Old Sodbury Church Of England Primary

Welcome to Chestnut's class page. Here, you can find out what we've been up to and what's coming up. We are very excited about the year ahead and we hope you enjoy looking at our wonderful work! 

Useful information

PE

PE this term will be on a Monday and Friday and it will be cricket (taught by Liam). Please could the children come in on these days in their PE kits on these days. 

Home learning

Reading: Please listen to your child read at least 3 times a week. You can find ideas for comprehension questions to ask at home in the Reading resources section of the website. 

Reading books are changed on Thursdays. 

Phonics/spelling: Please practise phase 3 and phase 5 phonics sounds at least 3 times a week, using the sounds to make words. Practise Year 1 or 2 common exception words Spelling resources

(Year 2 only) A weekly spelling assignment will be uploaded (starting on Term 3) onto https://www.spellingshed.com/en-gb 

TTRS (Numbots): Using Numbots (Year 1/Year 2) and/or Timestable Rockstars (Year 2 only) at least 3 times a week. See Times table Rockstars Support 

Mission: Choose one or more of the extra mission tasks set on Class dojo to complete at home. Send in photos of your work onto Class Dojo that you would like to share with the class. 

Items to bring in daily:

Water bottles, lunch boxes and appropriate outdoor clothing

Items to leave in school:

Wellies, painting shirt and waterproof clothing.

Term 6

Mission question: What happens to our waste?

Mission

We started our mission by sorting different types of materials into groups. We looked at their properties and what they are used for. 

Maths 

We have been using balancing scales to measure the weight of different items and then comparing capacity and volume using water. We could also get down to eye level and measure the volume of water in each tub using the scale of the edge. 

PE

This term we have been learning about rounders and cricket. We have been learning about being on different teams- what to do as a fielder and what to do as a batter. Today we played a full game of cricket on the field. 

English 

We have researched and written our own information text about our a chosen animal. We used formal language for our facts. 

Art

We researched and learnt about the artist Wassily Kandinsky. We used pastels and practices using our fingers to smudge and create blended patterns. We created our own pieces with a choice of coloured pencils and pastels. 

Fire day!

We had an amazing afternoon building our own fires and learning all about fire safety. We then cooked our own s'mores on our fires and cooked chocolate bananas in foil on the fire. We had so much fun, even though we got rained on. We were having too much fun to worr!

Term 5

Mission question: What did Brunel achieve?

Mission 

We have launched our mission "What did Brunel achieve?". Today we explored "What is an engineer?". We had a special visit from a water engineer who told us all about what she does and helped us design and make our own bridges. Engineers create, explore and solve problems so we challenged ourselves to think like an engineer. 

English 

This term in English we are reading 'The Wilderness' by Steve McCarthy. It is about a little boy called Oktober who is afraid of nature until he meets the Wilderness and realises all the amazing things in nature. We will be writing a narrative and a letter. Our focus is using adjectives to expanded our sentences and using subordination (wheb, if, because) to make our sentences more exciting. 

RE

In term 5 and 6 we are answering the question "Who is Muslim and how do they live?". Today we looked at the 99 name of Allah. We then made our own prayer beads using 4 beads to represent ourselves. 

Mission

We visited the SS Great Britain in Bristol. We learnt so many new things about Brunel. Did you know he can draw a perfect circle? Did you know he was the first person to ever design a screw propeller for a ship? 

Design Technology 

We designed, made and evaluated a glove puppet. We explored different sewing and joining techniques. We absolutely loved making out puppets and were very proud of them. 

Term 4 

Mission question: What grows near us?

Science Week

This week has been science week for the whole school. In Chestnut we have been looking at forces. We did 5 experiments 

1) How can we change the shape of materials?

Can you bend it? Can you stretch it? Can you twist it? Can you squash it?

2) What materials float and what sinks?

3) How does the steepness of a ramp affect how far the car will go?

4) How can we make the rocket mouse go further?

5) How could we move our teddy from one place to another?

RE

In RE this term we are answering the question "What does it mean to be part of a faith community?". We talked about the different communities we are all part of and then created a crest or badge for our family thinking about what is important to our families. We wore the proudly!

Mission

We have been learning all about pollinators in our mission 'What grows near us?' and we had a very exciting bee day where we learnt all about honeybees. We learnt all about how they are very important and how they collect nectar and spread pollen. We also got to try some honey from a local bee farm.

World Book day!

What an amazing day! Full of house competitions and fabulous fancy dress!

Art 

This term we have been learning about collage, looking at Henri Matisse and how he 'paints with scissors'. We have looked at using positive and negative space and complementary colours to add different effects to our work. 

Term 3

Mission question: How is our school similar to Childcare Primary School? 

Computing

This term we are looking at data and different ways to collect and record our data using graphs and charts. Today we had a go at representing data on whiteboards using pictograms. 

Mission

We launched our new mission this week- "How is our school like Childcare Primary school?". We will be exploring the continent of African and looking at Uganda where Childcare Primary is. 

This week we started to look at human and physical features around our school before we explore maps next week. 

English

This term we are reading the book 'Noa and the little elephant' written by Michael Foreman and supported by a Ugandan ranger who has made it his life's work to protect elephants from poaching. We will be writing our own stories about an animal from Uganda in a similar style to our class book. 

Art

This term in art we have been looking at Ugandan art. They use lots of repeated patterns inspired by nature and the traditional colours (black, yellow and red). Our focus is printing using both poster and acrylic paint. We had created repeated patterns on paper and will be printing our final piece on material to create Uganda skirts for perform in our class assembly next term. 

Maths 

This term we have started multiplication with Year 1s looking at grouping and creating arrays. 12 = 2 groups of 6 or 6 groups of 2. The Year 2s having begun using the multiplication symbol and using repeated addition. 4 x 3 or 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12. They will be introduced to Timestable Rockstars to start over half term.

RE

In RE this term we have been answering the question "Who do Christians think made the world?". This week we were looking at what and who we are thankful for. We have written prayers and thank you cards to give to someone to say Thank You. 

English 

We have been researching African elephants to write our own information text. We found out these animals are the largest land mammal in the world and the heaviest ever elephant was found to be 400 kg!

Term 2

Mission question:

1) What does the poppy mean?

2) How has communication changed?

Maths 

We have been learning all about the part-part whole model to help us with our addition and subtraction. We have been writing all 8 calculations from our whole part model: 4 addition and 4 subtraction. 

Mission- What does a poppy mean?

In our 2 week mini mission we looked at Remembrance day and the history behind the 11th November. We researched facts about the poppy and the meaning behind it. We wrote our own poems and made our own poppies. We finished our mission with a class assembly to the school and their parents. We had a great time learning all about the poppy. 

We visited the war memorial at our local church. We looked at the names of all the local soldiers that died in the war. We found out it is a listed building which means its protected and very important to the local community. 

Splashdown- our class assembly

Mission

We launched our second mission "How has communication changed?'. We will be using timelines to compare how different forms of communication has changed over time within living memory (100 years). 

Term 1

Mission Question: What lives where?

English 

Our class book this term is The Bog Baby and we have loved making our own bog baby and writing a story about it. We used our imaginations to create our own and we think they are so cute!

Mission

We had a fantastic trip to the Bristol Zoo project to learn more about the different animals groups; fish, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds. We had so much fun and saw so many different animals. We even found out what they eat and could identify which were carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. 

English and Mission

We have been researching different animals and find out about their habitats. We also found lots of really interesting facts about them all. We worked really hard on our writing and to use the correct capital letters and full stops. 

Art 

In Art we have been inspired by Alma Thomas to recreate our own paintings. We have explored colour mixing with poster paints to create our end designs.