BIRCH 2024 - 2025

Hello and welcome to our class page for: 

Birch Class - Spring Term 2025

Claire is the class teacher in Birch, along with Caitlin and Molly, who are our Teaching Assistants.                                              

Special Breakfast happens each week on a Friday where we give our certificates to our Rights Respecting Superstars and find out which Duty bearers have earned an extra special mention too. During Special Breakfast, we all sit in the hall and celebrate in the achievements of others whilst eating a range of foods including pancakes, waffles, toast, eggs, fruit and yogurts.

We do offer a healthy breakfast each morning when the children arrive to get them settled and ready for the day ahead. During this session the children complete Early Bird activities and undertake reading and computer based tasks.

Each morning we have a phonics session to build upon individual's knowledge of sounds in order to enable them to be fluent readers. We follow the Little Wandle phonics scheme. Children are in different phonics groups, according to the sounds that they are working on.

Please try and read with your child regularly either online using Renaissance or using a reading book if you have requested one to be sent home. If you would like your child's log in details for Renaissance then please do pop me a message and I will send this out to you. I can also share the login details for Numbots if your child would like to play this at home.

HOME & REMOTE LEARNING:

Pupils have been given their login details to access our school learning apps at home. Please contact your class team if you need the log in details to be re-sent.

• My Maths – https://www.mymaths.co.uk
• Purple Mash – https://www.purplemash.com/sch/bridgeleapupilre
• Numbots – https://play.numbots.com/#/account/school-login-type? 
• Renaissance - https://login.renaissance.com/12d2c6fd-4cae-4a7f-a67b-31ae958a9006?state=1380400c-381c-43d6-bbab-16bb1193d0d0 

To view any of the wonderful work that we have done in Class Birch, please refer to your child’s Class Dojo Class Story and Portfolio where you will find news, pictures and information about what they have achieved and how we have celebrated their achievements.
https://www.classdojo.com/

In the second half of the Spring term we will be focussing on:                                                                                                     

• ENGLISH: We will be focusing on the story and characters from Lost in the Toy Museum. We will be using the strategies from Talk for Writing to enhance writing, bring writing to life and to enable all learners to see themselves as writer. We will immerse the children into the text by showing them a range of toys, old and new, and take them on an interactive tour of a museum.
• We will be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday 6th March 2025. Parents are invited in to school to work with their children in the afternoon. See Class Dojo for further information.
• We will continue to have daily phonics lessons and we aim to listen to the children read at least three times a week.
• In all our written work, we will be trying to apply the phonics that we learn.
• MATHS: We are focussing on number, number names, knowing quantities, ordering numbers, using the vocabulary related to more/less, one to one correspondence, odd and even numbers, and sharing equally and in identify and representing numbers with Numicon. We will also be looking at 2D and 3D shapes, using language of sides, edges, faces, corners and vertices. We will also be looking at a range of measures to compare size and mass.
• Playing on Numbots at home will help with this. 
• PSHE : We will focusing on the rights of the children, using Zones of Regulation to express feelings and emotions and developing relationships with everyone on our class. We will be using the iMatters curriculum units around Keeping Safe this half term.
• Language and Communication: We will be using Talk Boost to enhance our language and communication offer.
• Skills Builder: We are working on speaking and listening under the communication strand to develop effective communication and build relationships. We are also looking at Staying Positive as part of Manchester's Slills For Life strand of Self-Belief. Within this, we will build upon team work, learn new games, create our own games and devise rules for others to follow.
• Emma, our art teacher, will be with us again on the 24th March to spend a day painting and printing with us.
• In geography, we will be comparing hot and cold places. We will look at maps, build upon our prior knowledge of locating and naming the continents by identifying the equator and learning about climates and then we will compare the UK to Kenya.
• In Science, we will continue to focus on materials and their properties.

We continually strive to promotoe positve behaviour and will continue to give Dojo points, celebratory certificates and our weekly prize draw. Please feel free to message any of the team on Class Dojo.