Autumn Term in Kingfisher Class

Class Updates...

Merry Christmas Kingfisher families. 

Thank you for all of the lovely cards and gifts. 

Love Mrs S and Mrs M x

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Well done Isobel for making it through to the next round of BBC 500 word writing competition. We are super proud of you!

Weekly News

English 

In English we have explored a WAGOLL newspaper report and are now ready to write our own about the flood. We had a mini social history lesson discussing how sharing the news has changed since the teachers were young. Mrs S was hotseated as the mum (Joy) in the story and everyone now has some accurately punctuated direct speech included within their newspaper report plan. 

The Direct Speech Song and The Noun, Verb and Adjective Song continue to be favourites which support our SPAG learning. Why not put them on at home (and be prepared to cover your ears!).

Maths 

In Maths we have continued looking at the relationships between the 2, 4 and 8 x tables. We have also revisited column addition and subtraction as we found it quite challenging, especially when we had to exchange numbers! We are definitely getting there now though!

Remember to keep doodling too- and that this should be a completely independent activity.

Rock Steady

A HUGE well done to all our Kingfishers who took part in the AMAZING concert today. You are all superstars and totally rock! We hope parents enjoyed it too.

English 

In English we have really enjoyed using our imagination to explore the picture book 'Flood'. The book has supported our learning about direct speech as we have considered what the characters might be saying in the pictures. 

The Direct Speech Song was a really helpful tool for learning how to punctuate direct speech - when the reporting clause comes after the direct speech. We made up our own version for when the direct speech comes first. With Mrs M, we explored synonyms for 'said' to make our speech reflect 'who said it and how they said it - you plum! (Kingfisher joke! - ask them to explain).

The Noun, Verb and Adjective Song is another one of our current favourites to support our SPAG learning.

Maths

In Maths we continued  our focus on tables. We are beginning to realise how these underpin much of our maths and how important it is that we have a quick recall of them. PLEASE practice them at home together- there are resources on our class learning page to help you, including the current favourite an 8x table song to the tune of Adele!

We have been looking as progression in Maths too-it may be interesting for you to look at how your child's learning progresses as they move up the school 

Science

In Science we carried out an investigation: 'Can people with longer legs jump further?'

We had such a fun afternoon working scientifically and taking part in practical science. Here are some photos...

PE

We welcomed Chloe on Wednesday morning to help us learn a new sport called VX. Thank you Mrs Berry for organising another fantatsic sporting opportunity for us.

English 

In English we have been looking at figurative language and expanded noun phrases to add detail. This has been achieved through the context of river poetry and in particular the poem 'The River' by Valerie Bloom. We created our own verses using personification and some great results were achieved using lions, cheetahs and even hippos.

 Maths

In Maths this week we have been concentrating on our 3x and 4x tables. We have been looking at counting in steps of 3 and 4, repeated addition of 3's and 4's and how they link to  multiplication and how to write addition and multiplication sentences from an array and from pictures. 

For example 5 pots with 4 pencils in each could generate the number sentences:

 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 20   5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 20     4 x 5 = 20       5 x 4 = 20

Remember the links to our tables songs are on the website too. We are enjoying singing them in school as part of our lessons.

Geography

We are learning all about rivers in Geography this term. We begun by looking at the water cycle and at how water gets into our rivers. This week we have used atlases and looked at the location of rivers around the World and in the UK. Can your child remember the longest river in the World and its location? What about the longest river in England?

Science

This week we tried out a new recall activity in Science. After spending some time recalling the names of the bones in the human body, as well as what they do, children were invited (by a random spin of the wheel) to come and 'talk like an expert' in front of the class for one/two minutes - without saying um! It was the first time we had done this and the children who tried it remembered well and showed great courage to speak confidently in front of their peers- maybe we have some future medical professionals in our class!

Lily and Rebecca took our home made fossils apart. We couldn't believe the results the imitation cast fossils had produced. You may need to zoom in to see the detail.

Other News

Here we are with our fabulous winter wonderland inspired tree decorations made predominately from recycled items or materials found in nature. They will look great on the Christmas Arts Trail.

Well done Junior. We are really proud of your efforts with Doodle this week. Your smile says it all :)

English & Maths

This week we have been using our 'Be your Best' rule even more than usual as we work our way through the Autumn assessments. We have been exceptionally proud of the effort that the children have put into these and the way that they have used all of our values throughout. We have used our newly developed skill of peer on peer massage to support our mental wellbeing. Well done Kingfisher Class. 

