Beech Class, Week 2, Spring 2, by Miss Hampton

Date: 4th Mar 2025 @ 1:54pm

This week in Beech class began with Year 2 children visiting the library and Year 1 children having lots of fun making pancakes and other craft activities.

We have all continued to work hard in our lessons and we have started a new topic in history which is also linked to our learning in English - Castles! In history we will be focusing on the monarchs over time and the castles they lived in.

In maths we have continued our unit of work on fractions - finding a half and a quarter and equivalences. In English we have looked at how to use exclamation marks and spell suffixes correctly within a 'castles' focus.

In computing lessons we have looked at how to stay safe online when using websites (are they 'right' or 'wrong' to be on) and what to do if we don't feel ok when using the internet. The children thought of many ways to keep themselves safe and who their trusted adults are to tell if needed.

The 'In to Win' prize was enjoyed by the blue team on Tuesday where they had a pancake race and got to eat some too!

We also had a whole school party because of our wonderful attendance last week - we had so much fun with dancing and pass the parcel! Beech attendance was so good last week that we also gained some kid's choice to enjoy this week.

Friday was our day to celebrate World Book Day and the children thoroughly enjoyed dressing up as either their favourite book character or in their pyjamas for a 'bedtime read'.

This week's VIP was awarded to Jan for their great attitude to learning in reading. Well done!

Beech Class, Week 1, Spring 2, 28.02.25, by Miss Hampton

Date: 25th Feb 2025 @ 10:56am

Our first week back after the half term break has been busy but lots of fun in Beech Class.

In English we have started looking at 'Castles'. We have explored the different features of them and their uses. We also have had fun acting out the jobs people did years ago in castles. We have been working hard with our handwriting and spelling too and making sure we use these skills in our other lessons.

In maths we have started a new topic - Fractions. We have looked at 'equal' and 'unequal' parts and the importance of this with fractions. We have investigated finding a half and a quarter of a shape or an amount and we will be continuing this topic next week too.

We have explored healthy lifestyles during our PSHE lessons this week with Mr Carroll. We have looked at how to eat a balanced diet, personal hygiene, sun safety, internet safety and how to keep our bodies healthy.

In PE this half term we will be focussing upon skills to use in invasion games and gymnastics - developing balances and rolls.

Computing lessons this week have been lots of fun creating algorithms to move characters on screen using Code Studio. 

VIP was 'Writing Champions' this week and was awarded to Teona and Archie for showing good application of spelling in their writing. 

Beech Week 6 - 10.02.25, by Miss Hampton

Date: 11th Feb 2025 @ 12:29pm

It has been our final week of the half term and the children have maintained their hard work in class. We have had lots of fun in our lessons....!

In English we have been writing instructions and we started the week off by following some to make a jam sandwich! We had to read the order carefully so that we made it correctly. Some brilliant writing was produced at the end of the week. The first week back for VIP is writing champions so we will see who has been standing out with their amazing work.

We finished our unit of work in music and created our own group musical composition to represent an animal. The children created a musical score and worked together to follow it using their chosen instrument. We had some brilliant musical pieces!

We saw lots of creativity this week in our art lessons. They were linked to our English book 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' and we explored lines and colour when drawing our tigers. We used charcoal, crayons, pastels and paints to add colour to our art pieces.

In maths we have continued to explore the properties of 3D shape. We went on a shape hunt around the classroom and could identify how many faces, edges and vertices a shape had.

This week we also had Internet Safety Day where we started the day with an exciting whole school assembly led by Mr Pattinson. Back in class we explored how to stay safe on the internet further. We looked at how we can recognise if something is a 'scam' online and who to report it to if we see this. All our children could tell us who their trusted adults are in different environments - school, home, at clubs etc.

Coach Olivia's Star of Week in PE was Jan for showing great racquet skills...well done!

VIP this week was awarded for art and our winner in Beech Class was Aurora for experimenting with different materials to create patterns to resemble tiger fur. Well done!

Have a brilliant and also restful half term everyone. I look forward to seeing you for our next half term together!

Beech Week 5 03.02.25, by Miss Hampton

Date: 3rd Feb 2025 @ 2:42pm

This week has been Children's Mental Health week in school. In Beech class we started the week by thinking about knowing ourselves with an activity about our 'islands of personalities' - what makes us special and what our passions are.

Break the rules was lots of fun and we saw some excellent 'rule breaks'... tattoos, coloured hair and lots of cuddly toys brought into school! We also thought about how love ourselves and use many different strategies to support our mental health such as mindfulness colouring, yoga, drawing or doing our favourite activity.

In maths we have continued our shape topic. We completed an investigation using straws to see which 2D shapes we could make thinking about the properties of each one carefully. We also looked at symmetry in 2D shapes and started to investigate the properties of 3D shapes too. 

In English we completed a beautiful piece of writing in our Star Write books about the lion from The Tiger who came to Tea and described him in detail. The children tried so hard with this and produced some work to be very proud of!

This week we enjoyed our new topic in our music lessons which was focused upon the classical piece of music, The Carnival of the Animals which was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1835. The children listened carefully to each section of the music and identified which instruments were used and which animal the section represented. We had lots of fun drawing which one we thought it was.

