​In English we have continued with our work based on The True Story of the Three Little Pigs; the children have been making some great predictions about what might happen in this version of the story!
In maths this week we have come to the end of our unit of work on addition and subtraction. On Tuesday, we worked on a code breaker activity; the children had to work out the answers to addition and subtraction questions using the column method, then they had to find the answers which were stuck on the walls. The answers revealed a letter which formed part of a word needed to crack the code. The children were really determined to crack the code and enjoyed working out what the message was!
In Computing with Mrs Bayliss, the class have been learning how to use PowerPoint. Mrs Bayliss has been really impressed with how quickly the children have picked up the key skills needed. So far, they have learnt how to add a new slide, add text and have started to learn how to format the slides with animations. The children are working in pairs to create a presentation about a topic of their choice which they will show at the end of term.
This week’s spellings have been set on Spelling Shed; we will have a short test on Tuesday next week.
Spelling Rules: The prefix ’mis-’
Misbehave
Mislead
Misspell
Mistake
Misplace
Misread
Misunderstanding
Misuse
Mislaid
 
Both of our PE lessons are outdoors this term; please make sure that your child has warm clothing. 

Dear parent and carers,

In our English lessons this week we have really enjoyed reading more of Cosmic, and finding out how Liam and Florida ended up in a space rocket. The children have been working really hard on their sentence stacking, where we've been developing our skills using "show don't tell" so that our readers are able to make inferences about how our characters feel. We've also been working on developing our use of complex sentences, which involves being able to use verbs in different forms. Next week we'll be continuing with this work.

In maths this week we've been working on prime and square numbers, and also recapped using the inverse relationship between multiplication and division. Next week we'll be working on multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000, and also recapping multiples of 10, 100 and 1000 too.

In our science lesson this week we've been learning about plant reproduction. We've recapped the parts of a flower, and also looked at different ways that plants distribute their pollen, including wind and insects. We also talked about how some plants reproduce asexually, by making clones of themselves. The children were thrilled to bring home their own mini spider plant today- they need a little water and they'll grow well. The plants are decedents of the plant that Mrs Evans gave me when she retired, so it's a part of Appleton School history!

Next week's spellings all include -ent or -ence:
innocence
decent
frequent
emergent
confidence
competence
transparent
eloquence
violent
intelligence

We're continuing with our outdoor PE lessons in the coming weeks, so please do make sure that you child has a warm sweatshirt/jogging bottoms or similar to wear to keep warm.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. What's special about a prime number?
2. What has Liam learnt so far about being a Dad in Cosmic?
3. What's one of the advantages for a plant of distributing pollen using insects?

We very much enjoyed our Geography work where we focused on comparing our local area with a coastal area. We thought carefully about the similarities and differences between the two areas and really enjoyed watching Barnaby Bear at the Seaside to help us to learn about coastal areas. Use this link to access the video:
youtu.be/azhK5uf3t_0

Thank you to everyone who took part in the History sharing homework this week. It was great to find out about the toys and the games that our adult family members/ friends used to play with when they were children. The children will be continuing their work on toys and games from the past next week when they will be comparing Victorian and modern day toys. 

We have started our Read Write Inc approach to Phonics this week and have learnt the ay, air, ir, ou and oy sounds. These have been added to your Spelling Shed lists. 

Our PE sessions will now be taking place outside and we will be focusing on ball skills such as rolling, throwing, catching and bouncing. Please ensure that your child has warm layers to wear for outdoor PE. 

Dear parents and carers,

I hope that you all had a wonderful half term. Although we've only been back a week, it does feel like longer because we've already been very busy!

In our English lessons we have started a new project based around Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce. We have been thinking carefully about what we're learning about Liam, the main character, from the choices that he makes. We read the first few chapters and then wrote lots of questions that we have, which we're hoping will be answered as we continue to read the book. We're also started some sentence stacking based around Liam's experience in the Porsche showroom, which we'll be continuing with next week. In our sentence stacking this week we have been looking at the effect that different sentence length can have on the tension of the writing.

In maths we have been working on multiplication and division skills, concentrating on multiples and factors. This has pulled up a few children who are still not secure in their times table knowledge. I really like the Times Table Rockstars app  which costs £6 for a family membership for a year, but is a really good way of encouraging children to learn their times tables. Alternatively, you can use other methods which don't involve an app- there are some really good ideas on this website.

I was really impressed with the children's work on their Remembrance Day poppies, which Miss Sutton has used in the Remembrance Garden. They thought carefully about what Remembrance means, using the loving book Memorial, by Gary Crew and Shaun Tan, and then put that thoughtfulness into their artwork. 

The engineering project was also really good fun and you can see the results of that on this page.

