Beech Tree Class Blog
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Autumn 1 Week 4 24.09.26
Posted: Sep 24, 2026 by: Mr Dring (p.dring) on: Beech Tree Class Blog
Hello
This week we have fully immersed ourselves into the lives of ancient Roman gladiators as an inspiration for our character descriptions. This will lead to our first published piece of work of the new academic year and helps us to celebrate and assess each child's current writing abilities. We used some of our learning time to go outdoors to act out how a gladiator would move in an arena so that we could use more ambitious vocabulary such as marched, strode, charged rather than just 'walked into the arena'.
Our second week of swimming (following last week's assessment week by the leisure centre staff) has seen us undertake our first 45 minute pool sessions. The children thoroughly enjoyed it and the extra time in the pool helped us to see progress in the children's abilities already. As previously stated, the groupings of children are set by the leisure centre and are fluid so that they are continually assessed and moved according to their ability shown in the pool each week. We use the Leeds Swim Scheme to ensure that every child has the chance to succeed no matter what their starting points and also have the opportunity to be stretched and develop core swim safety skills where applicable. Thank you again for ensuring the children are arriving promptly and with kit ready for the local authority bus which leave at 9am on the dot!
In Maths, we have continued to explore the place value of numbers up to 10,000 which will helpd us when we start out + and - unit later in the term. In Reading, the children have really engaged well with the class novel 'Thieves of Ostia' and are enthusiastically joining in as we read along.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mr Dring and Miss Maher