Welcome to the Zebra Class Page

On this page you will be able to find out what we have been learning in school. This term our driver for learning is “Coasts".

Our P.E. day is Wednesday and Forest School is on a Thursday afternoon. Please remember to bring in named clothing and footwear for these activities.

Our library visit will be on a Friday.

Where do we live?

As part of our Coasts topic, we are looking at where we live in Geography. We started by thinking about the area of Popley, how this is part of the town of Basingstoke, which is in the county of Hampshire, which is in the country of England, which is in the continent of Europe, which is part of the world! We created a nested hierarchy to show this and see how each location is part of a bigger one! 

Instruction writing

In our Literacy this week we are going to be writing instructions for a new, improved obstacle course for next years sports day. Before we can write them, however, we had to test the obstacle course out! 

Sports Week

What a busy, but exciting start to the term with sports week! This week we have been busy practising for our sports morning, including making banners, flags and learning a chant in our teams. Sadly the weather tried to ruin our fun on Friday morning, but we still had a great time and look forward to completing all of the activities when we get a bit more sunshine! 

World War II day

As a conclusion to our World War II topic we spent the day as evacuees. We had our gas masks ready as we were "evacuated" to the countryside, where we spent the day in a school, just as the evacuees would have done during World War II. I think it's fair to say, we think schools are a lot better today than they were then!

Red Nose Day

On Friday we joined in with the fun of Red Nose Day. We all wore something red and donated money towards this worthwhile charity. As part of the fun we designed our own superhero red noses and composed an adventure story for them, and then celebrated how special we each are with a talent show! Zebra class is full of talented dancers, cheerleaders, joke tellers and magicians! 

Signs of Spring

Spring is in the air! On our walk to Basing Woods this week we were looking out for signs of Spring. We found new plants growing, buds growing on trees, new leaves and moss and a LOT of frogspawn in the pond. It really felt like Spring is on the way...

World Book Day!

Look at all of the exciting book characters we dressed up as for our World Book Day. Can you guess who we are all dressed up as? We enjoyed lots of story-based activities, and spent lots of time reading, of course!

Sock puppets

We enjoyed an exciting book week, based on the story 'Pattan's Pumpkin' by Chitra Soundar. As part of this we designed and made a sock puppet of one of the animals in the story. Have a look...don't they look fantastic?!

A real author came to visit!

To start our Book Week we had a visit from a real author, Chitra Soundar. She told us about how she became an author and storyteller, read us some of one of her super stories, and then encouraged us to use our imaginations to think of what we would do if we were given 7 wishes...but could only wish for things for other people. What would you wish for?

Special delivery!

A mystery note appeared in our classroom...it was a paper aeroplane from someone called Emily! We didn't know who it was from, so decided to write our own notes, turn them into paper aeroplanes and send them back, hoping that Emily might respond to us. We're keeping our fingers crossed for a reply!

Evacuation

We have continued to learn more about World War Two, focusing on Evacuation. We learnt all about what evacuation was, why it happened and what life was like for evacuees. Have a look at some of the fantastic non-chronological reports we wrote!

Fire fire!

This week in Forest School we were being resilient like Tigger. We had the dragon's breath fire strikers and were persevering to make sparks...look at how well we did! 

World War II

Our topic this term is going to be World War II, so we started the term with a special visitor. He told us about life during World War II, including being evacuated, and some of us joined in and became different people who lived during this time.

Christmas!

What a wonderful last day of term we had! We had to follow a trail of tinsel which led us to some very special visitors... In the playground we found Comet and Cupid and learnt lots about them from the elves. Then we continued on the trail to find Father Christmas!! Luckily our wonderful singing woke him up and he gave us all a special treat. We finished the day with a special Christmas picnic altogether. Merry Christmas Zebra class...see you in the New Year!

Christmas poems

This week we have been learning about different types of poetry and having a go at writing our own. Have a look at some of the poems we wrote!

Coronation Day

To celebrate the end of our Monarchy topic we enjoyed a 'Coronation Day'. We learnt about what happened at the Queen's coronation and considered what might be the same or different when King Charles III is coronated next year. We enjoyed some formal dancing, which many guests of the coronation would have enjoyed, and Mr Williams even pretended to be King Charles III and was crowned by Mrs Giles-Cox!!

Building mini dens!

This week in Forest School we were building mini dens for mini people! We thought carefully about where to build the dens, how we could make the people comfortable and what else they might need to survive. We were very resourceful like Eeyore when making them. 

Arts Week

What a great week to start the new half term! This week we enjoyed Arts week focused around the festival of Diwali. We learnt about the story of Diwali and then enjoyed Art, Music and Dance linked to the festival. We finished the week by inviting our parents into class to enjoy our learning with us. It was a great week!

Exploring in the woods!

We enjoyed our first trip to Basing Woods this week. We went deep into the woods and had a great time exploring the environment - we spotted bugs, birds, mushrooms and lots of different plants. We had a great time!

Gymnastics

In PE this term we are doing gymnastics and have been learning the 5 main gymnastics shapes - straight, star, tuck, pike and straddle. This week we got the apparatus out and used these to perform our fantastic gymnastic shapes.

Money, money, money!

This week in Maths we have been learning about money. We were thinking about the value of coins and using the coins to make an amount, moving on to make an amount in more than one way.

Portchester Castle

We were all very excited to go on a trip to Portchester Castle this week and it didn't disappoint! We had a great time exploring the outer bailey and thinking about all of the features of the castle (including the gardrobes - ask your children!). After lunch we were then all brave like Piglet and climbed the steep spiral steps to the top of the keep. It was very windy but the view was amazing! 

Billy and the Dragon

Last week we had quite a shock when we came back into the classroom to find that someone had been in to have a party! However, they had disappeared...leaving cake, drinks and un-popped party poppers behind. We aren't sure who it was, but it is very similar to the events of the story 'Billy and the Dragon'. This week we have been looking at the story in more depth, including thinking about the language used by the author and considering ways we could improve this.

Forest School fun!

We had a lovely afternoon for our first Forest School session of the year. We enjoyed exploring the different areas and the activities on offer, including mud kitchen recipes, music and bird watching.

Belonging week

Welcome back! We had a great first week in Zebra class and have spent the week getting settled in! We have been busy finding out about some of our British Values and thinking about how these apply to our classroom. We also set out our class charter, with rules that we will all agree to follow to make our class a safe, fair and happy place to be! We also held an election to vote for our school council members - well done to the 2 children who were elected.