Maple Class

Welcome to Maple Class!

Welcome to Maple Class' information and blog page. Here you will find general class information and see what we have been up to in our learning. 

Please remember to scroll down the page to see what we have been learning about! 

Class teacher       Mrs Kahn

Support staff        Phase TAs will support in the class throughout the week

PE days                 PE will be on a Thursday and a Friday. Please make sure your child has a PE Kit
                            in school.
                            This needs to simply be a pair of black or navy shorts, a plain white t-shirt and

                            a pair of pumps or trainers for going outside. Black or navy zipped hoodies can

                            also be worn in cold weather.

                            Children can wear their school kit all day on PE days if they wish - please note

                            they are not permitted to wear other sports clothes.

Homework            Homework will be set on Google Classrooms. Your child will be sent a

                             homework grid via the school app that has a variety of English, Maths and         

                             Topic activities on it for them to complete. They choose to do at least one         

                             activity each week (although they can do more!) Your child's username and       

                             password will be stuck in their Reading Record Book. Their homework needs to

                             be submitted by Thursday, as I will look at it before Friday and send a

                            certificate home to those children who have completed homework.

Reading and          Our school expectation is that your child reads at least three times

Times Tables         a week at home to an adult. This needs to be recorded in your child's reading

                             record and signed by an adult. This record needs to be brought into school

                             every day. We will check this on a Friday and children achieve a reading sticker

                             on their bookmark.
                             Once their bookmark is full they will receive a brand new book to keep as a

                             prize :)

                             If your child needs to change their reading book, they can change it on any day

                             when they go to their Read Write Inc group.

                             Your child will also have access and passwords to Times Table Rockstars and

                             Purple Mash. Their usernames and passwords will be put in their Reading

                             Record Books as soon as we have them all.

Contact us            If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to speak to us. You can

                            catch us most mornings before school or wait to speak to us after the children

                            have been released to parents/carers at home time.

                            Or you can contact us via our class email address:
                            Maple@newmoston.manchester.sch.uk

We very much look forward to working with you throughout the year in Maple Class and we are sure we will have a lot of fun learning. :) 

A big well done to those who carved a pumpkin for our competition to raise money for more books! They are all fantastic!

This week is the start of our unit ‘What is the UK?’. We learnt the countries and capital cities that make up the UK and located them in an atlas!

In Science this week we have thought carefully about the seasonal changes between autumn and summer. We got to go out and explore the changes! We noticed how some trees keep their leaves and now know they are called coniferous and evergreen trees. 🌲

A big thank you to the parents that came to our celebration assembly and then came to look at our amazing learning around the Great Fire of London. 🥰

We love reading in Maple Class and enjoy getting to free read everyday! 🥰

This week in science we completed our investigation into thinking and finding out what material would be the best for curtains. Some of us were surprised as we found of the black cotton is the best which wasn’t what some predicted!

In English, we have been looking at the poem ‘The Little Turtle’ by Vachel Lindsay. We have worked well together to create actions throughout the poem to help us remember it 🥰

In PSHE we learnt about the importance of working together and when we would have to work with others. We thought about sport games, helping others with work and helping each other tidy up. We then got to work together creating puzzles and listening to everyone’s ideas. 

For homework, children were asked to write some instructions to make a cake or bread. Ruby went a step further and baked some bread and brought it into school for us to enjoy! It was a delicious rosemary soda bread! Well done Ruby 🥰

This week we have been very luckily to have Rocksteady in school! We got to rock out to some great music and learnt all about bass guitars, piano, guitar, drums and using our voices! We were all really excited and had lots of fun! :) 

In Art this week we explored mixing primary colours to create secondary colours! We found out we cannot mix colours together to create our primary colours but can to create secondary colours. We also explored tints, tones and shades and how adding more white, grey or black changes a colours.

In R.E. this week we have been focusing on our special books. We thought carefully about our own special books and what story/stories they contain and how we look after them. 
We then recapped special books for Christians. We remembered that The Bible was their holy religious book and even got to see and look at different types! We learnt that The Bible is been made accessible to everyone who wants to read it.

It has been a fantastic first week in Maple Class. The children settled amazingly thinking carefully about their emotions through reading 'The Colour Monster'. We discussed our different emotions and what they look like and how they make us feel. They also got the chance to explore the classroom, finding out where all the resources were kept, showing me their amazing imaginations, reading books from the book corner and getting the chance to go into our role play area. :) 

2023-2024

Today in PSHE we have looked at the importance of dental health. We thought carefully about how many times a day we need to brush our teeth (2 times) and how long (2 minutes). 

We then thought about how much sugar is in different food items and sorted food into foods that have lots of sugar and food that has less sugar. 

We decided to keep our teeth healthy is to make sure we brush our teeth and clean our mouths, visit dentists and think carefully about what we are eating. 

For art this half term, we are sculptors! We have started by exploring clay and different ways we can manipulate it. We used our hands, a variety of tools and slip to help join pieces of clay together. 

For Science this week we have been investigating if things are living, dead or non-living. We thought carefully about what they mean and predicted what we might find outside that could fit under each category. We then went outside and noted our observations before checking these against the predictions! 

Over this half term, we have have been creating toy cars for Reception! 
We listened carefully about what Reception wanted, explored other toy cars to see what we liked about them or what we would want to change in our designs, thought carefully about a design criteria (we knew we wanted them strong and stable, colourful and have four wheels), designed our cars, created them and then evaluated them by allowing Reception children to play with them and asking them what they liked. 

