| To start off our topic on ‘Human Senses’, we worked in small groups to label body parts. |
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In Geography, we learnt about human and physical features, creating our own examples of each with Playdough. As a class, we explored globes, pictures maps, maps with keys, world maps, atlases, Ordnance Survey maps and digital maps, such as Google Maps. Using small world maps and construction bricks, we created our own towns, thinking about how features are connected. For example, a bus stop is useful outside a shop.
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We used the book Mix It Up! by Hervé Tullet as a starting point to help identify the primary and secondary colours, observing basic colour mixing theory. We then mixed secondary colours from equal amounts of two primary colours. We then created colour wheels using paint in the three primary colours only.
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We have been learning about place value, addition and subtraction within 10.
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September 2023
What a great start to the year we have had! I have enjoyed getting to know the children over the past week and have been blown away by just how settled the children have been on their arrival back to school after such a long break!
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Welcome to Orange Class September 2022 - July 2023
Tuesday 21st March 2023
Today we had our class trip to Carymoor. We were very excited to be travelling on a large coach! When we arrived at Carymoor we were met by Jo and Karen. We started by singing songs and having our snack. Afterwards we walked to the pond and searched for creatures that live in the pond. This was quite tricky and it was raining quite hard which made it difficult to see! We took a super muddy path back to base. We had our lunch together and then had play time in a large muddy field! After lunch we visited the round house and continued our learning on mini beasts and habitats. For our last activity we made our own clay mini beasts. Finally, exhausted, we got back on the coach to come home. We had an amazing day!
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February 2023
Today we came to class and we had a new teacher! Our teacher was from the Victorian times. We had to dress as children from that era. We started by having our hands checked for cleanliness. Next, we had to write the date on a slate – but we were only allowed to use our right hand. We found this tricky! After that we had to recite the hymn ‘All things bright and beautiful’. Finally we did our daily exercises. At the end we all agreed that we are very pleased we did not attend school in Victorian Times! (Special thanks to the Somerset Museum for a great morning!)
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September 2022
In Orange class we have been busy over the last few weeks. In English we have been learning the story of Red Ted at the beach. We have then innovated the story and thought about what might happen if Red Ted came to Primrose Lane. In Maths we have been learning about greater than and less than. Science learning has been focusing on properties of materials, we have been learning about human made and natural materials. We have had great fun in History learning about old toys – we even got the chance to try some out for ourselves.
Welcome to Orange Class News page. Here you can see what exciting things we've been learning throughout the school year.
March Home Learning
In our first week of home learning we have been making material pictures and have been measuring in Maths. Some of us have been in the garden and found materials for making pictures using grass leaves, wood twigs, stones and a plastic bottle cap (we found in the recycling). We have also enjoyed finding different materials around the house.
December 2019
This month we have been busy practising our songs and learning our lines ready for our Nativity play. We have learnt new dances top help us remember our words and we can’t wait to show our parents!
In History we have been continuing our learning about the Great Fire of London and we had a surprise visit from a real-life fireman. We spent a fantastic morning learning how to keep safe in our homes and what we should do if we ever need a fireman. We finished the month by having a great time at our class Christmas party and enjoying our Christmas lunch together.
November 2019
After a relaxing half term, we were excited to get back to our learning in Orange Class.
We continued with our work on animals in Science. We had a special visitor from Carymoor who came and taught us how we could protect the environment for all of our local animals. We learnt all about recycling and reusing our rubbish.
On the 26th we had Longleat come to pay us a visit. This was a fantastic afternoon which the children enjoyed. Longleat brought some snakes, some guinea pigs, a large lizard, some insects and a chameleon. We were lucky enough to hold the animals and learn all about their natural environments and their diets. It was a fantastic way to complete our work on animals. In History we began our work on the Great Fire of London. We have been baking cakes to an original recipe and making our own quills to try and write with.
October 2019
This has been a busy month in Orange Class. On the 2nd October we pulled on our warm clothes and wellies and headed to Gore Farm. We had a wonderful day using our senses to explore the woodland. We even got to eat our lunch outside at base camp! In the afternoon we went on a bug hunt, we found some very strange looking characters.
