In Literacy, Badger class have been reading the text 'Look Up!' As part of our hook, the children explored a telescope, some stars and a globe. The children came up with some lovely ideas on how these items relate to time travel and how they might connect to our new literacy book. When writing, the children have made lots of progress in using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.

In Maths, the children have been working on addition within 20 and subtraction within 20. The children have also learned number bonds to 20 using the part whole model. Badger class have been able to show their reasoning skills when working with their learning partners. The children have enhanced their learning by using  multi-link cubes and number lines when solving problems.

In History, children have been learning about travellers through time. The children have learned about famous astronauts such as Neil Armstrong and Mae Jemison. Badger class have also created a timeline of key events and wrote a fact file on astronauts. 

In Science, Badger class has been learning about the weather. The children conducted an experiment called ‘Rain Cloud in a Jar’. The children put water in the jar that represented the air. They then added foam for the clouds and dripped food colouring through the foam to represent rain.  

As part of our RE learning, the children visited St Mary’s Church. The children had a great time learning about Easter and engaged in all the Easter themed activities.

For World Book Day, the children dressed up as a character from their favourite book. The children had a lovely day and enjoyed an exciting World Book Day menu made by our lovely catering team.

We have seen a great deal of action in Spanish so far this year. Year 3 are learning to use everyday Spanish, like greetings around the school whilst, like proper  linguists, they are learning the building blocks of the Spanish language and having a lot of fun in the process. From dancing the vowels and counting syllables to accurate word formation and learning the alphabet to spell and write in Spanish, to numbers 1 to 10 plus colours.

Years 4, 5 and 6 have the advantage of having been already introduced to more difficult areas of the language, such as rebel consonants, strange consonants, unique Spanish sounds in phonetics and some exceptions. This enables most of them to read and speak fairly accurately They are currently developing the skill of writing from sound, through a variety of topics. 

Year 4 have been improving their Spanish through learning the days of the week, and months of the year. They are also starting to write sentences giving opinions about their favourite means of transport.

In Year 5 the language has been developed through healthy food,  giving opinions about fruits with sentences joined with connectives, and they have been introduced to some verbs to give directions while finding shops in town.

In Year 6 the linguistic techniques have been embedded through numbers 1 to 60, to ask and tell the time using a 24-hour clock and learning about all the countries in the World where Spanish is the official language.

As a whole, the teaching and learning of Spanish is focused on the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, which are threaded with the understanding of basic grammar concepts and made memorable through songs and movement, which I hope the children share with you at home just for fun!

For all those with students in Years 5 and especially in Year 6. We at Grafton, have a French club on Thursdays dedicated to helping the transition to any secondary school with exclusively French as a foreign language in Year 7.

¡ Hasta la vista!  

Our school uses the scheme of work ‘Jigsaw’ to deliver the PSHE curriculum. Jigsaw is a whole-school approach and embodies a positive philosophy and creative teaching and learning activities to nurture children’s development as compassionate and well-rounded human beings as well as building their capacity to learn. Every year group, from Nursery to Year 6, follow our PSHE scheme of work ‘Jigsaw’. Each half term, there is an assembly to launch the new puzzle piece across the school. 

This half term the children have been focusing on the Jigsaw piece, ‘Healthy Me’, which explores topics such as: physical activity, healthy lifestyle choices and keeping safe. 

4 Ash had this to say about the unit:

In Year 4,PSHE, we are learning about how to be healthy inside our body.

Our first lesson was about having friends so we did a friendship chart showing our closest friends.

Our next lesson was about how bad alcohol was for your body and how it affected the different body parts inside of you. We also learned how bad smoking and vaping are for you. We were so surprised at how much damage it can cause in your body. Can you believe it?