Rufford Park Primary School and Nursery

Weekly Update-6/9/24

Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to Rufford Park and welcome to our weekly class blog where we will share the learning we have undertaken in class. It will be updated every Friday each week of term. What a fantastic start to the year! It has been lovely getting to know the children this week. They have settled in really well and I have been extremely impressed with how positive and enthusiastic they have all been whilst settling into our new classroom and routines. I have had such an enjoyable start to each day because the children have welcomed me every day with such happy beaming smiles despite potentially underlying start of term nerves.

We are very excited to share that we have been able to organise a visit to Murton Park this half term to support us with our new topic about the Celts and Roman Britain. Further details regarding the trip have been shared via ParentPay.

In reading, the children have been learning about the importance of reading and how it can support their learning. We have focused on on the different reading skills that we will be using throughout the year, which are represented in the form of dogs e.g Inference Iggy and Predicting Pip. Our class novel, which is related to our topic this term, is called The Thieves of Ostia by Caroline Lawrence, and the children have already made some great predictions about what it might be about just based on what they could see on the front cover. We have also chosen our story time book, which is The Hundred Mile An Hour Dog by Jeremy Strong, and the children have been really enjoying that so far. The children have also made their own lovely bookmarks and created their own book monster. The book monsters will form a lovely display in the corridor out side the Beech Tree classroom.

In our writing, we have started by focusing on handwriting (specifically focusing on size, formation and joins) and we have also been focusing on using capital letters and full stops correctly in sentences, as well as using commas for lists correctly as well.

In maths, we have started working on place value, understanding what it is, how to identify the value of each digit in a number and also show the value of each digit in a number in a variety of different ways. The children have shown great mathematical knowledge and shown a really positive attitude to their learning. 

I am here to support both your child and you, so if you have any questions, or are unsure of information we send out, please just let me or the office know (at the class door, via the Beech Tree email address beech@ruffordparkprimary.org.uk or via the Office telephone).

Take care,

Mr Kyriacou :)

Weekly Update-19/7/24

Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog

Hello everyone,

This week, in English, the children have been focusing on performance poetry. They focused on intonation, varying the pace, using different volumes and actions during their performance. The children focused on multiple poems by Bruce Lansky and Jack Ouseby. The children really enjoyed taking on the roles of different characters, especially with a grandma who could rap.

In reading, we have just completed our story time book as well (Kensuke's Kingdom) and the children absolutely loved it!

In maths, we completed out work on position and direction this week, which the children did very well with. We then took the opportunity to do some revision in the form of an outdoor lesson based on previous units that had been taught. The children were tasked with identifying different items around the playground and on the bottom MUGA which had right angles, parallel lines, acute or obtuse angles. The children really enjoyed it and were able to show off their knowledge about what they had been taught previously.

In art, the children have been finishing off their death masks, which they have spent the last few weeks creating using papier-mache. They then attached the snake and beard to their masks before painting them. The final pieces look fantastic and the children should be very proud of them.

The children also presented their Egyptian homework projects this week and we invited parents to come and see them all on Friday afternoon. It was lovely to see what they had produced.

Take care,

Mr Kyriacou :)

Weekly Update-12/7/24

Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog

Hello everyone, 

In maths, we have been focusing on statistics this week. We have been looking at pictograms, bar charts and line graphs, interpreting and analysing the information, and asking questions about the data being presented. We also collected data together as a class which revolved around the favourite foods of children in the class. After collecting the data, the children presented it in the form of a bar chart, labelled it all and then asked and answered questions about the data being presented. Well done!

In reading, we have completed our class novel (The Cat Mummy) and this week we generated ideas about what a possible tenth chapter would be about, where it would be set, which characters would appear in it and whether there would be any sort of time gap. The ideas that the children came up with were lovely and then they titled it and wrote a summary all about it. We also did a really fun activity which involved the children ranking all of the class novels we have read this year, from favourite to least favourite, with a reason about why they have ranked it in that position and a lovely image associated with that book to go with it. We had lots of different opinions for the ranking order and good reasoning to go with those opinions. Well done!

In science, we are continuing our unit of work on magnets. This week, the children have been experimenting with how powerful different types of magnets are and also testing out different materials to identify whether they are or aren't magnetic. It really surprised the children to learn that not all metals are magnetic e.g aluminium. It was lovely to see the children working well together in their pairs and using good scientific vocabulary to explain their findings.

Take care,

Mr Kyriacou :)