Central Idea: Families can support the local community.

Line of Inquiry One: An inquiry into different types of families.

As part of our learning this week, we have talked in detail about our families and how all families have similarities and differences. Throughout the week, Team RM have discussed why their families are so special and have written sentences using their phonic knowledge and increasing ability to write many High Frequency Words.

While learning and playing outside Lucy, Boo, Finn and Willow have re-enacted the many visits and adventures that they have been part of. They made an aeroplane using the large loose parts and created tickets for their friends to travel. Lucy said:

"My family always takes me to fun places."

Reminders / Notices:

Books will be changed on Mondays and Thursdays, please ensure reading folders are in school on these days - Thank you.

This week, Mr Townsend has taken Team RM for their first outdoor learning session. This will take place every Friday morning for the rest of term so please ensure all children have wellington boots in school for this.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Families can support the local community.

Line of Inquiry One: An inquiry into different types of families.

Over the past week we have been talking about our families and discussing their similarities and differences. We used connectives to extend our sentences and explain why our families are special. RMC came up with lots of lovely reasons.

'My family is special because they love me!' Imogen

We had our first outdoor learning session with Mr Townsend this week. We spent time down on the field listening to what we could hear and using a Leaf ID sheet we explored the trees in our school. We were able to begin to identify trees by looking closely at their leaves.

' I know that this tree is a Field Maple. It has a leaf with 5 parts like the picture.' Daisy-Grace

Reminders / Notices:

Books will be changed on Mondays and Thursdays, please ensure reading folders are in school on these days - Thank you.

This week, Mr Townsend has taken Team RM for their first outdoor learning session. This will take place every Friday morning for the rest of term so please ensure all children have wellington boots in school for this.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Communities have different jobs in order to help society function

This week has been short but full of learning opportunities. We have started on our new central idea. We have been exploring different jobs and what we want to be when we are older. We even had a dress up day and all looked fabulous!

In maths we have been focusing on length and height. We have had so much fun out in the garden and on the playground doing practical activities to help us learn and to help us use the correct language.

A very productive and happy week, well done 1M!

Please remember to bring in your PE kits and water bottles as the weather begins to warm up.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Communities function more effectively when there are rules and responsibilities

When reflecting on our previous unit of inquiry, the children really enjoyed learning about the past, particularly discovering that Maidstone had its very own dinosaur and finding out about Mary Anning.

Our new transdisciplinary theme is How We Organise Ourselves and our central idea is 'Communities function more effectively when there are rules and responsibilities. This will take us on a journey of discovery, finding out about who are the rule makers in our lives. We started with thinking about our school rules and who has responsibilities at school.

In Year 1 maths, we are beginning to understand multiplication by counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and applying this in word problems.

In Year 2 maths, we have been exploring tally charts and pictograms, seeing how these provide us with mathematical information which we can answer questions on.

Please remember appropriate outdoor learning clothes for the following dates: Monday 25th April, Monday 9th May and Monday 23rd May.

As the weather warms please ensure children come to school with a water bottle.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Communities provide services designed to meet people's needs.

We began this new module by reflecting on our previous transdisciplinary theme, recalling all we had learnt and explored regarding 'Our lives and histories are journeys'. We noted how history is a journey and that we ourselves had been on a journey of discovery. We hope you enjoy reading our reflections on our reflection site which can be found by clicking here.

Since then, we have begun our exploration of our new central idea on 'Communities provide services designed to meet people's needs'. We started by discussing what is meant by community and services, following this by exploring our Marden community and the services we have and need. We used Google maps to view the services our village has, noting that as well as physical services such as the doctors, library and shops, we also need literal services such as water and electricity. We then wrote about which services we consider the most important and which services we couldn't survive without.

In our maths, we have been exploring tally charts and pictograms, seeing how these provide us with mathematical information which we can answer questions on.

Please remember appropriate outdoor learning clothes for the following dates: Monday 25th April, Monday 9th May and Monday 23rd May.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Places can change as a result of human impact and organisations.

We began this week by reflecting on our last unit of inquiry. The children took full ownership of this and responded through slides and in their books. The children wanted control over the site shared with parents and wanted to be quoted and for their own images on the site.

After that, we began to look at our new central idea 'Places can change as a result of human impact and organisations.' Despite a short week our inquiry lessons have been full of in depth discussions, breaking down our central idea and the first line of inquiry. The children touched on human and physical impact on places, based on the class discussions as they were able to link their understanding of a previous inquiry on physical processes, arguing that it is not just humans that can change a place, some things change naturally! I was super impressed to say the least!

The children are also very intrigued by our new key text 'Greta and the giants.'

In maths we have focused on collecting data and representing this in the forms of tally charts and pictograms. The children have loved working as a team to collect data and demonstrated a secure understanding.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Economic activities rely on systems of production, exchange and consumption of goods.

