Cedar Class

Welcome to Cedar Class

Classteacher: Miss F. Rodgers

WB 12th July 

We have finished our last full week in Cedar class! Only 3 more days to go!

This week we have come back raring to get going with lots of assessments, which ALL children have been fantastic at. Myself and Mrs Brown are so proud of how resilient and confident they were and got right to it. 

We also have enjoyed looking at movement, turns and position in maths. We started the week off by looking at our left and rights, then moving onto directions and following that on with turns. It was very funny watching partners guiding each other across the classroom using only our key vocabulary! 

Enjoy the sunshine and we shall see you all Monday :) 

WB 28th June

We have had another exciting week in Cedar! On Friday, we all took part in our Sports Day races, running as fast as we could. We ran in a relay race where we had to work together as a team. The children were also amazing at showing support to the other classes by cheering them along. We are so proud. 

We have been working really hard in maths this week to tell the time. First, we looked at telling the time to o'clock. On Tuesday, we looked at half past and by Wednesday we were challenging ourselves by looking at both. 

We started an investigation to see how light effects plant growth. We have planted some cress seeds and put one in the sun, one in the shade and one in the dark with no light. We will be observing them to see how they grow next week. I wonder what will happen.

WB 21st June 2021

What a busy week we have had!

On Tuesday, we all took part in Myland's Sports Day. We thoroughly enjoyed watching all children take part and enjoy themselves. Well done to everyone, you are superstars!

We have also started a new model text this week called 'The Journey'.

As a class, we read through the text and text mapped each section to help us retell and learn the story better.

Here is our class text map below:

Can you remember how the story goes? Have a go at showing an adult what you know!

The Journey

The Polar Bear sat sadly on a tiny, glacial iceberg because the frozen sea was melting. He wondered where all the ice and food had gone.

What should he do? He decided to go for a swim until he found a little boat. He clambered into the boat and began to sail across the deep, dark sea. Before long he came upon a city, where machines rumbled and tall buildings hid the sky.

A Panda in the city curiously watched the Polar Bear then joined him on his boat. Together, they sailed along, listening to the rushing car horns. After a while, they floated up a river to where a jungle used to be and saw an Orangutan.

Miserably, the Orangutan was thinking about all the trees that used to flourish there. As the Polar Bear and Panda glided by, the Orangutan carefully climbed into the boat too. As they sailed across the big, blue sea, they all felt very lost.

A girl watched from a distant island as the boat came into view. She saw the animals were lost and adrift. They spoke to her about losing their homes. The polar bear asked for ice, the panda asked for the building to stop and the Orangutan asked for trees. Shocked, the girl decided to support the animals because she wanted to help them. Now the four friends are trying to heal the world together.

WB 14th June 2021

This week we have really enjoyed our PE lessons with Coach Dan and Mrs. Osman! We started off our lessons by learning how to bowl and bat in cricket and finished off with a tennis lesson with Mrs. Osman. Everyone tried super hard and we have some very keen cricketers and tennis players in Cedar!

On Tuesday, we were all VERY fortunate enough to take part in Young Voice's Biggest Sing, where we tried to break a Guiness World Record by having lots of different schools singing Lovely Day by Bill Withers at the same time! We practised, practised, practised in class and (if I do say so myself) sounded wonderful. Well done to everyone who took part!

Finally, a HUGE well done to Lucien for receiving a handwriting pen. The first person in Year 2 this year!

WB 7th June 2021

It has been so lovely to have everyone back in class after a well deserved break last week. 

We have got right back into working super hard by kicking the week off by boxing up our model text, The End of the Rainbow, by innovating our ideas for our own action story. What amazing ideas we have had! I have been so impressed with them. 

We then went onto writing up our stories, following the skeleton of our model text. Before half term we created a 'toolkit' to help us remember the elements of an action story. This was very helpful when generating our ideas!

In maths, we have started to look at money and recognising coins and notes. We had great fun making different amounts and deciding how much Miss Rodgers would spend in a day! 

This term in history, we are looking at Ancient Egypt. This week we learnt a little bit about the Egyptians (such as that they worshipped cats and built the Pyramids by hand) but we focused more on their alphabet and hieroglyphics. 

We drew out our names in hieroglyphics using a pencil to practise and then the next day used gold paint, as the Egyptians loved gold!

WB 24th May 2021

What another busy week in Cedar class!

We spent the week looking at measuring capacity in Maths and comparing various containers. The class were SO excited to get water trays out and get measuring! 

There were lots of lovely discussions about what container holds more and less, if the size and width matters and what containers would be best for certain things. 

Here are some pictures of us enjoying our practical lesson:

We also had a great art lesson all about printing.

We chose an illustration from our Big Reading text, 'The Fox and the Star', to copy for our design. 

The first step was the practise the drawing on paper. 

The next step was to etch this drawing onto a polystyrene sheet. 

The third step was to roll emulsion paint onto the polystyrene sheet.

The fourth step was to place the polystyrene sheet onto a plain piece of paper and press down hard for the illustration to transfer.

The final step was to peel off our designs carefully and see the end result!

Here are some pictures of our lesson:

WB 17th May 2021

Another busy week in Cedar class!

We have been learning a new model text this week called 'The End of the Rainbow', which the class have been FANTASTIC at learning. They know every part SO well and can re-tell most of it without even looking at the text! Each day we have been creating a text map to go with the text, along with some super actions. 