Anti- Bullying Week

On Tuesday we took part in the  BBC Live Lesson for Anti-Bullying Week. It was a really interesting experience and made us reflect on how we speak to our friends even if we think we are only joking around. The children had some interesting discussions around the topic and have a great sense of responsibility towards one another.

Proud moment!

We are super proud of Belle S for her entry to BBC 500 words competition.

You still have until 8pm today (10.11.23) if you wish to enter. Here is Belle's fantatsic story...

English

We have interrupted our river poetry to complete a writing assessment based on the clip 'For The Birds'. The assessment involves a recall of events from the point of view of Big Bird. Here is a link to the video For The Birds. PLease enjoy sharing it and discussing what Big Bird's thoughts and feelings may be.

Maths

In Maths we have been looking at sharing and grouping as well as introducing simple arrays. These are patterns of dots arranged in rows and columns which help the children to understand multiplication. We also practised counting in 2s,5s and 10s and linked this to finding multiples of these numbers.

Massage

We have begun to learn the skill of peer on peer massage. It was an incredibly relaxing half hour and we felt very calm afterwards. We are all looking forward to developing our techniques as the weeks progress. We also continued our yoga topic in PE.

English

In English we have began a new topic exploring a river poem. So far we have investigated the features of this poem, including how the poet uses a possessive apostrophe and descriptive language. As a class we developed a word bank of adjectives and similes to describe a river. Moving forward we will be exploring personification and creating our own poems in the same style using some of the rich language that we have generated and applying our focus punctuation and grammar skills.

Here is a link to the poem lyrics as well as a video version containing some beautiful river images.Enjoy!

The River by Valerie Bloom - Video

Poem 

Maths

In Maths this week we have continued our work on column addition and subtraction. We are getting much better at making sure the hundreds tens and ones place value columns are lined up and to recognise why this is important. We have 'marked' work and identified errors to help us to understand this. We have also learned to make reasonable estimates in maths so we can immediately recognise if our answer is likely to be incorrect. 

Massage

This term, Y3 will be given the option to learn peer on peer massage. Last year this was extremely successful - please watch our video https://boysinmind.co.uk/film-massage-at-welton-school/ .  

If you have any questions please see one of the Y3 team.

Remembrance

We have started our learning about Remembrance by watching and discussing elements of a BBC live lesson. Next week we will further develop our understanding of this important topic.

Term 2 Curriculum Overview

English

This week we have been writing biographies, and because it is Black History Month we have decided to focus upon the 1960s black American sprinter - Wilma Rudolph. 

After watching clips of Wilma's courageous Olympic races, we learnt more about her journey to success.  Everyone was shocked at how she managed to progress from being paralysed in one leg to winning three olympic medals. We used the key concepts of biography writing  to structure our work. Kingfishers were able to link many of Wilma's attributes to our own values here at Welton. What an inspirational woman she was!

We will share some of our writing here as soon as it is completed.

Letters

As promised here are some of the letters that we wrote thanking the church for our recent visit. 

Maths

It's been a tricky week in maths as we have begun to add and subtract by regrouping. We have used the column method to do this and have used diens to support our understanding and help us to visualise what we are doing. We can also draw pictures to help us.

Open Classroom Parent/Carer Session

Thank you to the many parents who joined us this afternoon for our open classroom session. We hope you enjoyed making the biscuit  models of Stonehenge with your children, even if you didn't relish eating them quite as much as they did! The children have loved the Stone Age topic and it was enjoyable to conclude it with a fun activity. Prior to your visit we had  ben talking about using the evidence found at Stone Henge to try to determine why it was built. We decided its original purpose could have been either as a burial ground, an early calendar, a concert venue or a healing centre. The children asked me to share with you this video link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf7xwHFuH2o

The children also loved performing their Harvest Rap from a couple of weeks ago to you. I'm very impressed they remembered it. I couldn't!

Here are some photos of your biscuit creations!

Thank you to the children who brought in fossils from home to share and support our science learning about how fossils are made.

We have really enjoyed our Wellness Walks/Runs this week. These have given us a chance for some time outdoors, enjoying the sights and sounds that the season change is bringing us in the beautiful valley behind our school.

English

English this week has involved a lot of thought around the editing process. We encourage all of the Kingfishers to be brave and show our courage value when editing their work with purple pen. Kingfishers have also been practising how to respond appropriately to the marking symbols SP and P, for example, using a dictionary to check how to spell a word. This was applied to our 'Don't Go' narrative work and the children really impressed us with their ability to improve their writing using these methods. 

