Maple Tree Class 

Welcome to Maple Tree Class! 

A warm welcome to parents and children from Maple Tree Class. Thank you for visiting our class page. Here you will find lots of information about the fun and exciting things we are learning about. And as we are always very busy, please do visit our page often to see all of our wonderful and exciting adventures.

*Maple Tree Class 2023-2024*

We had an amazing talent show. Everyone in Maple tree is very talented. Here are some of the performances. I apologise for the singing being so quiet. 

We had an amazing time at sports day. We showed great sportsmanship and skills. 

This week was also One World week. Our focus country was Canada, which is where our teacher is from. We learnt a lot about Canada as well as learning to sing the nation anthem. We were great at the English version but are still working on our French. Some of our favourite facts were about the tradition of kissing a cod in Newfoundland and that a one dollar coin is called a loonie.  We also had our classmates share about the countries they and their families are from. 

We've had a very busy week this weekend. It started with a history workshop. We got to participate in a dramatic reenactment of the Great Fire of London. We learnt alot about what happened and why it started. 

We started our new term with a trip to the zoo. We had a fantastic time seeing all the animals. Some of our favourites were the sloth, gorillas and butterflies. 

Over the past few weeks we have greatly enjoyed having the ducks with us. We watched them hatch from their eggs and become ducklings. We were truly amazed by how much they grew in a week going from an egg to swimming. We also enjoyed watching Mrs Wilton have to chase a duckling who escaped from the pool. While we're sad to see them go we know they'll have a great life back on the farm enjoying a much bigger pond. 

As part of our coronation celebration we had a surprise visit from the circus. We practised spinning plates, balancing feathers and tossing flower sticks. We had some real talents in our class. We also had an assembly to celebrate as a school. We sang our favourite coronation song. Our tea part was a little rained out but we still had fun inside. 

We have been working hard in our school garden the past few weeks getting it ready for planting. We planted peas, beans, courgettes and herbs. 

We have a had a great last day of term celebrating Easter. Our bonnets we amazing! Mrs Wilton is so impressed with all of our hard work. We also had a visit from a special visitor who brought us a treat. 

Thank you to all of the parents and carers who supported us this term. Have a great break!

We have had an amazing science week! Our class brought many interesting experiments. The volcanoes were popular but some pf us chose to explore magnets or capillary action. We also got to participate in a school wide building project. 

We recently celebrated World Book day. We had a fantastic time dressing up as our favourite story book characters. 

We were lucky enough to have a visit from a theatre company who presented us Wind in the Willows. We loved learning the songs and some of us got to do some acting in the show. 

As we come into the Lenten season we went down to the chapel to get our blessing and cross for Ash Wednesday. We also spent some time coming up with promises for Lent.  

This year for Number Day we wore our best number themed clothes. We were very happy to show them off. We also had a maths scavenger hunt. We used our maths skills to figure out clues. We also sang one of our favourite songs about 2 times tables.

We started off bird watch week by going on a garden walk to count the birds that visit our garden. We also got to see the bird food we made in action, attracting lots of local birds to our garden. We got to practice our maths skills by making tallies to count. Later in the week we were visited by Falconry UK who should us some of their amazing birds and told us a bit about them. Our favourites were the owls. 

For our class Assembly we focused on the Catholic social teaching, Option for the Poor. We used our mascot Poppy the Popokotea to help us learn more. We challenge you all to think of ways you could help those in need this Lenten season. 

Welcome to the new term! We have been starting a new unit of study in science looking at materials. We made tents to test different materials to see which is best suited to the job. 

We have been very busy the past few weeks getting ready for Christmas. We have had Christmas jumper day, a visit from Santa and a class party. All of these was a great reward for all our hard work on our carol concert.

This week we went on a trip to Lambeth Palace to experience the travelling crib. We got to speak to people from different parts of the nativity story. We even got souvenirs from each speaker. 

We have been starting a new unit in science all about materials. This week we have been classifying materials to see which is best suited to make a tent. We will be using this information to test out different materials on tents to see which is best. 

This week we travelled back to Victorian times. We got to role play as servants in Queen Victoria's household. We played games to practice our skills and learned how to properly greet a King, Queen or princess and prince. 

As part of antibully week we celebrated Odd Sock Day. We talked about bullying and what we can do about it. We also celebrated the differences that we each have.

