What a wonderful start to the academic year! The Hive came back after the summer holidays ready and raring to go and have done a super job settling back into Ab Kettleby life.

It’s been a busy half term with so much going on. We started off by reviewing our Behaviour Boost and finding our feet. We reminded ourselves of the school rules, setting boundaries and expectations for ourselves. We looked at democracy within our British Values and considered the importance of ‘our voice’. We were excited to vote and elect our new School Council, along with our Head Boy and Head Girl. They have hit the ground running, joining meetings and making plans for the year ahead.

In English, we have really enjoyed reading our class text of ‘Charlie and The Chocolate Factory’, which has been incredibly inspiring! We came up with our very own setting made of delicious treats and after drawing/designing what this would look like, created a wonderful piece of descriptive writing! We were proud of the ideas, skills and vocabulary we were able to include.

The children have demonstrated some excellent values in maths so far this term. We have explored place value and worked with up to 6-digit numbers in ordering, comparing, and rounding! We moved onto some addition and subtraction problems where our skills were really put to the test! I am so impressed with how eager the children are to learn and the resilience they have shown during challenge.

It has been wonderful discovering the Mediterranean within our Big Question this half term – ‘What makes Spain so spectacular?’. The children were able to reflect on past travels and link the knowledge they had already to that of other children in the class. We expanded on previous learning and located the areas in Europe that have a Mediterranean climate, and where such biomes can be found. We moved on to look at the environmental challenges that Spain faces and looked at how we can update others to help. We decided to make informative posters to educate those around us.

Science has been a lot of fun these past few weeks as we have been finding out more about living things and their habitats. The class went on a fact hunt and taught each other new information to use when classifying and grouping plants and animals. We made cross curricular links to geography here as we looked at areas of the world where living things are becoming endangered. We used computing lessons to present research into a chosen living thing and the risks our world has upon their habitats and lives.

French, music and sports have been additional areas of enjoyment where we have pushed our skills to the limits! We have loved our Friday afternoon visits from Mrs Grimes who delivers our French lessons. This will continue into next half term where our language will further develop. We are also on a roll with Mr Rigugiato who is currently teaching us how to play the cornet.

We have worked hard to position our mouths correctly to form the perfect sound and have begun to practice songs! For many of us, PE is a favourite and we have not held back! Mrs Sporty Brown has been preparing us well by taking part in the 2K run each week. Children have been continuing to beat previous times and demonstrating a great sporting attitude when cheering each other on!

What a brilliant start to the year. We can’t wait to see what more is to come! 😊