Holly Class w/b 14th November 2022

We have had an exciting week out and about learning more about our village and community.

On Monday we were treated to a close up look at a huge, blue tractor. Mrs and Mrs Quilter very kindly brought it along to the playing fields for us to see and Mr Quilter told us all about his work fixing tractors and making sure they run smoothly. We learnt lots about the different parts of the tractor and what it could do, as well as how the farmers might use it to help them with their work. 

On Wednesday morning we had more visitors, this time it was Emily and Faye the paramedics who brought their ambulance to show us. They told us all about their work and how they look after people as well as giving us a tour of the ambulance. They showed us lots of their kit and the children really enjoyed looking at all of the special little compartments and boxes on the ambulance where everything was kept. 

The children had lots of questions for both sets of visitors and had a wonderful time learning about these important jobs in our community. Thank you so much to Mr and Mrs Quilter and Emily and Faye for giving up your time and coming to see us. 

To support our learning this week we have been reading 'Martha Maps it Out', a book all about a little girl who loves making and drawing maps of her city and home. Inspired by this, for Forest School this week we went on a village adventure and created our own maps, but they were maps with a difference! We didn't draw them, but instead used sticks to collect things that helped the children to remember where they had been and the route we had taken. The children worked together brilliantly to make their journey sticks and have been retelling our adventure back at school, next week we will also do some map making of our own. 

As well as all of this, we have also been busy in our literacy and maths lessons this week. In maths, Year 1 have been working on creating addition and subtraction fact families. They have used bar models and part part part whole models to show their number sentence as a picture first, and then writing 8 number sentences to go in each family of facts. The Reception children have been learning about having 'more' and 'fewer', and we have played lots of games to practise using these words in the right context. In phonics lessons, Year 1 have been learning alternatives for the 'or' phoneme this week; 'aw', 'au' and 'al', as well as the tricky words 'work', 'because' and 'laughed'. The reception children have learnt to read and write 'h' and 'b', as well as continuing to work on recognising and reading some tricky words that might appear in their reading books. 

On Friday the children had a lovely day dressed in their own clothes to raise some money for Children in Need and, just to add to the excitement, we spent time learning the songs we will be singing as part of our Christmas nativity!