Welcome to Chestnut's class page. Here, you can find out what we've been up to and what's coming up. We are very excited about the year ahead and we hope you enjoy looking at our wonderful work!
Useful information
PE
PE this term will be on a Thursday and Friday and it will be athletics. On Thursdays the session will be led by an external. Please could the children come in on these days in their PE kits on these days.
Home learning
Reading: Please listen to your child read at least 3 times a week. You can find ideas for comprehension questions to ask at home in the Reading resources section of the website.
We will continue to change reading books on Fridays.
Phonics/spelling: Please practise phase 3 and phase 5 phonics sounds at least 3 times a week, using the sounds to make words. Practise Year 1 or 2 common exception words Spelling resources
A weekly spelling assignment will be uploaded onto https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb
TTRS (numbots): Using Numbots and/or Timestable Rockstars at least 3 times a week. See Times table Rockstars Support
Mission: Choose one or more of the extra mission activities to do at home. Send in photos of your work onto Class Dojo that you would like to share with the class.
Items to bring in daily:
Water bottles, lunch boxes and appropriate outdoor clothing
Items to leave in school:
Wellies and pencil
Term 6
Our mission question: What did Brunel achieve?
Platinum Jubilee celebration 2022
We had a great time celebrating 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. We all made crowns and had jam and scones on the playground. What a treat!
Mission
This week we launched our mission "What did Brunel achieve?". We were very lucky to have a visit from Selina Hunter who is a civil engineer in Bristol. We were engineers for the day and we designed, tested and built our own bridges which needed to hold a 1kg weight. We had a great time testing our models and using some techniques to make our bridges stronger- using triangles, suspension and reinforced beams.
RE
We have been exploring the religion of Islam and looking at 'Who is Muslim and how do they live?'
We have enjoyed exploring what it means to be a Muslim and have looked closely at what the Qur'an means to a Muslim. We also created sets of instructions for others to read to help them and treat the holy book correctly.
School Trip- SS Great Britain
We had a fantastic trip to the SS Great Britain museum in Bristol. We learnt so much about the history of the incredible ship, who has travelled on the voyages and how it was built. We even had an opportunity to dress up in Victorian clothes. We had a great time viewing the ship from below in the dry dock and then going into the Brunel museum which is dedicated to the famous engineer ands all he has achieved. It really was a wow day for us all!
Mission/English
To finish our mission this term about Brunel we made and information sheet using videos and QR codes with lots of facts all about the bridges, ships and railways he made.
Den building day
Today we built our own dens for ourselves and our teddies. It was in aid of Childcare Primary school in Uganda to raise money for new toilets for them.
Term 5
Our mission question: What happens to our waste?
PE
We started the term with an athletics circuit where we had to work together to gain points for our team. The station were; throwing, hurdles, relay race, long jump and other active activities.
Theatre trip
The whole school went on a incredible trip to Cardiff in Wales where we watched Joseph and the technicoloured dream coat. We went up on 2 coaches and we had the best time! The show was bright and colourful and we will be singing the songs for week! Wow what an experience!
Science
This term our mission is "What happens to our waste?" and we have started off this week with looking at properties of materials. We have learnt lots of new vocabulary such as; permeable, transparent, opaque, flexible, brittle, fluorescent. We will then be looking at the importance of recycling and how we can make sure we recycle and reuse more at home and school.
Design Technology
This term we are linking our DT with our mission and making glove puppets using different joining techniques such as gluing, pinning and stapling. Our final piece will be a hand sewn glove puppet. We started by making a template of our hand and cutting out our two pieces of material.
Splash down
Using our glove puppets we created videos to teach people about "What happens to our waste?" and to help people know how we can help our environment. Remember to pick up your litter, reduce, reuse and recycle. We can also look after our planet by saving water and electricity which are extremely valuable resources we need to survive.
Fire day
Today was our must anticipated fire day. We built our own fires after collecting our sticks and using pine cones as tinder. We cooked bananas with chocolate inside, wrapped in foil. It got all gooey and delicious.
Term 4
Our mission question: What grows near us?
Mission
This term our mission is 'What grows near us?" where we will be looking at plants and trees in our school area. This week we have been identifying the different parts of a plant. Stem, leaves, roots and flower and their functions.
Computing
This term we are learning all about what a computer is and how we can control technology. We designed our own robot and thought about the inputs and outputs for each part of the robot. We then explored different simple robots we have in school- beebots and remote control cats and cars.
Art
This term we are looking at the artist Henri Matisse and how he "paints with scissors". The children have had great fun this week creating their own collages using only paper and scissors.
Mission
We have been very busy this term growing lots of different things in our garden and classroom. We have grown beans in a bag and watched them as they grew on our windows. We have also planted lots of wonderful flower in our garden for summer time.
Maths
In maths we have been looking at 2D and 3D shapes. We explored the different properties, identifying the number of edges, faces and vertices each shape has. We found this was much easier when making them our of straws and plasticine. We then found shapes around our own classroom and thought about other 3D shapes we see in everyday life.
Mission- Superbloom at the Tower of London
We have been chosen to be one of a few hundred schools across the country to create their own superbloom at their school. At the tower of London this summer they are created one large superbloom which will cover the entire moat surrounding the tower of London. This is to mark the historical event of the Queen's platinum jubilee. We have been very busy weeding and sorting out our spiritual garden and raised beds in order to plant our seeds.
