The Huntspill Primary Academies

Welcome to Willow Class

Willow class is made up of 29 children in year 2 and year 3. Miss Smith is our Teacher and Miss Barton is our TA. Miss Prowse/Miss Gibbons work as 1:1 TAs.

We love and have a positive attitude to our learning and always try our best and work hard.

This term our big question is 'How has electricity improved our live?’ The mini enquiry questions we will be answering are: What do you know about electricity? How can we use electricity? How do you make a circuit? What is important about shadows? How do we conserve energy? What if we cut off all the power? What game can you make using sound/light and electricity? This learning enquiry is Science based, so we have no Geography or History focus this term.

We will be learning how to make simple circuits using wires, bulbs, buzzers, switches and cells (batteries) and how they work. We will be identifying common appliances that run on electricity and discussing how the work. We will also learn about conductors and insulators. We will also be learning about light, how light is reflected, different light sources, how to protect our eyes and how shadows are made. (Find out more on our How do cities grow? knowledge organiser and curriculum overview at the bottom of the page)

English

Writing

For Writing, we use The Write Stuff scheme, I know many of you are already familiar with this. For those who are not, the lessons are split into experience days, which provide children with a stimulus for their writing followed by sentence stacking lessons where we use lens to create a vocabulary vault, which children use for their writing. The lens come from the writing rainbow which has a Fantastic tier (feeling, asking, noticing, touch, action, smell, taste, imagining and checking for sounds), a Grammeristic tier (grammar devices such as punctuation, adjectives, nouns, tense etc) and a Boomtastic tier which includes other devices we can use in our writing i.e. onomatopoeia, repetition etc. We do not use all lens every lesson (6 at the most). Once we have done all the sentence stacking lessons children do an independent piece of writing.

Our first unit is a poetry unit 'Desk Diddler based on the poem 'Bathroom fiddler' by Michael Rosen . Our second unit is a narrative unit based on the book 'Incredible book eating boy'. Our final unit this term is non-fiction (instructions) based on the book 'My Strong Mind'.

Reading

In Reading, children who have not completed the Read, Write Inc (RWI) programme will continue to have daily lessons, which will consist of speed sounds, reading, spelling words using Fred fingers and hold a sentence. Children will then read a RWI story which will involve learning story green words from the book and red words (these are tricky words that cannot be sounded out) and speedy green words. Children will work with partners to take it in turns to read the story and on the final day will have questions to answer about what they have read. This year we will be teaching RWI in sole colour groups across KS1 (Ash and Willow) i.e. a pink group, a blue group etc.

All children will be doing whole class reading for a whole hour twice a week. Each lesson we will all have the same text and will be focusing on one of the six comprehension skills - making sense of what has been read, activating prior knowledge (what we already know that may help us to understand the text), word consciousness (understanding new vocabulary and meanings), predicting (what might happen based on what we already know or have read so far), summarising (main ideas from a paragraph/sequencing the story) and visualising (using pictures with new vocab or using illustrations from the story to gain meaning about the text). We will also focus on our reading fluency by listening to modelled reading by me (Miss Smith), choral reading (reading together as a class), echo reading and paired reading. The first text we are reading is 'Too small Tola'. The second text we are reading this term is 'The boy who harnessed the wind'.

Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation (SPAG)

We are following the Spelling Shed scheme. Children who have finished RWI scheme will have daily SPAG lessons with 20 mins focusing on spelling and handwriting and 20 mins focusing on grammar and punctuation.

Maths

In Maths our units this term are Division, Fractions and measurement we will be learning:

Year 2-

Division

recall and use multiplication and division facts for the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication tables, including recognising odd and even numbers
calculate mathematical statements for multiplication and division within the multiplication tables and write them using the multiplication (×), division (÷) and equals (=) signs
show that multiplication of 2 numbers can be done in any order (commutative) and division of 1 number by another cannot
solve problems involving multiplication and division, using materials, arrays, repeated addition, mental methods, and multiplication and division facts, including problems in contexts

Fractions

recognise, find, name and write fractions 1/2, 1/4 and 1/3 of a length, shape, set of objects or quantity
write simple fractions, for example 1/2 of 6 = 3 and recognise the equivalence of 1/2 and 2/4

Measurement

choose and use appropriate standard units to estimate and measure length/height in any direction (m/cm); mass (kg/g); temperature (°C); capacity (litres/ml) to the nearest appropriate unit, using rulers, scales, thermometers and measuring vessels
compare and order lengths, mass, volume/capacity and record the results using >, < and =
recognise and use symbols for pounds (£) and pence (p); combine amounts to make a particular value
find different combinations of coins that equal the same amounts of money
solve simple problems in a practical context involving addition and subtraction of money of the same unit, including giving change
compare and sequence intervals of time
tell and write the time to five minutes, including quarter past/to the hour and draw the hands on a clock face to show these times
know the number of minutes in an hour and the number of hours in a day

Year 3-

Division

recall and use multiplication and division facts for the 3, 4 and 8 multiplication tables

write and calculate mathematical statements for multiplication and division using the multiplication tables that they know, including for two-digit numbers times one-digit numbers, using mental and progressing to formal written methods
solve problems, including missing number problems, involving multiplication and division, including positive integer scaling problems and correspondence problems in which n objects are connected to m objects

Fractions

count up and down in tenths; recognise that tenths arise from dividing an object into 10 equal parts and in dividing one-digit numbers or quantities by 10
recognise, find and write fractions of a discrete set of objects: unit fractions and non-unit fractions with small denominators
recognise and use fractions as numbers: unit fractions and non-unit fractions with small denominators
recognise and show, using diagrams, equivalent fractions with small denominators
add and subtract fractions with the same denominator within one whole [for example, 2/5 + 3/5 = 1 ]
compare and order unit fractions, and fractions with the same denominators
solve problems that involve all of the above

Measurement

Measure, compare, add and subtract lengths (mm,cm and m), Mass (kg and g) and Capacity (L and ml)
Measure the perimeter of 2D shapes

add and subtract amounts of money to give change, using both £ and p in practical contexts
tell and write the time from an analogue clock, including using Roman numerals from I to XII, and 12-hour and 24-hour clocks
estimate and read time with increasing accuracy to the nearest minute; record and compare time in terms of seconds, minutes and hours; use vocabulary such as o’clock, am/pm, morning, afternoon, noon and midnight
know the number of seconds in a minute and the number of days in each month, year and leap year
compare durations of events [for example, to calculate the time taken by particular events or tasks

Our PE days are on Tuesday & Wednesday each week. On Tuesdays TKASA will lead a sport lesson and on Thursdays I will teach REAL PE.

Click here for Willow Class Curriculum

Our Classroom