Rufford Park Primary School and Nursery

Weekly Update-7/2/25

Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog

Hello everyone,

This week, we have continued reading Kidnap in the Caribbean and focusing on reading tasks revolving around retrieval and inference skills, commentating and sharing opinions about different author choices made throughout the book and summarising skills.

In maths, we have been focusing on dividing 3 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers using short division, we have also focused dividing 3 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers with remainders. The children have also been practising to use the inverse (short multiplication) to check their division calculations. It's been amazing to see the progress!

In our writing we have focused on a variety of features that will be included in our next piece of writing. These include inverted commas for speech, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials. The children have also planned their resolutions and endings to the real-life story about three men trapped in the crater of Kilauea.

In PSHE, we had a Mind Mate assembly on resilience, along with a one-hour workshop. The children really enjoyed it and understood the value of having and showing resilience in everyday life. In our other PSHE lesson based on our Keeping Myself Safe unit, the children were learning all about the dangers of alcohol and cigarettes and the impact that they can have on your body.

In computing, as part of our Sequencing Sounds unit, the children used coding on Scratch to write the beginning of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The children were also able to demonstrate good problem solving throughout the lesson in order to make their note sequence work correctly. The children also experimented with changing the pitch of the sound which also relates to work that we have been doing in science.

Song

Take care,

Mr Kyriacou :)

Weekly Update 31/1/25

Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog

Hello everyone,

This week, we have started working on our next piece of writing. This is again based on a non-fiction text and is about three men who end up trapped in a volcano crater. This is all the children have read up to in the story and their task for their next piece of writing will be to write their own solution and ending to this story. Together, the children have mind mapped possible solutions that are realistic and fit in with what they know about the story so far. We have also focused on work involving apostrophes for singular and plural possession as well as using inverted commas for speech.

In our maths, we have moved onto short division using the bus stop method. This week, we have focused on dividing two digit numbers by 1 digit numbers. The2 children have shown amazing progress with using the bus stop method and have also been using the inverse operation (short multiplication) to check their answers.

In science, the children conducted an experiment revolving around whether the volume of sound is affected by the distance someone is from the sound source. The children really enjoyed it and with three groups conducting the experiment, we were able to determine that all 3 sets of results were accurate.

Take care,

Mr Kyriacou :)

Weekly Update 24/1/25

Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog

Hello everyone,

In our reading this week, we have continued to read the next six chapters of Kidnap in the Caribbean. The children have been absolutely loving it! The have particularly loved all the suspicious events that have been occurring and have so many questions about who is behind it all. This has prompted lots of lovely discussions and predictions being made.

This week, in maths, we have been focusing on using the short multiplication method and multiplying two- and three-digits numbers by 1-digit numbers. The children have been working incredibly hard on using this method and it’s absolutely amazing to see how much progress they’ve made with it. They should all be really proud of themselves!

In our writing, the children have been working on writing their diary entries, where they have taken on the role of Sue Ruff, a survivor of the 1980 Mt St Helens eruption. The children have written about the events of that devastating day from her perspective and have produced some absolutely brilliant pieces of work, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

For our computing unit, the children have been using an animation programme called Scratch to create three of their own sprites, apply code that will make them move in different ways, control when they start moving, create multiple different backgrounds to go with each sprite and make those switch over on a loop. The children have really enjoyed this unit so far and have produced some lovely little animations.

In our geography work, we used fieldwork skills to locate ourselves on a map of school, used the painted compass directions on the playground and used geographical vocabulary as we traced the horizon line with our fingers. We also discussed the weather conditions and cloud cover that we could observe.  

Take care,

Mr Kyriacou