Here is our text map below:

This week, we have been working on creating pieces of writing and art work for our corridor display, based on 'The Fox and the Star'. 

Every child had a role to play in creating this, whether it was pebbling the fox, cutting out thickets or painting a leaf. Everyone had a job to do! 

Mrs Brown and I are so proud of how hard the children worked to create this wonderful masterpiece! (A big thank you to Mrs Brown too who put it all together!)

WB 10th May

We had a very special guest in Cedar class this week. Miss Leggett brought in her pet rabbit Theo to show us! This made us all very excited as we had just finished our non-chronological reports on rabbits. We spoke about what we included in our reports and were able to chat to Miss Leggett about whether these things were true or not. We were all very sensible and quiet not to scare Theo :)

We have also had a busy week in Maths. We begun measuring items around the room with a ruler and recording what they measured. As the week went on, we looked at estimating and comparing. We challenged ourselves by thinking of what would be best to measure certain objects, a metre ruler or a 30cm ruler? 

We then measured Miss Rodgers with a metre ruler. She was 1.82m! Are you taller or shorter than Miss Rodgers?

WB 27th April 2021

Firstly, I just wanted to say a HUGE well done to everyone in Cedar class for their amazing behaviour this week when the film crew were in. They all answered the questions beautifully and were complimented by the film crew as to how wonderful they all were! So well done and thank you Cedar. 

Secondly, we have had another very busy week! 

As a class we practised and practised our model text all about dolphins, so that by Friday we were able to write up what we knew and what was produced has been FANTASTIC! We are working so hard in Cedar class on our handwriting and making sure we are joining up our letters. (Some of us desperately want a handwriting pen!!)

In maths we have been focusing on subtraction within 100. We used the method from the previous week where we partitioned the tens and ones. This helped us a lot and made the process a lot easier!

Friday 30th April was 'Daily Mile Day', so we were challenged by Mrs Osman to complete 6 laps of the school field. It was very tough but we did it!

We have had such a fantastic week and I hope you enjoy your Bank Holiday weekend. 

WB 19th April 2021

Another fantastic week in Cedar class!

We have continued looking at our Big Reading book, 'The Fox and the Star' in depth and have spoken about what themes we notice in the book. We had a wonderful discussion about how when we lose something we may be upset at first, but we then remember all the wonderful things we have! 

This is our class display based on 'The Fox and the Star'.

In English we are working towards writing our very own non-chronological reports! 

This week we have begun looking at the features of a non-chronological report and we are beginning to build up our toolkit for this. Can you remember what we need?

We have also begun practising our new model text, a non-chronological report all about dolphins! Here is what we have started so far below:

As always, we have been keen mathematicians in this class! Each and every one of the children have worked SO hard over the last 2 weeks on addition and have even caught Miss Rodgers out....

Our new topic in Science this term is all about plants.

We have been on a plant hunt around the school grounds and have spotted some BEAUTIFUL flowers as well as different trees.

We now know that trees that lose their leaves are called 'deciduous' and trees that keep their leaves are called 'evergreen' as they stay.....forever green!

W/B 12th April 2021

Cedar have had a brilliant first few days back to school, they have been raring to go!

This week, we have started our new text in Big Reading called 'The Fox and the Star' by Coralie Bickford-Smith. We have (so far) read the book very carefully and spoke about the illustrations throughout the text. They class were amazed at how few words there were, but what a beautiful story it is!

As we are now SO interested about foxes, we have started to plan our non-chronological report on foxes in English this week. Each day we are text mapping a part of the report to help us remember key facts about foxes. Did you know they are members of the dog family? 

In maths we are looking at odd and even numbers.

We used our numicon to help us with this. 

The even numbers each have a 'friend' with them, whilst the odd numbers have an 'odd one out' at the top!

Week Beginning 15th March 2021

Another fantastic week in Cedar Class!

The class have thoroughly enjoyed planning and innovating their own version of our text, 'Goldilocks', this week. They have all written the beginning part which were amazing, they all have some fantastic and creative ideas. I am really looking forward to seeing what the end product looks like next week!

In maths, we have been continuing our work on fractions. The whole class have been reminding me that a fraction is an equal part to a whole, and that I still can't have the bigger slice of the pizza! We then moved onto quartering amounts using multilink and numicon. The class were very resilient with this and by the end of the week were all pros at quartering a number. 

This week the class also finished their Boudicca posters. They have really enjoyed learning about her and her distinctive features. They were amazed that she was taller than most men and had hair almost down to her knees! Below are some children showcasing their work :)

Welcome Back Cedar!

What an amazing, fun-filled first week back we have had in Cedar Class! All the children and parents have been SO welcoming and I have really enjoyed meeting you all properly.

This week we have been imitating our text Goldilocks, by practising parts of the text map each day and then writing up this part of the story. The writing produced has been AMAZING and I am so proud of each and everyone in class for their hard work and resilience. On the video centre is the final product!

In maths we have been looking at equal groups, in particular halves and quarters. We used our hands as 'balance scales' to measure if we had equal groups or not. We then moved on to finding half of an amount using our brand new numicon! The class loved this :) 

Our topic this week is focusing on Queen Boudicca and her links to Colchester. The class were APPALLED by her behaviour and what she did!

Thank you Cedar class for such a wonderful first week back!