Elephants

Welcome to Elephants

The Elephants class is taught by Mrs Townsend, and supported by Mrs Austen. We are a mixed age class of Reception and Year 1 pupils.

Our topic is this term is

'What's it like to live in Africa?'

Throughout this term we will be completing our topic work which will culminate in our class assembly.

We will be exploring and contrasting destinations in the UK (specifically the Lake District) with areas in Kenya (such as the Maasai Mara). We will be learning to use geographical vocabulary to describe the physical and human features of these places. Children in Reception will be looking particularly at animals which live in Africa and learning more information about the ones that interest them the most. This will be related to our work in Science, in which we will be looking at the classification of animals according to their characteristics.

English & Literacy

We will start this half term by practising speaking and listening skills and preparing to perform for our class assembly. 

After that, we will explore the features of non-chronological reports. We will use Talk for Writing skills to learn the structure of a simple version. When we are confident, we will change some elements of the text to create our own innovations. After that, children will create their own reports in the form of an information text about visiting Africa.

Plan for this Half Term

General information

On Monday afternoons, Mrs Butterworth takes the children to the forest area for outdoor learning! Children will need to bring wellies, suitable over-trousers/all-in-one suit, a warm coat, scarf, gloves and winter/summer hat as necessary because they will be going out in all weathers. 

This term, Reception will do P.E. on Wednesday afternoon. Y1 will do P.E. with Miss Kinver on a Thursday afternoon. Children will need their kit (shorts/tracksuit bottoms, t-shirt and plimsolls) in school at all times, as we may take other opportunities to do P.E. activities at other times too. 

All children in Elephants are timetabled to go for library time on Tuesday afternoon. They have the opportunity to choose any library book to take home and enjoy. Please ensure your child's library book is returned to the red box in the cloakroom on the morning of their library day.

Homework

At the beginning of each half term, all children will be given a homework grid. It is expected that everyone will complete at least ONE activity from the grid. Written work should be presented neatly in homework books, using pencils for writing. Creative work can be presented in any way of your choosing, but we would still like a record of it in your book (either by way of a photograph or drawing). Homework will be discussed periodically, but it will not be necessary to bring in the work until the date on the sheet. 

We will also send spellings home weekly; these will either be a collection of tricky words or words which follow a pattern (usually related to spellings of a sound learnt in phonics). Spellings will usually be tested on Wednesday morning. It is expected that children will get three spellings correct; if not, they will be asked to learn them again and be retested at a later date.

Times tables

Alongside our daily maths sessions, Year 1 children will be beginning to learn their times tables. We will start with the two times table. This will be in the form of chanting whilst following written multiplication number sentences: 

1x2=2 ("one lot of two is two")

2x2=4 ("two lots of two are four")

...

12x2=24 ("twelve lots of two are twenty-four")

 Keep up the hard work!