Monks Risborough CE Primary School
Spring 2 - How can we look after and respect all living things?
Welcome back, Robins!
This half term we will be focusing on our school value of Respect.
To help us answer the question How can we look after and respect all living things? we will investigate a range of minibeasts and the natural world around us. We will enjoy a range of fiction and non-fiction texts to further our learning across all areas of development. We can't wait to start exploring these creatures as we know they're of keen interest to many of the children!
Keep checking back here for photos of our learning.
Key Texts
Week 1: Lunar New Year
It's been wonderful to welcome back the children and hear about their half term adventures. We began the term by exploring Lunar New Year, which fell during the holidays, and shared the story of 'The Great Race' which tells of how the animals of the Zodiac were chosen. The children engaged whole-heartedly with the story and loved discussing the morality of some of the animals' routes to crossing the finish line! They were able to tell Mrs CC on Wednesday the animals' placing in the race, all the way up to 12th - what great retrieval!
We're very proud of how hard the children have been working in phonics and it's great to see lots of progress being made. Children were reassessed before half term and are relishing the challenges they're being met with in their new groups.
In maths we've continued taking a deep look at the composition of numbers between 5 and 10, thinking about how six is made of 5 and 1 more, seven is made of 5 and 2 more etc. We also introduced some 2D shape work and the children really impressed us with their knowledge of circles, triangles and squares. Some could even explain to us the difference between a square and a rectangle, describe which had curved sides rather than straight, and identify the number of sides and corners ('vertices') on each. Well done Robins!
In RE we have begun learning about the Easter story in order to answer the question 'Why do Christians put a cross in an Easter garden?' This week we read the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, which is celebrated on Palm Sunday. To deepen our understanding, we re-enacted the crowds' excitement at Jesus' arrival by waving imaginary palm leaves and saying 'Hallelujah!' as we heard in the story.
Way back in September, the children painted self portraits. This week we revisited self portraits with the children, using pens instead of paints this time, and it really is incredible to see the progress they've made since they started school in terms of self awareness, fine motor control, shape, space and colour. They are being displayed in the classroom along with a thumbnail of their previous portrait - do come and see these fantastic works of art at the next Book Look afternoon!