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Goldfinch Class

Welcome to Goldfinch Class!

Here is some useful class information for you. We will be adding information and photos of what we have been doing on here throughout the year for you to see.  

 

Teachers: Mrs Litt – Monday and Tuesday (alternate Wednesdays)

                Mrs Bingham – Thursday and Friday (alternate Wednesdays)

Teaching Assistants: Mrs Last - Mondays

                                   Mrs Walton - Tuesdays, Thursday afternoons and Fridays

                                  Mrs Baber - Wednesdays and Thursday mornings.

 

PPA Cover: Mrs Brady – Wednesday afternoons

                   Miss Nilsson, Sports Coach – Wednesday afternoons

 

PE Day: Wednesday - Please make sure children have their appropriate PE Kits in school.

 

 

Reading:

It is really important you try to read with your child at home as much as possible. Please try and hear your child read every day and record in their reading record when you have read with them. For our whole school reading challenge, we count all the reads that your child does with an adult in school and at home. Reads will be counted at the end of each week and they gain different certificates for the number of reads they achieve throughout the school year.

 

Spellings/homework:

Spellings will be given out in their homework books at the beginning of each term and labelled with the date, the children will practise these in school, but these will also need practising at home. Please use the homework book to practice them in. There will then be a test every Friday morning. The spelling will be marked with the children so they will be aware of their scores and these will be recorded in their reading records. We may also give out more practical topic related homework projects throughout the year.

 

Times tables:

All children will have a login for TT Rockstars, a fun, interactive website to help them learn their timetables. Their logins will be in their reading record books. We are able to set the correct timetables for your child and monitor usage. Timetables are a crucial part of maths. We carry out our school times tables challenge on Fridays and awards are given when children pass a level.

 

For information regarding our termly learning and topics please click the stars below!

 

 

Spellings:

Thank you to all of the parents and carers who attended our 'Welcome to Goldfinch' meeting this week. If you were unable to attend, please find our class information letter below.

Term 1: Useful Documents:

TERM 1

 

Week 1

 

Welcome back everyone to Year 2 and Year 3! We have had a great first few days back getting to know each other and finding out all about what we were all up to over the summer holidays. We have been introduced to our new book 'Maybe' and enjoyed being artists creating different artwork linked to the book. We also sketched fabulous Goldfinch birds which look wonderful in our classroom. 

We have all settled into Goldfinch Class really well. 

Week 2

 

This week we have been busy developing our team building skills in PE and had to guide a blind folded team member through 5 hoops across the river. We were also working on our communication skills and trust.

We had a fun session outside taking part in a Frisby golf workshop, developing our frisby throwing and catching skills. We all improved over the session and everyone managed to get lots of points in the last game where we had to get the frisby into the targets.

Well done everyone!

Week 3

 

To ignite our new English learning, we enjoyed finding envelopes around the classroom. Inside them were clues and we had to guess what the clue was describing – some clues were describing food items and others were describing animals or characters from a story. We read our new text, ‘Little Charlie and the Lighthouse Keeper’ and as a class we created a story map. We made the connection that the answers to the clues were in our text. We discussed the new vocabulary to make sure that we understood what we were reading and together made a word bank.

Please find our class text for you to read at home under the Useful Documents section above. 

Week 4

 

As historians we have started are new history topic, Britain since 1930. We have been thinking about how we have changed since birth and were able to create a timeline of the important events in our lives. We have been able to compare the lives of others with our own. This week we have spent time thinking about our families and made a family tree. We were able to talk about the oldest and youngest members of our families and understood how every family member has contributed in building our local and wider community. 

Week 5

 

We are enjoying being Geographers so far this term and this week have spent time learning about different Human and Physical Geographical features. In small groups we were able to sort and then refine our groupings, for example one group of children challenged themselves to sort the physical features that they had found into water and non-water features. It was great to hear all of the groups using geographical vocabulary and asking each other such interesting questions.  

 

 

Week 6

 

We have been investigating what Plants need to grow in Science. We all planted our own bean and have been very excited observing their growth. We have also carried out an experiment to see which conditions cress grows best. We were able to conclude that healthy plants need light and water to grow. 