We have had a brilliant first week back at school. 3 / 4 D have shown great reflective practise when recalling their learning from last term and reflection upon its impact on them as PYP learners.

We have begun our new unit of inquiry which will take us around the world to look at the production, exchange and consumption of goods. We have already begun to discuss a range of items that we are consumers of, where they originate from and how they are transported.

Our new book for this term will take us on a journey with Sona as she learns all about climate change and caring for the planet.

In maths we have been consolidating our learning of fractions and decimals. Now moving onto measuring mass in kg and g.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Transportation systems can be developed to meet the needs of the community.

The children arrived back in school on Tuesday, eager to speak about their Easter holiday adventures. We are continuing to read 'Who Let the God's Out' by Maz Evans as our class reader. Our new reading comprehension book for this module is 'Future Friend' by David Baddiel. The children enjoyed predicting what the story could be about from looking at a picture of a city displaying the date 3020 as well as signs stating 'Flood Warning', 'Temp 51C' and 'Stay Inside'. We had a great discussion and then read the first chapter.

The children have reflected on their previous PYP inquiry and thought about what they learnt during the inquiry. They enjoyed looking through their inquiry books and remembering all that they had done during module 4. They thought about the skills that they applied during the inquiry and how they have developed their learner attributes. We had a fantastic, detailed discussion about this. We also completed our knowledge harvest for our new inquiry and picked apart our new central idea.

In maths this week, we have been dividing by 10 and 100 and looking at the relationship between the number bonds to 10 and how these can be used to calculate larger amounts. On Thursday, they started athletics in PE. We had a great time in the sun on the field. There was lots of laughter and fun had by all. Finally, on Friday, we learnt about St. George's Day.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Roles and responsibilities lead to successful leadership.

Welcome back! It was fantastic to see everyone after the Easter break looking refreshed and raring to go. I've also enjoyed catching up with lots of you during parents evenings this week.

In maths, we have continued to look at fractions, finding fractions of quantities and looking at the relationships between this and multiplying fractions. We have challenged ourselves by applying this learning to lots of problem solving questions.

During inquiry, we have reflected on last terms learning and it was great to hear the children recall so many interesting things from last term. They thought carefully about the skills they had learnt and also how they had developed their learner profile attributes. We then began to pick apart our new central idea, thinking about what made a successful leader, coming up with examples of successful leaders. In order to apply this learning, we ordered school staff based on who we thought had the most responsibility and who had the most important roles - it's safe to say they kept Miss Holness happy with their thoughts!

We have also started to cover cricket in our PE lessons and we looked at batting and fielding this week and how to apply these to run scoring.

Our reflection on our previous inquiry is here.

Central Idea: Roles and responsibilities lead to successful leadership.

The children have settled back fantastically after the Easter break, and have given me a warm welcome as their new teacher. I would like to thank those of you who were able to come along to the meet and greet on Wednesday after school; it was lovely to meet you (or see some familiar faces again!). I hope I get a chance to catch up with those who were not able to come along at some point in the near future.

The children spent some time this week reflecting on their inquiry learning from last term. This was a valuable opportunity for me to experience, and hear about some of the amazing learning that they have done so far this academic year, and how they are continuing to develop their learner profile attributes. This then led us nicely into our new central idea of roles and responsibilities, with questions about what makes a successful leader. I cannot wait to see how far they are willing to take their learning, this term and beyond!

In Maths, we have continued to look at fractions, finding fractions of quantities and looking at the relationships between this and multiplying fractions. We have also started to learn the key skills of cricket in our PE lessons, which the children are very excited about!

Central Idea: Conflict shapes society

Inquiry - We have begun our inquiry by exploring the key concept of causation. Children have had in-depth discussions about the complex and intertwined reasons for conflict which can inevitably end in war. Children have begun creating an emotive piece of mixed media and collage artwork to depict a soldier's despair. This relates neatly to our creative writing where we have been exploring the experience of landing on the beaches of Dunkirk during WW2.

Maths - We have been revising finding fractions and percentages of amounts through multi-step problem solving. The challenge level is high and children are developing good resilience to be able to work back through a problem to see where errors may have been made. We have also been very impressed by the mathematical language which children have been using in order to communicate their justifications with one another.

Reading - Our focus has been to introduce children to a wide variety of texts in order to broaden vocabulary and expose them to different (and unfamiliar) writing styles. We thought you might be interested to see some of the books we have been using.

Travel planning –

• How will your child get to and from school every day?

• Does your child need to purchase a bus/train pass? You may want to start looking in to this now

• The Arriva App would be useful to download, if appropriate

• Can a bus/train timetable be easily read?

• Does your son/daughter know what to do if there are delays/issues with transport?

• You may have talked about, or even tried the journey during the Easter holidays, but if this is very new to your child, you may want to start practising this early

• Can your son/daughter easily walk to school?

• Will they be walking with friends/siblings?

• Will they be confident walking independently?