This week we have been learning about geckos. We wrote some great facts about them. We can't wait to use all we have learnt to write our leaflets next week. 

Today we had an assembly for Remembrance day. We had a special guest come to visit. Mr Barry who spoke to us about his time in service. We asked many questions about his experience and about the animals he worked with in the army.  

We celebrated All Saints' with an assembly discussing what a saint is and what they did. We also studied St Bernadette.

We had a great first day back from half term. We enjoyed welcoming our parents to see our Halloween costume parade. 

We have been very busy this Black history month. It started off with an amazing story telling performance from Adrian. He also led us in a drama workshop where we got to work on tableau's. Our teacher was amazed at what great actors we were. We also got to research a Commonwealth country, Guyana. We put or learning together to create a poster.   

We have been working on number bonds to 20. Some of our class mates have challenged themselves to find them all. We also learned that addition is commutative. 

We have had a busy day for World Mental Health Day. We started by discussing what to do when we had feelings that didn't make us feel good. We got to do lots of art and we got a cooking lesson. We got to make flapjacks!

As part of our study of continents in Geography we looked at the human and physical features of each continent. 

We have been reading the Gigantic Turnip. Today we acted out the story. We have some amazing actors in our class!

Harvesting

We finally get to harvest everything we planted in our garden in Year 1. We got to harvest tomatoes and carrots. The children also learned about which vegetables to pick and which to compost.

Today we role played as sunflowers. Our class got to pretend to be sunflowers to learn about the different verbs and adverbs we could use to talk about a sunflower. 

We have been exploring habitats. Today we went to observe micro habitats in our school garden. The children found many microhabitats under rocks and in tree logs. 

As part of our exploration of the continents and oceans we practiced some map making. We made maps of our school using items found in our classroom. 

End of Maple Tree Class 2021-2022

Summer II

Dear Maple Tree,

Thank you all for such a wonderful year. It has been an absolute pleasure to teach each and every one of you. I wish you all the best in year 3 and in the rest of you learning journeys. I am going to miss you all.

Mr Kelly-Weekes 

Year 2 Leaver's Mass

Thank you to all the children for such a wonderful mass. If you would like to watch clips from the mass please clink on the link below. 

Maths Week

We had a really fun time celebrating Maths week. We had the chance to visit St Mary Magdalenes to play some amazing Maths games designed by the children in Year 3 - 6. We also investigated the question: How old is the oldest tree in our school?

We discovered that the Chestnut Tree is the oldest. Its over 200 years old! 

Insect Week

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON- STORY TELLING WORKSHOP

Today, we were taken back to 1666 when we met Mrs Wellbake, cook to Mr Samuel Pepys.

We heard her first hand account of the Great Fire of London and she tried very hard to ensure that this tragedy would never happen again.

With the help of the audience, using artefacts, props and costume, she and the children re-enacted the drama of the fire and helped to plan a fire-free future for the city of London.

While engaging with this fascinating historical episode, the children had lots of fun and were fired with enthusiasm to learn even more about this significant event in our history.

Spring ll

We all enjoyed this magical performance of

The Sword in the Stone and learned such an important lesson that we can all succeed if we are

 honest, brave and kind!

Spring l 

We had so much fun celebrating the World Book Day!

Children made book marks, wrote book reviews, visited the library and enjoyed reading books.

Our author was Road Dahl.  In class, we have been reading the Witches and we took part in an amazing workshop acting out the story of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'.

But we have been also looking at different fairy tales and discussing the language, settings and characters.

Bird Watch Week: Projects 

Bird Watch: Falconry UK 

The Tin Forest Letters: 

Maths: Multiplication and Division 

The Tin Forest

In English we have been reading the story of the Tin Forest. The Tin Forest is a beautiful story about a man who creates a forest out of scrap materials and in turn his forest is blessed with life. To celebrate this wonderful story and to bring our learning to life we created our very own Tin Forest. 

Science

In science we have been exploring materials and what materials have the best features for a variety of different uses. We have been experiment with what materials would make the best tent. 

Autumn ll

Letter to Father Christmas

We were very excited to write our letters to Father Christmas. We had lots of questions to ask him in our letter - How old are you? How many elves do you have? How do you travel around the world just in one night?

We also spent some time reflecting on the year, telling Father Christmas our achievements and things to improve... things that we promise to work on in the new year!