We have also enjoyed writing our Harvest poem to share and perform at our Harvest Collect Worship this week. Thank you to all of you who came to celebrate this with us and for your generous food donations. 

Week 7

 

As artists we have been looking at some of the artwork produced by Keith Haring. Some of us had seen his artwork before and had some in our homes! We made observations of the different colours and techniques he had used in his artwork. We shared our opinions on our favourite piece of artwork and we were able to justify our opinions by giving reasons why we felt the way we did. 

 


Week 8

 

We have worked really hard publishing our 'Best Writing Yet' in our neatest handwriting this week. We have been writing our own versions of Little Charlie and the Light House Keeper. All of the children should feel very proud of themselves for their perseverance and concentration as they look lovely displayed in the classroom and are great to read. 

We have enjoyed learning all about Clevedon as our local area study in Geography. We have identified the many geographical features that Clevedon has and this week looked closely at a map of Clevedon to locate them. We used a compass and have started using the cardinal points; North, East, South and West to describe where these features and places of interest were located in relation to each other. 

TERM 2

 

Week 1

 

This week we ignited our new Talk for Writing text, by receiving a letter from an evacuee family. We watched the opening scenes from ‘A Lion A Witch and a Wardrobe’ where there was a short scene that showed the blitz. We discussed what we thought was happening and how the children must have been feeling. We then watched the scene where the children were at the train station. We discussed what children were wearing and noticed that each child had a label round their neck. We all then made our own evacuee label.

Week 2

 

This week we have supported anti-bullying week with the theme 'choose respect'. This is a special week to encourage everyone - children, teachers and parents - to take a stand against bullying all year round. We had classroom discussions and made a paperchain of people showing how they were going to choose respect. 

To mark the start of anti-bullying week we took part in odd socks day. It was a fun opportunity to encourage everyone in our class to express themselves, celebrating individuality alongside celebrating what makes us all unique.

During the week we also celebrated Positive Noticing Day. Throughout the day we spent time thinking about the power of positive noticing - it made us feel really good about ourselves. We each made a label for someone in our class and wrote something about them that we had positively noticed. Everyone wore their labels home so that they could be shared and celebrated. 

Week 3

This term as Artists, we have been looking at the discipline of paint. In our exploration of paint our artist focus has been Wassily Kandinsky. We have looked in detail at some of the artwork he produced and have made observations about his abstract art. This week we explored making different lines using paint. Some of the lines we made were straight, curved, wavy and zig-zag. Some of the lines were thick, some were thin and a number of us explored overlapping lines which connected them to make shapes. 

 

Week 4

 

As Geographers this week, we have used a weather chart to record the weather. We watched a national and local weather report and recognised many of the weather symbols revisiting last weeks learning. We discussed that a thermometer is used to measure the temperature and looked at lots of different types. Every morning and afternoon this week, we have recorded the weather by going outside to observe the weather conditions, used a thermometer to record the temperature and drawn the relevant weather symbol in our daily weather charts. Luckily the heavy rainfall and strong winds brought by Storm Bert over the weekend have passed and we thought that the weather was mild for this time of year. Although there were some chillier mornings, most days we observed that the temperature had risen by the afternoon. 

Week 5

 

We really enjoyed welcoming our parents and carers into Goldfinch Class for our History open morning this week, thank you to all who came to share our lesson with us. As Historians we enjoyed learning about the end of World War 2 and how it was celebrated. We thought about the food people would have eaten at their street parties (as rationing still continued for many years after the war had ended) and made Union Jack flags for decorations. 

 

 

 

Week 6

 

We have been so busy over these last few weeks rehearsing for our Christmas Nativity - Christmas with the Aliens!

Everybody has worked very hard on learning their words and the songs. We enjoyed performing to the whole school on Monday in our dress rehearsal. We have also presented two performances to our parents and carers - we think you will agree that everybody did a fantastic job and did themselves proud. A huge well done to everyone in Goldfinch and Owls. 

We also had a very exciting day on Tuesday when we joined the rest of the school on a trip to Weston Playhouse to watch the Beauty and the Beast pantomime. Everyone enjoyed shouting out and participating - we even got sprayed with water! It really did get us in the Christmas spirit and it was great to see everyone enjoying themselves and having fun. 

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