Year 1

What a busy and exciting week it has been in Year 1! The children have been working so hard and showing great enthusiasm across all of their learning.

In English, we have been writing postcards back to Beegu’s parents, telling them all about Beegu’s adventures on Earth. The children thought carefully about how Beegu might be feeling and what she might have seen and enjoyed during her visit. We made sure to include capital letters in the correct places, use finger spaces and full stops, and even tried to upscale our writing by adding interesting adjectives to make our sentences more exciting.

In maths, we have been finishing our topic on place value within 10. We explored counting backwards, finding one more and one less, and using the words fewer, more and same. We also began comparing numbers using the inequality symbols for greater than (>), less than (<) and equal to (=). This was a tricky new concept, but we reminded ourselves that practice makes progress! Please continue to practise this at home whenever you can.

In science, we began learning about animals and how they behave throughout the seasons. We explored the five main animal groups and named examples from each. The children also became artists this week, taking inspiration from Yayoi Kusama. We practised sketching an apple and used stippling to make our artwork look more realistic.

To finish our week, we became map experts! Using our knowledge of directions, we followed clues using left and right to find Paddington and Sunny the Sunstone Tiger hidden around the playground.

Well done, Year 1 — what fantastic learners you are!

   

   

w/b 06.10.25

Keywords: adjectives, features of a postcard, more, less, fewer, same, numbers within 10, animals, seasons, stippling, shading, aerial photographs, maps

Sounds: air, ir, ou, oy

 

w/b 13.10.25

Keywords: capital letters, finger spaces, full stops, greater than, less than, equal to, compare, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, bird, real-life, 3D, left, right

Sounds: ea, oi, a-e, i-e

 

Messages:

• Please ensure your child brings their reading folders in with their reading record and books on Mondays. 
• If folders are brought in later in the week, we’ll do our best to change the books when possible, but it can be tricky to find time once our weekly routines are underway. 
• The reading record should be signed by an adult five times. 
• Please make sure your child’s snacks are nut-free as we are a nut-free school.

 

Dates: 

• Tuesday 14th October: family teacher meeting 

• Thursday 16th October: family teacher meeting

• Wednesday 22nd October: last day of the half-term

• Monday 10th November: Victorian day (dress up as a Victorian child)

• Friday 14th November: Odd Socks Day

• Friday 21st November: Nasal Flu Vaccination

• Wednesday 26th November: St. Matthias’ Church visit

• Wednesday 3rd December (8.45 - 9.15 am): open classroom

 

Year 2

We have been able to take advantage of some fortunate timing, fine weather and our spacious grounds these past weeks.

Children were excited to bring in their superhero toys this week to help them plan their next piece of action-adventure writing. Taking inspiration from the Traction Man book series, they will be writing a diary about their character’s antics. Our focus will be on writing consistently in the past tense and to refer to emotions. Children are taking pride in their published work and will be able to wow you with it at the forthcoming family-teacher meetings (please take the time to look at their books in their classroom, before or after your meeting). 

Everyone enjoyed being outside in the Forest School area for science. We looked for minibeasts in their microhabitats. Some spectacular science knowledge was shared, including a leopard slug and a sighting of slug eggs. The children were able to come up with some sound hypotheses about why the soil contained more living creatures than leaves. 

In maths, we have moved on from fact families to focus on adding ones. In keeping with our small steps approach, we will add to this so that most children will be able to add and subtract across tens by the half term break. 

Our British Isles learning is moving from Belfast to London in geography, where we will be thinking about human features and physical features of landscapes, including London landmarks. 

We are looking forward to seeing how our Orla Kiely-inspired printing turns out. A variety of plant and animal prints were planned last week, will be etched this week and printed next week. Keep an eye on Instagram next week for the results! 

Please let your class rep know if you are able to help accompany individual class visits to a gurdwara in November, to support our RE learning. Thank you.

          

   

                   

   

w/b 06.10.25

Keywords: Diary, past tense, first person, emotions, addition, subtraction, ones, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, capital city, human and physical features, wallpaper, printing.

 

w/b 13.10.25

Keywords: Inference, retrieve, edit, publish, addition and subtraction across tens, London, landmark, human and physical features, printing, bright colours.

 

Messages:

• Please ensure your child brings their reading folder in with their reading record, reading book and homework book on Mondays. Please send these in a school book bag. 
• The reading record should be signed by an adult five times during the previous week. 
• Please tie long hair back completely.
• Thank you for supporting the school’s healthy snack stance.

 

Dates: 

• Tuesday 14th October - family teacher meetings

• Thursday 16th October - family teacher meetings

• Wednesday 22nd October - End of term. School resumes on Monday 3rd November

• Thursday 13 November – Gurdwara visit, Pearl class

• Friday 14th November: Odd Socks Day

• Friday 21st November: Nasal flu Vaccination

• Wednesday 26 November – Gurdwara visit, Turquoise class

• Thursday 27th November – Gurdwara visit, Amethyst class

• Wednesday 3rd December (8.45 - 9.15 am): open classroom