Welcome to Kingfishers class page!

Kingfishers have made a great start to the Summer term, with excellent learning behaviours and attitude towards studying and representing themselves across the school – well done!

PE will be on Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons.

Forest School on Wednesdays (currently half class rotation)

Our topic for the first half term will be Oxford:

Our topic for this term is a local study based on Oxford castle.

We be exploring the castle’s history, from its beginnings as a motte and bailey castle built by William the Conqueror, through its use after the English Civil War as a prison, and up to modern times as a hotel and social venue. We will be map-reading, investigating Oxfords architecture and visiting the Castle itself.

Our topic for this half-term is World War 2.

We will be researching why the war began, how it affected ordinary people in the UK, and how it changed working life for women. We'll also study the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the Allies and the Axis, and the holocaust. We have a trip planned to the Milestones Museum in Basingstoke on the 29th June, where we will look at some of the important jobs during the Blitz and how rationing affected how we shopped.

WW2 Trip to Milestones, Basingstoke

Kingfishers spent the day at Milestones Museum, learning about the blackout, rationing and nursing in World War 2 - with some dressing up too!

Writing

Our latest writing topic is 'Biographies', and as a class we will work together to study its features, investigate a WAGOLL and also create a biography using the features and language discussed. This will be followed by everyone writing a biography of a person of their choice.

Following this, we will look at diary entries, including some of those by Anne Frank, and will write our own in the guise of an evacuated child during World War 2.

In reading, we have begun our new book 'Malamander' by Thomas Taylor. This is set in the coastal town on Eerie-on-Sea, which changes from ice-cream and deckchairs in the summer, to stormy, misty and strange in the winter months. There is also the small matter of the legendary Malamander, a half-man half-fish creature, who may or may not have been seen lurking by the pier. The class will continue to develop their skills in answering ‘VIPERS’ comprehension questions.

Maths

In maths, we are currently working on properties of shape, including types of and the measuring of angles.  We also continue to practice the skills we learned in previous terms such as multiplication and division. After properties of shape we will be looking at co-ordinates and also units of measurement. In addition to this, we practice arithmetic skills each day (mental maths), along with continually revisiting previous learning. Kingfishers are also encouraged to continue with the very popular Timestable Rockstars at home. Please contact the office if login details are required.

Rio is our class mascot, and has a certain role to play in class each day.

Rio will sit on the desk of a pupil who has passed their secret mission the day before…..

What is this secret mission? Each day, we secretly choose, at random, a child to demonstrate the focus of the day (e.g. participating, working hard, listening well etc). The class will be unaware of who has been chosen and so will all focus on achieving this target. If they pass their mission, the mystery student will be revealed! However, if they do not pass, their identity will remain anonymous, and as a class we will reflect on improvements we can make for the next day.

Art

Kingfishers’ art from last term, working on Ancient Greek pots with stories, will be exhibited at Cornerstone, Didcot during July – well done for all your hard work! We will also be visiting St Helen and St Katherine school during June to see our work and that from other schools in the area. This term we will be studying 'St Paul's Survives', an iconic photograph from World War 2, and creating our own version of this. We will also look at food packaging from the era and recreating these in our own style.

Finally, we will study LS Lowry and his paintings from the middle part of the 20th Century.

Here are our topics for other areas of the curriculum:

Science – Living things and their habitats

Computing – Music programming (Scratch)

RE - Sikhism 

PSHE – Changing Me

PE – Cricket (Wednesday) Frisbee (Thursday)

Music – Musical Theatre

Forest School – Working on FS skills (Wednesday)

Kingfishers continue to work hard at their learning. We are very proud of their efforts and look forward to this continuing as the term progresses.

Mr Wooster and Mrs Jacobs