We wish all our friends, family and school teachers a very happy Christmas and the happiest New Year!

The Polar Express - Letter

We had the best time this week! We read the story of The Polar Express and we also watched the film. It was such a magical day - we were on our cozy pyjamas drinking hot cocoa and watching such a Christmassy movie!

We wrote letters to our parents retelling them our magical experience in the Polar Express.

Giant African Snails: Writing a leaflet

By taking care of our school pets- The Giant African Land Snails, we learn more about them. We wrote an information text to teach others about these fascinating creatures.

Maths

At the end of the half term we have been looking at money. We reviewed the names of the coins and notes that we learned in Year 1, and we learned how to add and subtract pounds and pennies. We also learned a key concept: change - when we pay more than what we need, we get the difference in return and we call that change!

In order to understand the importance of money, we played a bartering game pretending we were living in London hundreds years ago when people had to trade objects. The game that helped us understand how lucky we are to use money now for transactions.

We have also been working on addition and subtraction! We have used our place value skills to help us solve problems using both one digit and two digit numbers. As this term progresses will be developing a wide range of strategies including using number lines, partitioning, tens frames and as always concrete resources to support out learning and problem solving skills

Odd Socks Day

We wore Odd socks into school to spread awareness about Anti bullying. This was part of our anti bullying week in school where we discussed the importance of being kind to one another. The odd socks helped us to identify that we should celebrate our differences and always remember to be kind to one another. 

Science and Gardening:

In science we have been learning all about Food Chains. Food chains show us how energy is transferred when one animal eats another! We have drawn our own food chains as well as acted them out! 

Clever Never Goes

We had a visit from our local community support officers who spoke to us all about staying safe.  We learnt that CLEVER, NEVER, GOES!

Autumn l

PSHE 

During PSHE this half-term, we have been learning about a variety of ideas that explore our feelings and opinions on a range of topics. Some examples include how to reduce the spread of germs, the importance of rules in the classroom, incorporating Learning Behaviours and special visits. We have had an eventful first half term, please take a look at what we have done to get a real taste of our learning

Religious Education

Beginning with God

We have been learning about the story of Moses and the Burning Bush. We made links between our own experience and metaphors for God in the Bible. By looking at our school garden and the world around us, we learned how to be grateful for God’s wonderful creation and God’s presence in our lives.

 We explained the Trinity using the sign of the Cross.

Maths

Place Value

This term in Maths we have been learning about Place Value. Place Value, as the name suggests, is all about recognising the value of numbers! 

For example in the number 34 we can see that it is made up of 3 tens and 4 ones.

The children have spent time representing both two digit and three digit numbers using a variety of different concrete resources including Numicon, blocks and dienes.

Gardening

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Summer Term

R.E.

School Grotto 

Our school grotto is being restored and we were all invited to collect a stone from the grotto. We decorated the stone in class with words and images that help us to reflect on Mary.

We also came to school dressed up as one of the Holy Family, a saint, or as a character from the Bible. 

We enjoyed learning about Islam, the Muslim religion. We learnt how they worship Allah and Miss Kermanipour shared some Islamic traditions with us in class.

We celebrated One World Week.

Each class represented a different country. We all enjoyed learning about the countries and shared our learning with a big display in the hall. We also learnt new dances from each country and we wore clothes from our home countries.

As part of our celebration of the Year of St Joseph, we came to school dressed up as our dads, granddads or favourite male role model to celebrate Father's Day

PSHE

We had some Zoom sessions with Harold the Giraffe. He told us all about our feelings and staying safe with our friends.

Dressing Up

We have had may fun days when we have come to school dressed up to celebrate creativity.

Maths

We have been learning how to tell the time. We used our knowledge of fractions to help us!

In maths  we have been using our knowledge of multiplication and division to help us understand and identify fractions.

Science

Our science topic this term has been Animals Including Humans . We explored the life cycles of humans, how we grow and how to stay healthy by eating a balanced diet. We did an investigation to see if the bigger the body part you had, the older you are. We measured the size of heads and shoe sizes of children and  teachers.

Spring Term 

Gardening

During our spring gardening lessons we planted seeds and counted the animals we found in our garden. We also spent time learning to identify all the different flowers on our school garden.

Autumn II

Gardening

This half term in gardening we investigated materials and their properties so we could make a winter shelter. We also looked at the best way to plant bulbs and seeds.