Newsletters
- Weekly Newsletter - 8th February 2019 15th February 2019
- Weekly Newsletter - 15th February 2019 15th February 2019
- Weekly Newsletter - 25th January 2019 25th January 2019
Welcome to Beech Class
2018 - 2019
We are a year 3/4 class of 30 boys and girls. Our classroom is lovely and the newest in the school. We have lovely teachers too! Miss Cox is our class teacher and our support teachers are Mrs Nicklin and Mrs Robarts.
This Autumn term we are learning about 'The Mayans' and our focus in science is 'Animals including Humans'. We shall also be using a resource called 'HeartSmart' in PSHE lessons which will help our resilience. In English we are reading the book 'Giant' by Kate Scott and 'Rain Player' by D Wisniewski as well as reading some of 'The Mystery at the Maya Ruins' by C Marsh .We look forward to sharing our work with you over the coming year.
Spring Term 2019
In Beech Class this term we shall be having a geography topic-based theme, learning about 'Europe' ; Purely coincidence re Brexit ! The children will be using digital and good old-fashioned resources - globe and atlases - to find out about Europe's position globally, as well as climates, trade, currency, languages and landscapes/land-uses.
This term we are also increasing our mathematical knowledge and understanding by further developing place value, arithmetic, shape and measure, fractions and increasing our understanding of time and statistics - graphs!
In English we are reading a book called 'The Secret Lake' and will be finding out about stories and poems from different European countries.
In Science this first half of term, we are learning about 'States of Matter' and the second half of the term, about; 'Rocks and fossils'. In RE the focus is from 'Understanding Christianity' and looking at 'People of God'. PSHE is via 'HeartSmart' - 'Too much selfie isn't healthy!'
In PE the children are developing their skills in orienteering and will also be doing 'Dance' focus.
So lots to learn and enjoy over the coming weeks.
We had a visit from an author today (11th January) who is from America. Sue Ann Rawlin loves to write and loves to travel, so she combined the two and wrote a book about all the friends she meets on her travels. The book is entitled 'Novel Friends'.
Although written for adults, the children were excited to find out where she has travelled to and why she started to write. After 'Susie', as she like being known as, had finished explaining about how important it is to follow your dreams and ambitions, the children asked her many questions. Her book is available in audio, video, online and on paper. Listening to how many hours of editing and preparation for each form of media, made the children appreciate the whole process of publishing too.
Today, Friday December 14th 2018, Beech Class gave an amazing performance in their Class Collective Worship of:
'All Around the World.' Everyone had a part to recite and the 8 songs were sung wonderfully well. Within half an hour they had taken us to India, China, America, Hawaii, Africa and Spain!
Here are some photos of the occasion for you to enjoy and re-live.
There is also a video of the performance - please go to the video section in the 'Children' drop-down list to view this.
Beech Class Making Science!
On a gorgeous sunny, autumnal November day 2018, Year 3 and 4 had a lovely trip to Baylab Pharmaceuticals in Reading. They got the chance to be scientists for a day - wearing the obligatory white coat - and learnt how to make bath bombs and lip balm!
The following photos reveal the science, as well as the excitement involved, in creating a product which the children were able to take home; complete with personalised choices of smells and colours.
Today, September 7th 2018, the sun was shining and so Miss Cox decided to take her class outside for some fun maths activities. These activities included having to work together carefully in order to organise each other into specific categories. We all worked really well together and it made a lovely change from doing maths in our books!
Organising ourselves into height order Organising ourselves into height order
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Organising ourselves to show colour of eyes graphically - Longest line blue, shortest mixed colour eyes |
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Boys organising themselves into height order Girls organising themselves |
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We are a fantastic class of 14 Year 3 and 18 Year 4 children. We have settled in well to our new class and are enjoying our new topic of The Stone Age to The Iron Age. Today we have been creating Stone Age style pictures and in our writing, we have begun to write an adventure cave story. This links in with our class book which is 'Stig of the Dump'.
Spellings really can be fun!
A new year and a new approach towards learning our spellings! Today the whole school had a fun spelling day.
Beech Class were looking at 'Contraction Words' and had fun doing a variety of activities to help remember them. They sang about the 5 vowels which the apostrophes replace and managed 3 different rhythms simultaneously - cool !
They did some lovely finger painting, made some model contraction words out of clay, created words as stain-glass window affects, came up with some crazy mnemonics to help remember the words, and, had fun with a quick quiz!
All -in-all, a great time was enjoyed by all...even by Miss Cox and Mrs Nicklin!
Beech Class have been learning about Christianity this half term and have been looking at the concept of 'Holy'. What it means and what they recognise as a Holy image or symbol. Binsted is a Church of England School and so we were lucky to have a guest speaker who is a practising Catholic. This was extremely interesting for the children who find it difficult to comprehend that we are all Christians, despite following either Church of England or Catholic religion. Mr Taylor was faced with many questions from the children and he was able to help unravel any confusions that had arisen. Some questions:
Do Catholics speak different languages?
Do Catholics eat any special foods?
Do Catholics go to different churches?
Do they have vicars?
Do they follow Jesus?
Do they wear special clothes?
Many thanks to Mr Taylor for enlightening us all.
There are times when we all need to reflect and evaluate what we are doing and how things are going. Being resilient is not always easy but by developing skills which enable us all to keep going and always do our best are what make us the unique individuals we grow into.
Mindfulness is a great way of focusing the mind and de-cluttering helping re-energise our positivity.
It's good to talk Believe in yourself There's always a way out
https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/mindfulness-for-children-kids-activities/