On the 16th October we had a chance to dress up for Maths Day. Some of us came as numbers, some as calculators and we even had a dice. We spent the day learning different ways that we could use our number knowledge such as playing bingo, snakes and ladders and making a picture in the style of Mondrian.
September 2019
It’s been a busy start to the term in Orange class! In our first week, we have been getting to know our new classroom. In English we have been practising using full stops and capital letters. In Maths we have been counting forwards and backs to 10. In Science we have begun our new topic about our bodies and we were very excited to start our new football workshops.
In our second week we started our new story in English – 'Red Ted at the beach'. We have acted out our story and been learning to sequence a story. In Maths we have been learning 1 more and 1 less. In Science we have continued with our topic and have thought of lots of different ways that we use our bodies. For our RE lesson we read the parable of The lost son and made story wheels to help us retell the story.
This week we have been writing our version of Little Red Riding Hood. In Maths we have started to learn about money and have opened our own little shops! In History we played a board game to consolidate knowledge of Christopher Columbus. We have been looking at wild flowers and how they spread their seeds in Science and in Art drawing our self portraits.
In English this week we have started to learn about Traditional Tales starting with Little Red Riding Hood. We made stick puppets and told the story in small groups. In Maths we have been ordering numbers to 100. We have continued learning about Christopher Columbus in History and completed our phonics screening. We ended the week by making Fathers Day cards and had a tea party to celebrate completing our Phonics screening.
In English we have been looking at punctuation. We have completed lots of tasks using full stops, capital letters and exclamation marks. In maths we have been looking at comparing numbers to 100. We have been learning about Christopher Columbus and his journey in History. In Science we have been planting runner bean seeds, which we hope will grow and planted our petunias into our raised beds.
We also celebrated Pyjamarama Day, we all wore Pyjamas to school and read books in the hall with the other classes.
In maths this week we have been using chocolate buttons to help us learn about quarters. In literacy we innovated the story The Emperor of Absurdia and in Science we made wind vanes and went outside with our compass to see which way the wind was blowing.
We finished off the week with China Day, we spent the day making Chinese arts and crafts which we then displayed to Red Class. In the afternoon we had a Chinese feast.
This week in maths we have been looking at making halves which we did by chopping a cake and eating it. In literacy we were learning adjectives and how to make our writing more exciting. In science, we learnt about cloud formation and went outside and tried to find the different types of cloud.
This week we planted our petunias for the local Wyndham Park competition. We checked our weather gauges in Science and were surprised to see how little rain we had collected. In Art we tried drip painting in the style of Jackson Pollock, it was great fun.
This week Orange class have been busy learning Yoga and playing cricket. In Science we have began our weather topic by measuring rainfall. We have made our own weather gauge and placed it in our playground. We are looking forward to investigating the results.
We had a very busy return to Orange Class, we had our Easter Bonnet parade and our Easter egg hunt. In maths, we made a 10s number line.
This week we have been learning the Easter Story and the symbols of Easter. We have decorated eggs, made chick puppets and made easter nests. In maths we have been learning about capacity and have done lots of experiments using water.
This week in Maths we have been learning how to measure and weigh different objects. In Science, we finished our materials topic by sorting items found on the playground into different groups.
This week we had the Drumming workshop. We all had great fun learning traditional songs and rhythms. In science we were attempting to rescue dinosaurs from the ice.
We had a lovely visit by the Dogs Trust and we learnt how we care for a dog. In Science we experimented with waterproof and non waterproof materials.
On 15th March, we were visited by a local toy Historian. We spent the whole day learning about old toys and we even got a chance to make some.
This week we were lucky enough to be visited by Pete the Poet. He took us on a journey around the world and we ended up in a Russian toyshop. We also spent time caring for our school chicks. For World Book Day we all dressed up in the theme of Rhyme, we had visits from a ladybird, little-bo-peep and cat in the hat.
We have made the most of the glorious sunshine by playing rugby outside. We also began our Toys project and looked at some old toys and tried to guess what they were.