In addition to this, we wrote thank you letters to the church for welcoming us last week - meanwhile learning about how to use the subordinating conjunction 'because' to explain the reasons why we found it so interesting.

Maths

Alongside our usual tables work this week, we have begun to use the column method to add and subtract 2 and 3 digit numbers. We have drawn pictures to represent this to help us understand what is happening in each place value coulmn. We found it quite tricky at first and need to be very careful when writing the calculations to line up the hundreds tens and ones columns correctly.

 We have learned how to access the timed tables songs from the website too so we can practice at home.

Science

Kingfishers absolutely loved working scientifically this week and exploring the permeability of different soil types. Mr Snell was super impressed when he popped in to find out what we were learning. As a teacher, it was so lovely to hear the children talk about how much 'fun' they were having whilst investigating - the photos say it all!

Thank you Teodora for the fabulous Science that you chose to do at home in response to this lesson. Chosing to write about the experiment was such a great idea and it is lovely to hear about how much you enjoyed it.

Art

We have had fun in art this week.  We have been looking at prehistoric art such as cave paintings this term,  which links to our History topic of The Stone Age. Last week we did charcoal drawings of animals and this week we looked at colour. The Stone age people would have had to make their own paints from things they could forage, so we had a gio and colouring using natural pigments. We used red cabbage, spinach, red onion, berries, sand, turmeric, paprika, mud and grass. Some worked well and others didn't but it was fun trying! Here are a few pictures!

Thank you Emma for bringing in your great grandmother's Maundy money to show us. We were also impressed with the great internet research that you did at home. 

English

In English we have enjoyed some visual literacy this week using Don't go - THE LITERACY SHED. We watched this clip and responded by writing a narrative from the point of view of Pinky. This involved thinking about Pinky’s thoughts, feelings and actions as well as using adverbials, conjunctions, adjectives and all of the punctuation that we have been consolidating these past few weeks. As we go to press they are not quite finished so we hope to share some with you next week.

Maths

In Maths we have continued practising our tables and trying to speed write them. We have looked at how the 4x table relates to the 8x table, by doubling.

We are focussing on adding 1's, 10's and 100's to numbers and are beginning to look at what happens when we cross ten or a hundred and how to make the calculation easier to solve by making a 10 first. eg 136 + 9=?    We add 4 to the 136 first to make 140. Then we add the remaining 5. 140 + 5 = 145

RE

On Wednesday, Kingfisher Class visited St John’s Church , Midsomer Norton to find out more about what happens during a Baptism. Curate Phillip and Rev. Guy Scott kindly showed the children around the church and explained the role of Baptism in the Christian Church. This will support our learning in RE over the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy the photos.

English

In English this week we have been finishing our quarry trip recounts, learning to edit them in detail with purple pen and respond effectively to our teacher's marking. Then we have published them by writing them in best with our handwriting pens. 

It has been great to see so many fantastic recounts with everyone clearly having enjoyed themselves and excited to write about their experience.

In guided reading we have been reading a book called 'The Pebble in my Pocket' by Chris Coady which links really well with our Rocks and Stone Age topics. Through our vocab session we have learnt some new technical words such as 'conglomerate' and can explain how different types of rocks are formed - sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic.

Maths

In Maths this week we have been learning how to apply our number bonds to 10 to addition problems. We have also learned how to add and subtract ones and tens to 3 digit numbers without crossing 10 and which place value column changes. We have begun to learn a new song to help us remember our 3x table https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzVyBQ5uTbo

Moons Hill Quarry Trip 19.9.2023

What an amazing day we had being scientists at Moons Hill Quarry today. We hope you enjoy sharing all of the photographs from the trip. Here is an overview of what we did on the visit.

We closely observed, described, tested, classified and identified a range of rocks and fossils.

In full PPE, we travelled to nearby Whatley Quarry (the largest limestone quarry in England).  Here we had a Quarry tour where we visited the area that they spin the rocks at 70mph and smashes them into smaller more manageable pieces. We saw lots of busy people who work at the quarry and also some huge machinery at work.

Thank you to the team at The Somerset Earth Science Centre for all of your hard work with us today. Thank you also to Mike at Berkley Coaches for driving us, our wonderful PTFA for contributing towards our coach costs and our parent helpers for accompanying us.

Some of the children were really keen to watch a blast but unfortunately there was no blasting today. However, if this is something that you would like to take your child to see please read the information below from the quarry.