Please visit the Superbloom website for more information on this project.
https://www.hrp.org.uk/schools/superbloom-schools/#gs.vpywd2
Computing
This week our brand new Ipads have arrived! We were so excited to use them. Year 6 visited our classroom and showed us how to use them. We even created our own videos and sent them to the class Ipad to see on the screen. We practised finding a website and using Timestable Rockstars/Numbots and spelling shed games. We cannot wait to start using them for our missions and across all areas of the curriculum.
Term 3
Our mission question: How is our school like Childcare Primary School?
Mission
We have started our mission off with a bang this term. "How is our school like Childcare Primary School?" where we are comparing our school and the UK with a school in a small village of Ndejje, Uganda. We are very lucky to have a link with Hosanna support group who support children from Kinseyni slum to attend Childcare Primary School. We are looking forward to finding our more information about the children and the different way of life.
RE
This term our RE question is "Who do Christians believed made the world?" We have been exploring our wonderful world by looking at all the things God has created in nature. We are very lucky to have our forest and field to explore nature.
Maths
In maths this term we have been focusing on multiplication and division. As a whole class we used cones and hoops to make equal groups. The children explored making equal groups using the different colours and sizes of the cones. We have been looking at making arrays in Year 2 using our stacking counters. This has been really fun as we have found they are repeated patterns.
Mission- Geography
This term we have been exploring maps and creating our own. We have used an online programme called Digimaps which allowed us to print off our own chosen maps and label landmarks and features. We also went on a walk around our local area.
Art
This term we have been exploring Ugandan art. We have been looking at the wonderful colours and patterns they have on all their fabrics. Our art skill this term has been printing where we have been using string to create our own stamp to create repeated patterns.
Dance
This term we have had a wonderful time practising some Ugandan dance, we even made our own outfits to help us with the famous Ugandan bottom wiggle.
English
In English we have been writing non-fiction writing. We have done our own research about African elephants using the computers and text books. We have written an information text.
Science week!
Wow! What a week we have had. 4 experiments in 4 days! We have been exploring forces.
1) How can we Change the shape of and object?
2) How does the steepness of a ramp affect how far something will roll?
2) What materials will float and sink?
Term 2
Our mission question: How do people keep in touch?
Mission
We started off our mission with a launch straight into different ways people used to communicate in the past. We pretended to be cave artists, human messengers, carrier pigeons and even the postman delivering letters. We are looking forward to finding out about how communication has changed over the past 100 years and how people keep in touch.
Fire service
We had a fantastic visit from the local fire brigade this week. We learnt all about how to stay safe if there is a fire at home. We also learnt about what to do if our clothing catches fire. Stop, drop and roll!
Design and technology
In D&T this week we have been looking at how wheels and axels work. We have been looking at fixed wheel axels where the axel freely rotates through a chassis. We were making sure our wheels are straight and fixed in place so our vehicle could move in a straight line.
We have designed a post trolley to deliver the Christmas cards to all the children in the school. We used axel holders to keep our axels in place. We are very excited to decorate them next week ready for Chestnut to be the Jolly postman across the school.
History
Today in Chestnut we were exploring the significant event of the invention of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. We really enjoyed looking at lots of different phones and comparing the modern mobile phone with the the old fashioned phones. We even had a go at making string and paper cup telephones. This was fantastic fun!
RE
This term in RE we have been looking at the 'Good news' that Jesus brings. So far we have found: "Jesus accepts us just as we are", "Jesus is friend to all", "Jesus forgives us for our mistakes so we must forgive others" and "God will always listen". We have been creating a floor book to show all the wonderful work we have been doing in RE.
Mission
This week just as we have been finishing our own post trolleys to use to deliver Christmas cards across the school, we had a visit from a local postman himself! We had so many questions for him and loved to have the chance to use an official Royal Mail post trolley. We then used inspiration from it to improve our own designs.
Term 1
Our mission question: What lives where?
Mission Launch
We have been busy finding out about lots of different animals and classifying them into groups (mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds). We went bug hunting and looking for different micro-habitats in our forest. We found that bugs and mini-beasts like to be in dark and damp places which are usually hidden under logs and under bushes. This was a great start to this term mission 'What lives where?'
Maths
This week we were exploring number bonds to 10 and 20 using Numicon and tens frames to help us. We were trying to find all the different pairs to make 10 and Year 2s challenged themselves to use the number bonds to help them work out the number bonds to 20. We worked very hard and enjoyed writing our answers onto the playground in chalk.
Art
This term we have been learning all about colour and how we can mix the 3 primary colours to make secondary colours. We created different shades by adding more paint of one primary colour. We have explored how artists use warm and cool colours in their work to create different moods and affects in heir paintings. We have also practised brush control and how to hold our brush in different ways to create different lines. Here is so of our work from the past 3 weeks.
Forest school
We spent a very muddy and wet afternoon in our garden. We were busy wedding and preparing our raised flower beds ready to plant some winter plants. We made 2 wonderful hedgehog houses for any local hedgehogs to use over the inter months. We though very carefully about the size and what leaves would give them a nice comfy bed. We also did some pond dipping. We also got very dirty when we harvested our school potatoes which were planted last year. Wow! We have been very busy today.
Wild Place Project trip
We visited Wild Place Project where we were able to see lots of animals in amazing habitats. We had a fantastic time and we all thoroughly enjoyed exploring this wonderful park. We couldn't believe we had the chance to see the new young lynxes which were only born in May this year.