In RE this week we have been learning about the story of Hanukkah and how the holy festival started. We used role play to help us remember the story.

Today in science we learnt that animals are sorted into different classification groups based on their characteristics. We studied images of different animals to work out what characteristics they had in common for them to be birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals or fish. We were surprised to think beyond the ideas of animals not just sharing the characteristics of ears and eyes! 

This week has been Mental Health Week! We are been focusing on our big emotions, thinking carefully about the names of different emotions, what they look like in us and how to manage big emotions. Can you guess what emotions we are showing?

For our first week back, we went back to the park to explore the differences in our local environment as it is now spring! We noticed that the coniferous trees still had their leaves and the deciduous trees now had started to grow blossom or green leaves. We also noted how it was a lot more muddy but the grass and flowers, like daffodils and bluebells, had started to grow. 

Many of us even noticed that the daffodils had started to die so made the connection that they only grow and live around spring time. 

For D.T. this week we finally made our egg boxes! The children told me where to stick their triangular supports to make their butt joints stable. We then decorated them for Ms Maynard's egg. :) 

Well done to Minnie for winning the prize for Year 2! Minnie carefully designed a bird house that we can put up around the school to help protect and look after our local birds. Very impressed with her design and hard work! 

A big thank you for the parents and carers who came in this afternoon to read with Maple Class! We all really enjoy reading books :) 

Today we have been practising how to use a hacksaw to help us make our boxes. We discussed carefully on how to be safe around a work bench and Jack saw before all getting to have a go. We really enjoyed it. 😁

In Maths we have learnt the difference between standard and non-standard units of measure. We have focused on the importance of starting at 0cm when we are using a ruler and how to see what something is to the nearest centimetre. We had lots of fun exploring the length and height of objects in the classroom 

In Geography we are learning about Blackpool linked to our unit 'Where would you rather be - Blackpool or Rio?'. We used atlases to locate Blackpool and to understand how far away it was from Manchester and in what direction. 

For Science this half term, we are focusing on materials and the uses of everyday materials. We thought carefully about what a material is and then explored what materials different objects were made of. We then realised that some objects were more than one material so created a Venn diagram to show what they were made of. 

Where would you rather be-Blackpool or Rio?

We have a focus on Geography this half term and are learning about two places Rio de Janeiro in South America and Blackpool which is in Europe and in the country we live in.

We will learn lots of facts about these places, compare them and ultimately decide where we would rather be! 

The knowledge organiser below will tell you more about our learning.

In computing this week we have been exploring pointillism. We used 2Paint to create our own versions!

In art we have been exploring primary colours and how we mix them to create secondary colours! We then learnt what tint, tone and shade meant and used white and black powder paint to create a scale of colour! Many of us noticed that if we add white to red it creates pink!

For science this term we are looking at the seasons and seasonal changes between autumn and winter! We worked out that we are currently in winter and went for a walk to explore what winter looked like around us. 
We saw that many of the trees have lost their leaves but some trees and plants, like ivy or holly keep their leaves and still grow slowly. 

What do we know about our school?
We have a focus on History this half term and are learning about the history of our school-the buildings, what it was like to be a pupil here in the past and how things have changed compared to today.
The knowledge organiser below will tell you more about our learning.

Today in science we have discussed the importance of good hygiene.  We partook in an experiment using glitter to represent germs and how quickly germs can spread when we touch something else. We then looked at washing our hands with just a paper towel, then water and finally with soap and water. We learnt that soap helps kills bacteria which is important in keeping us healthy. 

In D.T. this half term, we have been focusing on creating a sandwich! We were given a design criteria that we had to follow very carefully. It included that we had to mix a filling and use salad ingredients what we had to slice. Everyone got to pick the ingredients together to ensure not only they would enjoy them but so that everyone was successful at achieving the deign criteria. 

In our PSHE lesson, we leant about how to work well in a team and different teams we have to work on.

For our first task we were put in random groups and had five minutes to find at leas one thing we all had in common. We then discussed that if talking to other classmates made them feel closer to them and how it would get them work well together in the future. 

Our second task focused on communicating our ideas and working well together to get the hula hoop around everyone without letting go of our hands. 

This week has been friendship week! We have talked a lot about what makes a good friend and how a friend should make us feel.

We also discussed 'What is a bully?' and 'What is the difference between someone being mean and someone bullying you?'.

Maple Class were excellent in explain that bulling is when someone is mean to you physically or verbally again and again whilst meaning mean only happens once. We also got the chance to create posters to help inform others :)

In computing we have been focusing on grouping and sorting. This week we had to read the instructions carefully to know how to sort the shapes and then independently sorted them into the correct categories. 

A big thank you to everyone who came to the family reading morning. The children loved sharing their favourite class book with you all and discussing them. 

This week we were learning about our compass points. We went for a walk around the school grounds and located north, east, south and west using a compass. 

What do we know about our school?

We have a focus on Geography this half term and are learning about our school-it's location, where things are in our school and using maps, compasses and other sources. 

The knowledge organiser will tell you more about our learning.

Well done to my stars this week!

My handwriting award is for Aurora who has been taking her time and working hard in her presentation. 
My maths champion is Loraya who has really impressed me with her knowledge in subtraction. 
My reading award is for Hayden who always pushes himself in his reading both at school and at home.  
Finally, my teachers award is for Ivy who is always such a positive role model for others. 
Well done all 🥰