In English, the children have started work on their own stories, based on our class book, 'Meerkat Mail'. They'll be using the skills they've learnt during the last couple of weeks, but in a fun twist, we decided to write about a squirrel who lives in Ashton woods.  We've been very impressed with what we've seen of their writing so far. 

In maths, Year 1s have been counting on to find one more and counting back to find one less. Year 2s have been exploring some tricky concepts this week - flexible partitioning and writing numbers in expanded form. However, they've stuck with it and these skills lay good foundations for the maths that's to come as the year progresses.

We looked into the reasons why Florence Nightingale decided to take the brave step of travelling to the Crimea to help wounded soldiers in this week's topic lesson and next week, we'll be finding out how much of a difference she made. Our display of 'Florences' in the style of Paul Klee is now complete and very impressive it is, too! We love seeing all the different, individual interpretations of the original concept.

Our Computing lessons this term are all about the technology around us, specifically computing systems and networks. The children very much enjoyed a scavenger hunt around the classroom, in which they had to identify as many items of technology as possible - using the definition of technology as it's broadest, as anything made by man to help us.

We continued our work on materials in Science and this week investigated magnets and magnetic materials.  The children had great fun using the magnets to see what was magnetic and they then found that they could add more things on to a magnetic "chain".

Finally, we were lucky enough to have a visit from the Dog's Trust and the children learned about how to be kind to dogs and give them space when they need it, for example when they are eating or sleeping.  It was a very interesting session and the children were beautifully behaved.