Birch Class 2024 - 2025

WELCOME TO BIRCH

Mrs Savage is the class teacher

Mrs Feast is our teaching assistant, with Mrs Metcalf on a Friday

Miss Daniels teaches on a Wednesday and Mrs Turner on a Monday afternoon

Mr Parrish teaches PE on a Thursday morning

Follow us on Twitter @WhitegateBirch

In Birch class, the children begin to develop their independence as they grow academically, socially and personally. The children grow in wisdom by building on their previous knowledge through our exciting topics and areas of learning. There will be many opportunities for them to shine through assemblies, worships, practical learning opportunities, trips and experiences over the course of the year. Our current topic is...

Our theme of ‘Fascinating Flight’ will see us investigate the history of flight and how this has taken us into space. Our history lessons will look at some significant explorers and different ways are travelling including, Ibn Battuta, The Wright Brothers and Neil Armstrong. We will be comparing and contrasting historical evidence and asking the question, ‘Are all explorers male?’ Our DT project will develop the skills of construction and focus on wheels and axles. This will support the children in creating a moon buggy, fit for space exploration. 

In Geography, we will continue to develop our place knowledge of continents and countries. We will also recap our knowledge of compass points. The children will use their mathematical skills of position and direction to support this. Science lessons will look at the topic of 'Animals including humans'. This unit takes children through lessons where they learn how to notice that animals, including humans, have offspring, which grow into adults. They find out about and describe the basic needs for survival (water, food and air) and finally they learn how to describe the importance for humans of exercise, eating the right amounts of different types of food, and hygiene. This will also support their learning in PE lessons and PSHE. We will also be exploring habitats and food chains.

In art, we will be continuing to use painting but in free and expressive ways. We will be looking at contemporary and abstract artists such as Marela Zacarias and Van Gogh. In music, we will be learning the recorder! The children will learn the importance of taking care of an instrument, practising and perseverance. They will learn some simple tunes and compose some of their own melodic patterns using the notes they learn to play. 

Our Religious Education focus will be on exploring Jesus; why he was a friend to everyone and the symbols linked to Easter. In PSHE we will continue to look at the topics of relationships and focus on wellbeing and the differences between boys and girls, male and female. Our No Outsiders text explores what it means to feel proud. 

Computing will continue to look at internet safety. Finally, we will be publishing some of our writing using simple programmes on the laptops; developing the children's typing skills and use of Microsoft programmes.

English and Maths

In English lessons we are focusing on writing in a range of genres including story writing, instruction writing and poetry. We will be continuing to extend our sentences using a wider range of sentence openers and conjunctions and include lots of new and exciting vocabulary. The children will be developing their editing skills through proofreading, revising and peer editing.    

Maths will focus on completing our unit of work on addition and subtraction and move onto money and multiplication and division. We will also have a focus on position and direction through our geography work.

Reading continues plays a fundamental part in all areas of the curriculum. We have our reading display ready to be filled with the many, high quality texts we will be immersed in this term. We will be reading a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books including poetry, within our English, guided reading and topic sessions, as well as our end of the day class read. We have a spotlight author who has been chosen for their high-quality texts. We will have to opportunity to listen to, read and learn more about these fantastic authors.

Brian Moses is our next spotlight author. He is an amazing poet and will help us to write our own poetry. Having this literacy-rich environment will encourage a positive culture of reading within our class and promote the children's enjoyment of reading. 

Homework

Homework will be set each Friday and will be due in the following Thursday. Please ensure the children's homework books are returned on a Thursday so they can be marked and the children's new homework added. Homework will consist of a personalised spelling list in their books taken from the common exception words for year 1 and year 2, followed by words linked to year 2 spelling patterns. Homework will also contain a link to their maths tasks on Education City. Please also encourage your child to access the Numbots programme, which really helps to support their basic skills in addition and subtraction.   

Please ensure your child reads at home at least 4 times per week.  In Birch, we expect the children to be reading aloud to someone at home and for this to be recorded in their Home – School contact books.  

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch. 

Mrs Savage 

Below is an example timetable. Please note this is subject to change. Spring term 1 PE is on a Thursday and Friday