Hello! My name is Miss Pountney and I am so excited to be teaching in Maple Class this year! This year our teaching assistants will be Mr. Clayton in the mornings, and Miss Camp in the afternoons. 

I am very happy to be moving up with the children into Maple Class as we already know each other very well and we already know how important it is to be kind and respectful towards one another. We know that we should work hard with our learning as well as having fun and enjoying it! We know that it is so important to support, look out for, and be understanding of each other. By doing all of these things, we make our classroom a fantastic place to be! 

We are going to have so much fun with our learning this year and I can't wait to learn all about these new topics with the children. In history this year we will be learning all about Space Explorers as well as The Great Fire of London! In DT we will be looking at bridges and we will be getting to make our very own bridges. I can't wait for our Australia and Antarctic topic in science!

Key things to remember:

• PE kit needs to be in school every day and needs to be labelled with your child's name (things go missing more often than you'd think!) Please check the school's uniform policy if you are unsure of the colours of items of clothing that the children should have.
• Children are expected to read daily and record this in their reading records - it is fine for them to record this themselves! It would be really helpful if your child could bring their bookbag to school with them everyday as reads will be counted multiple times a week - we love to see children getting their reading certificates and want this to happen as often as possible!
• Spelling and Maths homework will be sent home every Friday in the orange homework book. All homework must be completed and handed in by the following Friday.
• The children’s homework book can also be used for any additional home learning should your child wish to do this. We love to see this home learning in school, and there will be time for the most amazing pieces of home learning to be shown to the rest of the class during the week. 

Term 4

This term in Maple class we have been focussing our writing around the book Miss Leoparda by Natalia Shaloshvili. The key theme in the story is protecting the environment and how the choices we make have an impact. The children have been working hard and have been using different skills to create different pieces of writing, such as writing a letter as Miss Leoparda to the townspeople to encourage them to make better choices for the environment. As a class we have been looking at how we can reimagine the text and we created a new version of the story which we put actions to, to help us to remember. As you can see, we thoroughly enjoyed retelling our new story with our partners! Over the next week the children will be writing their own versions of the story and will be changing the characters and events to make it their own. 

Term 3 Geography

This term in geography, our Sensational Safari topic gave us the opportunity to learn about the country Kenya. We used atlases and globes to find out where Kenya is in comparison to the UK. We learnt that Kenya sits on the equator, an invisible line that goes around the centre of the earth splitting it into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. We found out that because Kenya is located on the equator, it has more hours of daylight than us, and the weather is much hotter! We learnt about what life is like in rural Kenya, and in the capital city Nairobi, in comparison to life here in the UK. We loved getting to learn about the Big 5 and other animals that roam Kenya's savannahs. 

Bedtime Stories

Willow, Sycamore and Maple classes had a wonderful time at our Bedtime Stories event. The children enjoyed listening to stories in a softly lit room by a roaring fire, took part in a thrilling bear hunt around the school using torches, and finished the evening with hot chocolate and biscuits. A truly magical experience enjoyed by all!

DT in Term 1

Maple have been loving learning about bridges this term! We have been learning about different types of bridges, what shapes make them strong and also looking at different materials that are suitable for making bridges. We have learnt all about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol as well as many other famous bridges, ships, and railway systems! We tried using different objects and materials to explore how to make a strong bridge. We then designed our bridges and created prototypes to see if they would work before moving on to decorating and putting our bridges together! The bridges can cleverly move using a winch and hinge mechanism which the children were very excited about!