Hello and welcome to Beech Class. My name is Ms Barson and I am supported by the fantastic Mrs Slade, our teaching assistant. Beech Class is a mix of amazing Year 4s and wonderful Year 3 children who are resilient and enthusiastic learners.

Each term we have a different, exciting topic to develop children’s curiosity about the world around them:

Term 3: Every picture tells a story

Term 4: It’s our world, let’s look after it

Term 5: Healthy body, healthy mind

Term 6: I am a global citizen
 

Please remember:

-named PE kits need to be in school every day.

· Homework (maths, spellings and sentences) are set on a weekly basis.

· Please take the time to read every evening and discuss books with your child. We want children to develop a love of reading. Children’s reading achievements are displayed on our class reading graph.

It is going to be an amazing year – keep checking our class page to see what we’ve been up to!

I'm a Global Citizen

This term our topic is: I’m a Global Citizen. We are looking forward to visiting Wagamama in Trowbridge where we will be tasting different food from Asia. Last term, we learnt lots of amazing new skills during our time with Mrs Disney in our Foodies sessions. We found out about inspirational women, past and present and designed and made birthday cakes for them. Beech Class learnt lots of new skills including how to break an egg and test if it is fresh and how to mix fondant icing to make different colours. We evaluated our cakes and agreed they were scrumptious!

Under the Sea

Everyone in Beech Class is really enjoying finding out about the amazing creatures that live in the oceans.  We are learning about animal classification in science and writing information leaflets on loggerhead turtles.  Did you know they can hold their breath for 5 hours underwater?   They are omnivores and eat fish and sea plants.  They particularly like jellyfish, unfortunately plastic bags and jellyfish look very similar so we are writing persuasive posters to encourage people to dispose of plastics carefully, and recycle, reduce and reuse.

Term 4    It’s Our World Let’s Look After It.

This term we are learning about the  oceans and some of the creatures that live in them.  We have written information leaflets on loggerhead turtles and found out lots of interesting facts about these fascinating marine creatures. We will be researching the impact of plastic pollution and writing persuasive posters to encourage people to look after our environment.  We loved World Book Day, and had lots of fun dressing up as our favourite characters.  We are looking forward to our school trip to Carymoor Education Centre to learn more about the environment.

Term 3    Every Picture Tells a Story.

Beech Class have been very creative this term and created a whole class painting. Our topic has been focused on the artwork of Claude Monet, in particular his famous painting ‘Bridge over the Pond of Water Lilies’. Each child created a tile of the final painting.  We used lots of skills in the process including: careful observation, discussions about his techniques, experimenting with water colour paints and oil pastels and looking at proportions to upscale the section of the image.  We researched and wrote about Claude Monet’s life and loved finding out about his amazing garden at Giverny.

Diva Lamps

At the end of term 1, Beech Class created Diva lamps. Diva lamps are lit during Diwali, the festival of light. As you can see, we moulded clay to create the traditional shape used across the world by Hindus today. Once the clay had dried, we decorated them using metallic paints. The children had great fun and took great care when making them. Well done Beech Class!

Rangoli Patterns 

We have been exploring Hinduism this term. Did you know that Hinduism is the only religion that worship more than one god? Did you know that Hinduism is the oldest of the world regions practised today? Did you know that Hinduism originated in South East Asia along the River Indus?

When looking at the different deities, we focused our attention on Lakshmi. She is the goddess of wealth and purity. However, she only bestows her blessing on people who worship her sincerely and not in greed. We then explored a tradition called rangoli patterns. Hindus believe that by creating a rangoli pattern on their doorstep, they are inviting Lakshmi in to their home.

As you can see from the pictures, we created our rangoli patterns using coloured petals. Hindus will traditionally use coloured rice, sand and chalks but we thought that might get a bit messy in our hall!

Beech Class Poster Competition Winners

As part of the Harvest celebrations, we looked at Trowbridge Foodbank and why it is an important resource in our community. We learnt that last year the foodbank provided 15,500 meals to people in crisis. We felt that people should know more about this, so we created posters promoting it. The winning poster was then displayed in Tesco on their foodbank collection trolley. The winning poster creators took their poster down to Tesco to hand in and then they were given a £10 budget to buy some provisions for the foodbank. As you can see from the pictures, when you think carefully about what items to buy, you can get quite a bit for your money!

In Beech Class this week...

In Beech Class this week we have been discussing how we are all different but all equal.  We started our topic by looking at where we were born.  We plotted everyone on a map to show how diverse our class is.