Ferrari Class – Autumn Term 1, 2023

Week Ending 15 September

Welcome back! September 2023

We have had wonderful start to the school year in Ferrari Class. It has been lovely to see how quickly we are working together as a new class. We would like to say a big welcome to Alex and Scarlett who have joined us this year. The Year 2 children have set a wonderful example to the new Year 1 children, helping them to settle quickly by being kind, caring and helpful. Mrs Connell and I are very proud of all the children in Ferrari.

Our topic this term is ‘Childhood’. This project is history based and teaches children about everyday life and families today, including comparisons with childhood in the 1950s, using artefacts and a range of different sources. Alongside this driver topic we have companion projects which are linked to the main project. They are Everyday Materials and Human Senses (Science), Mix it! and Funny Face (Art), Our Wonderful World (Geography) and Shade and Shelter (DT). To launch our topic, we looked at vocabulary words related to the passing of time. We challenged the children to talk with a partner to compose their own sentences using these words. They then shared and compared the sentences by saying them aloud. Following this activity, the children were asked to think and act like history detectives when a variety of old toys appeared in the classroom. They compared old and new toys – thinking about the materials the toys were made of, measuring the size of the toys using a ruler and what type of toy it was. The children enjoyed playing with the old toys with the marbles and yo – yo being real favourites!

In English, we have started exploring our new English text called ‘How do you feel? by Patrick George. This book is a colourful picture book to help children express their feelings. The 27 different emotions are illustrated showing children in silhouette with a balloon. On each spread the balloon takes centre-stage portraying the emotion through its colour, size or shape. The children have enjoyed discussing and writing sentences about their emotions and played Emotions Charades which was great fun! All children have started their RWI reading books and visited our class library to choose a book to take home for the week. Spelling, phonics and handwriting are now part of our daily routine.

We are number wizards! The children in Ferrari have made a great start with our new maths topic ‘Place Value’. The children in Year 1 are focusing on numbers within 10 but are proving to be able to go beyond that amount when completing the challenges. The Year 2 children have been focusing on tens and ones and partitioning numbers to 100. They have used a variety of maths apparatus to complete the challenges and have done a super job in answering the problem solving and reasoning questions.

Every Friday, Mrs Pollington teaches Ferrari and this term she will be focusing on music, computing and RE.

The children have enjoyed exploring our indoor and outdoor learning areas, where they work independently on creative, construction and role play activities. We have enjoyed seeing how the children have worked and played together, sharing the learning resources in a kind and respectful way.

What a wonderful start to the year. Well done Ferrari!