Westonzoyland Primary School ‘Achieving, Learning and Growing Together’
Kestrel – Mrs Gardner (Year 2)
Welcome to Kestrel Class!
This page is designed to give you an overview of life in Kestrel class. Please check in for information, updates, ways to support your child's learning at home and, most importantly, pictures of your children enjoying their time at school!
You can contact the Kestrel teaching team via our class email address (414.Kestrel@educ.somerset.gov.uk) at any time and we will reply to you at the earliest opportunity. This is especially important in the current climate when communication on the playground is more limited.
PE
We currently have PE on a Tuesday, with additional short exercise sessions each day. Please could all children wear their PE kit to school on a Tuesday. Could all clothing please be clearly named to avoid anything getting lost.
Homework
Children will come home with a homework book on a Wednesday, with tasks to embed learning over previous weeks. Please could this be completed and returned by the following Monday.
Children are expected to read at least 3-5 times at home during the week. To encourage children, a reward system has been set up in class for those who read 5 times within a week. Please write in the name of the book and pages read in your child’s reading log. We will be collecting these in every Monday to monitor reading of the previous week. Reading ability has such an impact on all other areas of learning, so it is vital that children have plenty of opportunities to practice. Listening to you read a range of different stories is also really beneficial to them.
Outdoor Learning
Our outdoor learning session is on a Monday afternoon. Children will have the freedom to explore all of the muddiest areas, so please could they have old shoes or wellies for these sessions. Please also ensure that your child has a coat in school.
Kestrel Class Teaching Team
Class Teacher: Mrs Gardner
Lots of you will know me already from my time in the Pre-school, where I was lucky enough to spend time with many of your children. I spent the last year completing a Teaching Apprenticeship, working closely with Mrs Bell in Year 2. I also spent some time in Year 1, where I thoroughly enjoyed working alongside your children once again. They are a wonderful group of children that are a joy to teach; I can't wait to guide them on their journey through Year 2!
LSA: Mrs Hall
We are so lucky to have Mrs Hall staying with the class for another year. It was a pleasure to see the relationships that she has built with the children, and she is such an asset to our classroom. Mrs Hall will be in the classroom Monday - Thursday.
Jubilee picnic
This term we have been learning about Sedgemoor. We took a trip to our local church and information centre to find out more about the Battle of Sedgemoor, and have used maps to learn about our local area in Geography. The children have taken such an interest in this topic and we have had some fantastic discussions.
Some super examples of the children’s writing this week!
Our trip to the church
The Battle of Sedgemoor
In our computing lessons this week we have been learning to write algorithms and debug simple computer programs.
In our music lessons this week we have been learning about pitch. We practiced representing musical patterns in different ways.
Our learning this half term
Our current topic is real life superheroes, so today we had a visitor from the army to talk to us and teach us to march and stand to attention!
Marching!
We celebrated science week this week with an egg drop challenge!
Examining Egyptian artefacts
World science day
Anti-bullying week: positivity portraits
Anti-bullying week - kindness song
Introducing our instruction writing unit with hot chocolate around a campfire!
A little insight into what we have been learning this term!
Re-telling Funnybones
We are loving our "read and relax" sessions!
Each morning we spend time practicing spellings in different ways.
Practicing adding the 'ly' suffix.
In Geography, we have been studying continents and oceans.
Taking maths outdoors!
Whenever we can, we take our learning outdoors. This week we have been learning to use the greater than and less than symbols to compare items and numbers.
The kestrel class debut - The tiger who came to tea!
We've been using the story "the tiger who came to tea" for our first writing unit. We are getting to know the story so that the children can write their own version - part of this has been retelling the story with actions. They are now experts, and can also do it "super fast" and silently!