We completed our geography field work this week by going for a walk around our local area. We had to spot human and physical features and the children are now secure with the difference between the two geographical terms. We also got to wear our brand new high-visibility jackets that were recently donated by our local Specsavers in St Helens. A big thank you to them!

VIP this week was awarded to everyone in Beech Class for their wonderful contributions to our mental health work in school.

Next week is Art Week in Beech Class and we will be exploring drawing tigers linking this to our book The Tiger Who Came to Tea. 

Beech Class Week 4, 27.01.25, by Miss Hampton

Date: 27th Jan 2025 @ 12:28pm

This week has been assessment week in school and the children in Beech class have all put lots of effort into their work.

In maths we have completed our topic of division and now we have moved on to 'Shape'. We have been shape spotters...spotting all the 2D shapes we could find in our classroom - it was lots of fun!

We have continued our topic of cities, towns and villages in geography lessons. We compared two maps of Carr Mill and St Helens town centre and we noticed the differences between them. We also thought carefully about 'what affects where people live'. We looked at some characters who lived in either a city, town or village and their reasons why they would want to live there. 

Our computing lessons have focused on taking photos and editing them this week which the children have found interesting. They have used the 'crop', 'effects' and 'filter' tools to experiment with their chosen image. 

In English we have looked at how to describe the tiger (from the Tiger Who Came to Tea book) and used noun phrases in our sentences. We have also put lots of effort into our handwriting once again. Lots of children are using what they have learnt in their practice sessions in their other work books too! Well done!

In PE we have continued with our ball skills with Miss Hampton and our racquet skills with Coach Olivia. The stars of the week were Teona and Piper. Well done girls!

Our VIP winner this week was Isaac for showing great skills when finding human and physical features on a map of London in geography. Well done!

Next week is Mental Health Week in school so we will be completing some activities in class about this. We will also be going on a walk around our local area for our fieldwork in geography and spotting human and physical features.

Beech Class: Week 3 (20.01.25), by Miss Hampton

Date: 22nd Jan 2025 @ 10:17am

This week in Beech Class we have started to explore a new book in English lessons - The Tiger Who Came to Tea. We have explored the character's feelings and played a drama game 'conscience alley' to voice our opinions about what Sophie should do at a particular point in the story.

In maths we have started exploring division and we have used practical apparatus to create groups when sharing. We started looking at equal / unequal groups then moved on to grouping in equal groups of a certain amount.

In computing we have been looking at photo editing which has been lots of fun! We have also started a new topic in geography - cities, towns and villages. We have recapped the countries in the UK and their capital cities. We then discussed what a city is and the human and physical features you would find there. The children looked at satelite maps of the UK and the world when exploring populations and where most people live. Then we learnt about our capital city - London - and all the human and physical features that we could find there including some very famous landmarks!

On Wednesday, we had an exciting visit from a young child author. Max has 2 sisters with autism and has written 2 books that have been published. He took questions from the class and they found the session really interesting!

Coach Olivia's star of the week was Brandon G for his great participation in his racquet skills lesson. Well done!

Our VIP winner this week was Dexter for showing great enthusiasm and answering lots of questions in science lessons about habitats and homes. Well done!

Next week in school is assessment week. This is an oppportunity for the children to really show off what they have learnt so far this year!

Beech Class, Week 2 (13.01.25), by Miss Hampton

Date: 14th Jan 2025 @ 12:09pm

This week in Beech class we have had lots of fun in our maths lessons. It was Maths Through Stories Week at #teamcarrmill and the book we were focusing upon was 'How Many Jellybeans? We used our estimating to guess how many jellybeans were in the jar. We all had a really good guess and the person with the closest guess won the jar to take home!! 

Our winner was Olivia K! Well done!

In English lessons we continued to use the book The River to inpsire our recount that we wrote on Thursday.

Coach Olivia continued racquet skills in her PE lesson and the Star of the Day this week was Freddy! Well done!

We have continued with our Habitats topic in science exploring woodland and ocean habitats this week.

In computing lessons we have learnt about sharing only safe images in the online world and we watched 'Jessie and Friends' cartoon from the Think U Know website. We also developed our coding skills and used an application called Box Island which was lots of fun! 

Thank you to all those children who entered the maths competition to design a new front cover for a maths story book. There were some fabulous entries!

Our VIP for maths this week was awarded to Frankie for showing great enthusiasm in all maths lessons...well done!

A final big well done for our attendance in class last week. We were the class with the best attendance and we gained some Kid's Choice! Let's see if we can do that again next week.

First Week Back Beech, by Miss Hampton

Date: 9th Jan 2025 @ 9:58am

What a brilliant start to 2025 we have made in Beech Class!

We have started our new topic about mulitplication and division in maths looking at equal and unequal groups and the 2 and 10 times tables.

English lessons have been focussed upon our new text The River. The children have enjoyed exploring the interesting images in the book and thinking about what they would be able to see, hear and touch in the rainforest. They have also enjoyed retelling this 'circular' story in groups.

In science we have started our new topics of habitats and homes and despite the weather we have been looking for microhabitats around our school. We had lots of fun doing this and represented the data we found in a pictogram. 

Coach Olivia continued racquet skills in her PE lesson and the Star of the Day this week was Alistair! Well done!

We can't wait for Maths Through Stories Week next week! Look out for our competition on Seesaw.