Beech Tree Class Blog 2023-2024
Beech Tree Blog
Weekly Update-9/5/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, in our reading, we have continued to read our class novel (Stig of the Dump) and have focused on understanding the tricky vocabulary, using our scanning and retrieval skills to identify a range of similes and then focusing on using inference skills for a range of comprehension questions related to the third chapter of the book. We have also completed reading our third story time book of the year (The Secrets of Vesuvius) and the children really enjoyed it. The book was a sequel to our very first guided reading class novel of the year and the children chose it as our story time book because they enjoyed that first guided reading novel so much.
In our writing, the children have been writing their whole diary entry which has been written from the perspective of Om and they have completed their first draft.They have also used their purple pens to edit and improve the quality of it.
In PSHE, as part of our unit of work on Being My Best, the children were tasked with working out what could be wrong with Harold the Giraffe, who looked very unwell and was lying in his bed at home. The children came up with lots of great ideas about why he could be unwell and in bed. Once we discussed these ideas, we then had super discussion about what Harold could do to make sure that he keeps himself as healthy as possible. The children came up with ideas like: eating healthily and having a balanced diet, good amounts of sleep with a regular sleep routine, good amounts of daily exercise, taking medicine (only when necessary and the appropriate amount) and having good personal hygiene.
In our Fruit and Vegetables art unit lesson for this week, the children have been using a range of different skills to create their own mini clay sculptures based on real peppers in front of them. Although this was challenging for some children, it was great to see their resilience and the lovely pieces that they produced by the end of the lesson.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update-2/5/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, in our reading, we have continued to read our class novel (Stig of the Dump) and have focused on understanding the tricky vocabulary, our summarising skills and our retrieval and inference skills. It’s so lovely to see how much the children are enjoying it!
In our writing, we have focused on placing the events of Stone Age Boy in chronological order, writing in first person, past tense, using fronted adverbials effectively and creating powerful expanded noun phrases with prepositional phrases. The children have produced some super work which will really support them when they begin to write their diary entries.
In maths, we have come to the end of our unit of work on decimals this week. The children have been focusing on comparing decimals, ordering them, rounding them to the nearest whole and focusing on halves and quarters and converting them from fractions to decimals and vice versa. They have continued to work extremely hard, even during some of the more challenging lessons. It's great to see such resilience!
In computing, our unit of work this half term is focused on programming events and actions. This week, the lesson revolved around maze movement. The children learnt how to create their own maze, add their own sprites into the maze and then create the code to allow the sprite to move forwards going up, down, left and right in order to be able to navigate the sprite through the maze and to the other side. The children absolutely loved this and created some fantastic pieces of work! The children were also challenged with making parts of their mazes even more narrow and creating code that would allow them to reduce the size of their sprite in order to allow it to move through without touching the walls of the maze and then increase the size again when there was space to do so.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update-25/4/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, in our writing, we have read and discussed Stone Age Boy, which is the focus of our writing this half term. We have focused on understanding the range of feelings that the two main characters feel throughout different situations which involved some drama activities and also focused on using our five senses to describe different settings that appear throughout the story.
In our reading, we have also started our new class novel called Stig of the Dump. The children have made predictions about the story based on the front cover, we have discussed the meaning of challenging vocabulary as we have read through the first chapter and we have also focused on retrieval and inference work based on the first chapter. The children have really enjoyed it so far and they love the links to the Stone Age!
In science, we have started our new unit of work on Habitats. The first lesson focused on living things and their habitats, which prompted some fantastic class discussions, especially around the human impact for different living things and their habitats.
We also had some lovely book in a box pieces that were created based around their favourite books or book series, so well done to those children!
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou