Ashton Under Hill First School

Shaping Bright Futures Together


Oak Class Spring 2 Week 1

It has been great to be back to school this week and we have been straight back to work getting stuck in to our new themes and areas of learning.

In Maths we have moved away from the four rules and have started to learn about fractions. This week has been a refresher to remind us of what we (hopefully) know already and consolidating our previous learning before we move onto new learning.

The theme for our Topic and English are linked this half term, having a focus on children's lives during World War 2. We have started to read My Secret War Diary by Flossie Albright, written by Marcia Williams to learn the features and style of diary writing. This beautifully written and humerous diary has the most lovely illustrations and has really caught the imaginations of the children. We will be working towards producing a series of detailled diary entries about events the children have experienced. The gallery has some images of us annotating pages for this book in one of our lessons this week.

In our guided reading lessons we will look at a range of fiction and non fiction texts also written on this theme and the class library has a large range of books for the children to look at to widen their knowledge and understanding of life during this time. Our class reader is When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and follows the real life adventures of the author as a youngster at the start of WW2 when her family fled from Germany to safer havens.

In Computing we will be looking at Connecting Networks and learning all about the internet and other network functions to help us share information. 

Our DT project is focussing on levers as simple machines. We are making a toy with moving parts to learn more about how levers work. This week Year 5 did some research into what levers are and both Year 4 and 5 drew their designs. Next week Year 5 will first, make a prototype and then use this to make their actual product. I'm expecting some brilliant results based on the initial designs.

The first of two huge highlights of this week was on Thursday when Maddie and Leo represented us in Stourport at the County Cross Country competition. The fantastic Maddie won the race, finishing first out of all the competitors in her age group across the whole of Worcestershire. This is a massive achievement and we are extremely proud of her and we can't wait to find out how she does in the National round of the competition in Leicestershire in a couple of weeks time. GO MADDIE (aka CHAMP!!) Unfortunately, Leo had to retire from his race due to injury but he was showing excellent promise for a fabulous finish. Fingers crossed he is just as rapid next year and will show his talents off to the fullest.

The final highlight was when we celebrated World Book Day on Friday. The children looked AMAZING in their costumes commemorating the 25 year Anniversary of this event. We asked them to dress as characters from books over the past 25 years and they did not disappoint. Check out the gallery for some fabulous images of the wonderful Oak Class.

In RE on Friday we looked at how the Jewish sacred text, a Torah, is produced and made our own mini scrolls.

I look forward to meeting parents next week at Parent's Evening to discuss all the achievements of Oak Class and share targets to improve.

Please have a look at the updated Oak class page for more details of what we are studying this half term. 

Oak Class Page