Here are the spellings for next week (test on Friday as usual):
abundance
brilliance
elegance
extravagance
tolerance
hesitancy
relevancy
vacancy
dominancy
abundancy

Mrs B
Three things to ask your child this week:

1. What are multiples and factors?
2. How do you know that Liam is a thrill-seeker?
3. Why is Remembrance Day important?

 Have a look at our phOck class really showed their engineering mettle this week when I asked them to design and make a wind powered winch. We had talked about how we can use renewable, natural resources like wind, water and sunlight to create electricity, and how non-renewables like coal are pollutants and have cause environmental damage. Wind power has been used to hundreds of years in windmills, so we tried to emulate that, creating our own blade designs.
This was a very tricky problem. There were a number of sticky engineering points to overcome. As well as designing and making the blades, they had to be attached properly to the shaft, and then the shaft had to rest on the table, without moving. The blades needed to be angled to catch the "wind" (i.e. my hairdryer!) but also hardy enough to stand up to the wind. The children also had to fashion a "basket", which could be pulled up as the shaft turned (without getting in the way of the blades). We decided to test the designs by using the hairdryer on its lowest setting, 50cm away from the turbine.
I was really impressed with how well my class approached this problem. They showed lots of different animal attitudes, especially the bold badger and the bounce back bunny. They also worked incredibly well in their groups, showing me just how much they are growing in confidence.
​Have a look at our photos and videos below.

We took part in a class challenge as part of Engineering Day. Our challenge was to build the tallest paper tower using just paper and tape. 

We split into small groups and discussed our plans. Then we had ten minutes to build our tower. At the end of the ten minutes we had noticed that each group had stacked their paper on top of each other (just like Miss Leggett had done when stacking up the resources at the start of the challenge). We thought about what we could do to the paper so that we didn't just stack it one piece on top of the other. We then had ten more minutes of tower building time. 

After that we paused and took some time to look at what the other groups had been doing with their towers. We had a final ten minutes of tower building time. 

At the end of the tower building time we got together as a class and discussed how we could find out which tower was the tallest. We used a metre stick to measure the towers. The tallest paper tower was 40cm tall. 

We then took some time for reflection and discussed what we would do differently next time if we were to repeat this challenge. 

We have had a really lovely first week of the half term in Foundation Stage. The children have quickly settled back in to the school routines and have enjoyed lots of our learning this week.
Our phonics has seen us change our structure this week and we are now following the ReadWrite Inc scheme. This not only teaches the children phonics sounds but also gives them rhymes to support their letter formation. At the end of each session we pop a practice sheet in to each child's book bag for you to have a go at with them at home. 
Maths has focused on recognising 2D shapes in the environment and number recognition to 20. The children have been learning a 2D shape song to help them remember the properties of 2D shapes.
The children really enjoyed our science work this week and loved our first investigation looking at how water changes colour and is absorbed over time. There are lots of lovely pictures on Tapestry to have a look at.
All of the children loved coming in to the Gruffalo woods in class on Monday and we will be continuing work on the Gruffalo for the next few weeks. 
Finally, 3 things to ask your child this week:-
- Can they find a circle and a square in the environment?
- Can they sing the song "Wriggly Nativity" to you?
- Can they explain what happened to the water when we aded food colour? 
Have a great weekend,
Many thanks,
Kayleigh Ballard. 

Today at Forest School the children made some amazing discoveries, and some even ended up in space!
When we arrived we made a circle of leaves, this gave us all a chance to warm up, and to explore the field searching for the most beautiful colours we could find.

The children then went off to play, and soon there was a commotion, some had found a “real dinosaur bone”. They used water to unearth it, then spoons and trowels to start digging it up. Some also found brushes to wash it. They had discussions about whether it was a bone or a stone, whether there even were dinosaurs in Oxfordshire, and if it was a Dino.... what type was it?

Another group made a home under a tarpaulin and decided that it was night time, they drew the “blinds” and went to sleep under our shelter. They were going to wake up when it was “6 O’clock, or when the “bell next to their bed went off”.

Another group turned our leaf circle into “a firework rocket” they first collected fuel (water) and sprinkled it on the rocket, then they gathered into the circle, did a countdown, then blasted off. On arrival in space they soon saw aliens. They repeated the journey several times.

Some people spent time experimenting with our swing, getting “stuck” a lot. They used team work to get upright again.

All of these games were completely child led, they constantly chatted to one another, shared ideas and used past experiences to enrich their play. They all worked together really well, inviting others into their games. They were keen to share their ideas with the adults present.

At the end of the session we gathered around the leaf circle and took turns saying what we though we would find if we jumped into it, then took turns jumping. The circle became all kinds of things, ice cream, a whale pool, a firework ( a safe one), warm water.

Each child had an idea and had the confidence to share it with the group.
​
At the end of the session we huddled like penguins in the centre.

Dear parents and carers,

In our English lessons this week we have been finishing off the editing and revising of our wonderful "Glide" stories. I am really impressed with how carefully the children have worked and how much progress they've already made in their writing. Next term we're going to be working on a different story- Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce, as part of our Space topic work.

In maths this week we've been rounding off our work on statistics by looking at how to read and interpret tables. The children found using timetables difficult, so it would be fantastic if you can have a go at telling the time and thinking about duration (how long something lasts) at home. I know that people don't tend to use timetables as much these days, but if you can find any (like the Radio Times or even bus timetables) that would be brilliant. After half term we're going to be working on multiplication and division, including multiples, factors, prime numbers etc, as well as multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000.

​In science this week we've finished our work on Earth and Space. We carried out our first end of unit assessment, and the children did exceptionally well. Next half term we're going to be doing some work on living things and their habitats. 

I have set some spelling on Spelling Shed for half term, but other than that, there's no official homework. 

I hope that you all have a wonderful half term and that the children return refreshed for the run up to Christmas :)

Mrs B
Three things to ask your child this week:

1. How do you read a timetable?
2. What was the best thing about writing your Glide story?
3. What's the difference between orbiting and rotating?