Welcome to Fieldmouse class! Our teacher is Mrs Devenish, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 16 years and loves making our lessons as creative as possible. Her favourite things are cooking and being outdoors, although she doesn’t like snow very much, and is scared of spiders.

• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest school newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Max and Willow

Home learning ideas:

• Try to do as much maths as you can when you're out and about:
  • Keep on practicing counting whenever and wherever you can - how many cars are there in the street? How many trees in the field? How many trollies in the supermarket, players on the team or stairs on the way to bed? Our focus is on numbers from 10-20 this term, so things that come in groups of this size are ideal for counting practice.
  • Practice writing numbers in sand, salt or water, or try making numbers out of groups of pebbles.
  • Practice counting in 2s, 5s and 10s - counting in multiples as you go up or down stairs; counting in 2s as you pair up socks; totalling up everyone’s fingers and toes by counting in 5s...
• Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read - we've put together some guidance and advice on using the books your child will bring home here.  
• We follow the Read Write Inc phonics programme, and they have provided lots of guidance on supporting your child at home, which you can read here.
• Share stories, pictures, postcards and mementos from seaside trips in the past. What things did you do at the seaside? Why did you go to that particular place? If you’ve been to the seaside in different countries, think about what is similar and different about all these places.
• We will be learning about the properties of materials and the reasons why different things are made from different materials, so try going on a materials hunt when you’re out and about - how many things can we spot that are made from plastic? Why do you think they chose to use that material? What other material could be used instead?

Our latest news:

• We all had great fun on our India Day. We took part in a variety of Indian workshops including dancing, writing our names in Hindi, playing cricket, creating mehndi hand designs and cooking chapattis. We finished the day by sampling our cooking with a variety of dips.
 

 
• We were delighted that so many of our parents and carers were able to join us for our Stay and Count sessions earlier in the term.    
 

 
• We had a fantastic visit to see Goldilocks at Milton Keynes Theatre. It was a great opportunity for us to watch a real production after completing our own show, and we quickly knew when we needed to laugh, clap or boo! It also linked beautifully to our English unit so we could add even more detail to our writing about Goldilocks. 
 

 
• We have enjoyed attending Forest School. We have had great fun exploring the forest, engaging in different activities and making our own snack. We particularly liked making log dogs, making magical wands, drinking hot chocolate and playing games at the end of each session.
 

 

We have been learning about... 

Maths - We have been learning about 2d and 3d shapes and their properties, as well as exploring measures, the days of the week and months of the year. We really enjoyed sharing lots of our learning with you at our Stay and Count session.

English - This term we have been reading Stanley’s Sticks, Ruby’s Worry and Madlenka. We learnt how to plan and write our own stories about our stick, recount roars or worries we may have had and wrote our own journey tales. We particularly enjoyed getting to share our finished books with children in Nursery. We have also worked on using ? and ! correctly, as well as using conjunctions to extend sentences.

This term's topics

English - We will start the term by focussing on letter writing, using Paddington’s Post as our core text. We will investigate the way that letters are organised and develop our understanding of where capital letters should be used in our writing. We will then be writing letters to children in Hedgehog Class to find out more about life in Year 2. After that, we will be returning to story writing, using the story of Little Red and The Very Hungry Lion to explore traditional tales. We will then write our own versions of the story. We will continue with our Read Write Inc sessions every morning, working in small groups with others at our level to improve our phonics knowledge, ready for our Screening Check in June.

Maths - We will begin the term by exploring measurement, measuring heights, lengths and weights using a mixture of standard (metres, cm, kg) and non-standard (hands, books, marbles etc.) units. We will then move on to develop our understanding of multiplication and division, using equal groups, repeated addition, sharing, simple pictures, counting sticks and arrays to solve problems. We will introduce the idea of ‘remainders’ when dividing, and think about what to do with these ‘left over’ bits when we solve problems. We will also develop our ability to count in 2s, 5s and 10s, which will help to speed-up our working, and eventually lead to recall of our 2x, 5x and 10x tables.

Science - This term we will be investigating the properties of different materials, sorting them in a variety of ways and designing our own tests to find out how suitable they are for different jobs. We will think about the reasons why certain materials are used for specific purposes and suggest suitable alternatives that could be used for everyday tasks.

Humanities - In our geography lessons, we will be learning about seaside environments. We will discuss what people do when they go on seaside holidays and learn about natural and man-made features that we find in these places. We will then choose a specific seaside resort to investigate further (selected based on our own experiences) and compare this town with life in Stevenage. In history, meanwhile, we will explore seaside holidays from the past and discover how they have changed over the years. We will use photos, video clips and first-hand accounts to support our learning, and will use all of this to discuss how seaside environments have changed.

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