Welcome to Whale Class! We are made up of 2 different year groups (Years 2 and 3). Whale Class are taught by Mrs Kidson and supported by Miss Morrison in the mornings.
The children take pride in the work that they produce and their knowledge and skills have developed rapidly over the course of the year. Whale Class work hard in all lessons and demonstrate our school’s Christian values such as patience, responsibility and perseverance to achieve their goals, both for themselves and their classmates. Being a mixed-age class, the children are a great support to each other, setting a wonderful example to the younger children and accommodating a range of learning types. The children love working collaboratively, using a hands on approach to learning and spending time outside. We enjoy making use of the wonderful school grounds in our learning. We are extremely fortunate to have a large classroom space that accommodates for all learning needs, ensuring pupils have a rich and varied education experience.
Autumn
Spring
Summer
As a mixed age class, comprised of 2 Key Stages (Year 2 and 3), we have spent a lot of time ensuring that our Classroom provides a suitable learning environment for children of all ages in Whale Class. Here are the children enjoying a range of activities linked to our whole class topic.
In our English lessons this term, we have linked our learning closely to our topic, ‘Dragons’
Linked to Talk for Writing, this term we will be focuing on a range of Literature:
– ‘The Dragonsitter’ by Josh Lacey
– ‘How to Train your Dragon’ by Cressida Cowell
– ‘The Boy Who Lived with Dragons’ by Andy Shepherd – A variety of non-fiction books
– Dragon poems
Whale Class have enjoyed their Maths lessons this term. We have been focusing on place value in class this term, exploring hundreds, tens and units. We have also been practicing counting in a variety of ways in preparation for expanding our knowledge of multiplication tables.
In Spring 1, Whale Class are exploring the topic ‘The Uses of Everyday Materials’. The children have started to carry out various experiments and investigations into which materials are best suited for a specific purpose.
Our Topic this term is ‘Beatrix Potter and Our Local Area’.
Through this topic, the children have had the chance to explore the geography and history of The Lake District and some of the famous people and characters who lived and were created here. They have explored the poetry of William Wordsworth, the life of Beatrix Potter, landmarks of The Lake District and we will even be taking an exciting trip to the Beatrix Potter attaction in Windemere during this term.
This term, Whale Class have enjoyed their swimming sessions. All of the children have been working hard to improve their swimming skills, whether this is learning to float, perfecting their arm or legwork or practicing a variety of swimming strokes.
In English this year, Whale Class have been using Talk For Writing as a new approach to learning their writing skills. The children have been really enjoying learning the story of ‘The Snail and the Whale’. As a part of this the children have learnt the story orally and using hand signs, they have created story maps and editted these to create their own original stories in the same style. They have produced some fantastic oral, written and drawn stories!
Each week, the children take part in a guided reading session. In our reading sessions we are using VIPERS to support our learning and understanding of the texts we use. Our text in the first half of Autumn Term has been ‘The Storm Whale’ and the children have been able to identify and use new vocabulary from the text and create some fantastic predictions from their reading.
Whale Class have been working very hard in Maths this year. So far, topics that we have studied have included Number and Place Value, Mental and Written methods for Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division, 3D and 2D Shape and their properties, Measure including height, weight and volume, Time, Money and Data.
The children always enjoy hands on activities in Maths and love learning outside. Take a look at some photos of our favourite Mathematical activities so far this year, which include:
Finding arrays around the school.
Practical Place Value
Creating tally charts using “would you rather…” sentences
Working collaboratively to complete loop cards using their doubling and halving skills.