Operations and blasting:

Blasting can take place between 09:00 and 17:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00 to 12:00 on Saturdays.

We plan operations so that, wherever feasible, blasting is scheduled for Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at around midday. 

To sign up to receive our free blasting notification texts please email us at: whatley.quarry@hanson.com and include your address and the mobile phone number on which you would like to receive these texts.

 Maths

In Maths this week we have continued chanting our tables, working on the 2x, 5x, 10x and 3x tables.  We are also speed writing them in our books to help our recall.

We have continued working on place value to 1000 and have been comparing and ordering  numbers. We enjoyed beginning to  learn a place value song to help us and asked for it to be shared so we could practise it at home too. Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4FXl4zb3E4 . Keep doodling too! Remember this should be done completely independently with no adult assistance in order for the work generated to be at the correct level.

English

In English we have been making sure that we use capital letters and full stops correctly.  The quarry trip involved a lot of collaboration through speaking and listening. We have moved on to planning and writing a recount of the trip.  Once completed we will put some of our recounts here for you to see and the Earth Science Centre are also keen to share some with their stakeholders. 

Lots of children are flying along the race track after reading at home (don't forget to write in reading records!) and we are enjoying our class novel Wild Way Home.

English

Everyone has been trying hard to 'be their best' this week in English and the setting descriptions of caves have been extremely spooky and realistic. The setting toolkit that we created (with a little bit of help from none other than Peppa Pig) included some fabulous adjectives and we enjoyed stealing ideas from one another. We all had a giggle about 'saladtights' (stalactites) and saladmights (stalagmites)! When editing our work we found that, for many of us, checking for punctuation is really important at the moment especially when it comes to remembering capital letters. Something we will work hard on next week.

Maths

In Maths we have been learning to understand place value in more depth. As well as partitioning numbers into 100s,10s and 1s we then moved on to use this knowledge to find an easy way of working out more/less.

eg. 

351   3 hundreds, 5 tens, 1 one

10 more - I just need to add one more 10 so that makes 6 tens so the answer is 361.

100 less - I just need to take one hundred away so that makes 2 hundreds and the answer is 251

Practical apparatus helps us understand this and so do pictures.

Science

This week in Science we have started our Rocks topic.  Kingfishers had a great time working scientifically to observe and classify a range of different rocks.  Here are a few photographs showing the scientsts at work. They were able to use some fantatsic adjectives to explain the properties of a wide range of rocks and these were also used when desribing a cave setting in English. Everyone is super excited about our trip to the quarry next week to learn more about rocks and hopefully watch a blast!

Spellings

Term 1, Week 1

Rules and Routines

In Kingfisher Class we have worked very hard this first week to embed the school rules and values once again.  In addition to this we have introduced our version of the 'Good Behaviour Game' which involves earning housepoints and has the all exciting 'wheel' to spin and subsequent prizes to be won! 

The children have done a great job at working hard to earn housepoints through following our rules and values.  Can they tell you the school rules and talk about how they have followed them this week to earn housepoints?  Maybe they can explain how we likened them to the foundations of a building- without them being in place we are unable to be strong and stable inidivduals who experience happy times.

We have also introduced a whole class reward where children can opt to forgo their spin and earn a whole class starpoint towards a pre agreed class reward.  Currently we are aiming to earn 10 whole class housepoints which will allow us all to bring a small pocket sized toy to school for the day. 

We have high expectations of behaviour in our class and look forward to seeing lots of positive choices being made over the coming year. 

Term 1 Information

Welcome to Kingfisher class. We are really looking forward to teaching your children again this year and it is great that we are already familiar with each other. The classroom has been decorated during the summer and looks great. We hope that you can join us for our ‘Meet the Teacher’ meeting on Monday 11th September at 3.20pm in the year 3 classroom.  If you are unable to come along, the presentation will be shared here and together with the 'Welcome Letter' (above) should cover everything that you need to know.

Term 1 Curriculum Overview

Yearly Overview

Our class Teaching Assistants who will support the children at various times during the week are Miss Megan Moon, Mrs Hannah Keevil and Mrs Kim Green. 

  Useful web links 

If you would like some extra support with your child's learning, take a look at these links below which could help your child. Will will add to this list as appropriate. Please let us know if you find any good resources that you feel are worth sharing.

In case you missed it, here are our 'Kingfisher Welcome Letter' and 

'Meet the Teacher' presentation.