Welcome to Rabbit class! Our teacher is Mrs Wren, who has been teaching at Bedwell for three years. She is really good at music and English, and wants to make her lessons fun, interactive and memorable.  

• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest school newsletter
• Meet our School Councillors, Ola and Darcie

Home learning ideas:

• We’re working on tables facts this term, so it would be brilliant if you could work on learning these at home. Focus on one table at a time and try: 
  • Making-up rhymes to help remember number facts (“4 x 6 is 24, bears growl and lions roar!”)
  • Looking for numbers in that table in the world around you - on doors, car number plates, in phone numbers or when you’re out shopping.
  • Writing-out tables with finger paints, chalk or water-on-tarmac, or make them from playdoh.
  • Chanting, singing, whispering... Say tables out loud together whenever you have the chance.
• Each week we are set spellings to learn. Click here for guidance on strategies you can use to support your child in learning these at home. 
• In history, we're learning about Ancient Britain this term. Archaeologists have found a surprising amount of relics from the Stone Age and Bronze Age in our local area, and you can find examples in Hitchin museum. Go to their website at www.northhertsmuseum.org to find out more about visiting. 
•  In geography, we will be learning all about France, so this would be a great opportunity for any family members who have visited the country to share their experiences. What did they see, do, eat and drink? How similar or different was it to the UK? Has anyone seen the Alps, visited the Louvre or been up the Eiffel Tower?
• Investigate what magnets stick to - fridge magnets work fine, and you can investigate lots of different materials around the house. Try different metals and help your child discover that magnets only stick to some of them (mostly iron and steel).  
• There’s some great advice on talking to children about online safety on the NSPCC website at www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/ We also use lots of resources from the UK Safer Internet Centre: saferinternet.org.uk/ 

Our latest news:

• This term, we have had the chance to take part in Fit Kidz activities as part of our weekly PE sessions. With lots of weights and fitness activities, they are a great way for us to build up our core strength and stamina - and it’s been lots of fun too! 
 

 
• We rounded-off our geography topic with a brilliant USA Day. We all came to school dressed in red, white and blue (to represent the American flag), and then took part in art, cooking and PE sessions. We especially enjoyed making (and eating) our apple pies!
 
• As part of our history topic on Roman Britain, we made our own Roman shields. We cut out cardboard for the base of our shields and then added card shapes and patterns to make them look as authentic as possible. We finished the project by marching out onto the field in a classic Roman ‘tortoise’ formation! 
 

 
• We were delighted to be joined by so many of our parents and carers for our Stay and Read event. We talked about the reasons why reading regularly at home is so important, explored some of the things we can do to make it an enjoyable experience and shared lots of our favourite books. A big thank you to everyone who made time to join us in class. 
 

 
• At the beginning of December, we went to our school trip to Hazard Alley. Through hands-on scenarios - like crossing roads, spotting fire risks, and learning about stranger danger - we discovered how to stay safe in everyday situations. The immersive environment gave us the chance to practise real-life skills in a fun and memorable way, boosting awareness and confidence. It was a day filled with teamwork, laughter, and valuable lessons that will stay with us long after the visit. 
 

 

We have been learning about... 

Art - In geography we have been learning about the USA, and linked to this we created clay models of famous American monuments. Some of us chose the Gateway Arch, whilst others chose the Statue of Liberty and a few of us went for rockets! The models were quite tricky to make, but we learnt a lot about how to shape and join clay.

Science - As part of our work on plants we carried out investigations to discover what they need to survive. We tried growing them in the dark, with no water or sealed in plastic bags (to give them no air). We recorded our observations carefully and used these to draw conclusions about the conditions needed for seeds to germinate and grow.   

English - We have covered lots of different types of writing this term, including personal narratives, calligram poems, character descriptions and dialogue. We particularly enjoyed our work on persuasion, exploring posters and persuasive letter writing techniques before drawing together all of our knowledge to write speeches, trying to convince our teachers that we should cut down on the amount of paper that we use.

Do you think that we should be cutting down trees? Did you know that we have spent £6000 on photocopying in a year? You know that paper is made from trees. If we keep cutting down trees there will not be anything left! 

Do you believe that cutting down tree is important? You are destroying the happy trees. You are never too small to make a decision. You should consider using online work. We could do online homework. Do you want to harm the poor animals? In class we could use whiteboards. Please do the right thing and make this change. 

By Sadaqat

This term's topics

English - Our next topic will see us returning to report writing, using A Year Full of Celebrations and Festivals by Claire Grace as our core text. We will compare different reports, thinking about the way they are organised and the way adverbials are used to link ideas together. We will then write our own reports, describing a celebration that is important to us. After that, our final story writing unit of the year will be based around The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. We will develop our use of dialogue, conjunctions and paragraphs to extend and organise stories, and will then combine all of these features to draft, edit and present a science-fiction story of our own.

Maths - We’ll be concentrating on multiplication and division first, using practical resources and the idea of equal groups, sharing and arrays to support our calculations. This will then progress into the use of ‘formal’ methods for short multiplication and division. After that, we will be shifting our attention to time, learning how days, weeks, months and years are related, and then beginning to calculate time intervals. We will also develop our ability to tell the time, aiming to all be able to read analogue clocks to the nearest minute. Finally, we will return to place value, using our understanding of number to quickly multiply and divide by 10 and then being introduced to the concept of decimals.

Science - We will be exploring different types of forces, including pushes, pulls, gravity and friction, and thinking about the way that these affect the way that objects move in different situations. We will design and carry out fair tests to see which materials create the most friction, and to discover which materials stick to magnets. We will also investigate different ways in which we can measure forces.

Humanities - In history, we will continue to explore the technological changes that occurred across the Bronze and Iron Ages, which (slowly) changed ways of life and introduced new clothes, homes, weapons and jobs. All of this helped us to make the most of our trip to Celtic Harmony Camp in June, when we got to experience a taste of Iron Age life! In geography, meanwhile, we will be exploring France! We will begin by locating France on a variety of maps, atlases and globes, and will use this understanding to identify reasons why France is important to the UK. We will use maps, photos and videos to explore a range of environments and climate zones within the country, and will compare life in France with that in the UK.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.