As we approach the end of the school year, the excitement and learning in Fox Class continue in full swing! We kicked off the week with the Upper Primary and Secondary Talent Show, a fantastic event made even more special by the presence of our families. Each class showcased their talents through singing, signing, and dancing. We gave a fantastic performance of the reggae classic “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, confidently singing and signing along. A special mention goes to Baneet, who bravely took to the stage for a beautiful solo of “Let It Go” from Frozen—a true highlight of the show! Our confidence and joy, whilst performing, truly shone through. Please log onto the ‘Evidence for Learning’ app where our performance has been uploaded.

As part of our Personal, Social and Emotional Development curriculum, we wrapped up our work on life cycles, which has included learning about a variety of animals and plants. In our final session, we worked independently to sequence picture cards, showing a clear understanding of how living things grow from young to adult. It was amazing for the adults to see how much the children have remembered and can explain.

With the warmer weather making a return, we’ve been making the most of opportunities to stay cool and active outdoors. On Wednesday afternoon, we enjoyed time on the balance bikes and trikes, developing our independence and physical coordination—and having plenty of fun in the shade!

Our artwork inspired by Brian Wildsmith also continued this week, in our art session with Dan. We added finer details to our 3D owl sculptures using acrylic pens, focusing on pattern, line work, and colour. We all showed great care and creativity, and we’re looking forward to the final touches next week when we will use a range of craft materials to add texture.

In PE, we joined Sycamore Class for a lively cricket session. It was wonderful to see everyone participating with enthusiasm, whilst developing batting and fielding skills and also showing excellent teamwork and cooperation.

Our Champion, this week, is Baneet! Baneet wowed her adults, peers and parents, during the Upper Primary and Secondary talent show. Baneet showed amazing confidence whilst singing and dancing in front of a large audience – what amazing bravery!

The summer sunshine has certainly made its presence known this week, but the rising temperatures haven’t slowed us down in Fox Class!

We began the week with another fantastic swimming session, at Oak Park. It’s been wonderful to see how much progress we are making in the water. Our front crawl and backstroke techniques are really developing, and many of us are now showing greater independence, with less need for adult support—and even swimming without armbands! The Fox staff are all so proud of their growing confidence.

On Tuesday, we continued our creative journey with the work of British illustrator Brian Wildsmith. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring his vibrant style through different media to design owl-themed artwork. This week, we began painting our very own 3D owl models. We carefully studied Brian’s use of bold, bright colours and used this as inspiration for our own designs. The results so far are absolutely beautiful, and we’re excited to add extra materials next week to bring our creations to life.

This half term in cooking, we’ve been working hard to develop our independence by preparing a variety of breakfast foods. Each week, we’ve been building on our previously learned skills while exploring how to safely and confidently use different pieces of kitchen equipment. This week, our focus was on using the toaster and microwave to make scrambled egg on toast. Nicola carefully modelled each step, and then we had the opportunity to follow the instructions independently. Everyone did a fantastic job — and the end results were delicious!

On Thursday, we were delighted to welcome families to our exciting ‘Oakwood Olympics’ session. Over the past few weeks, we have been busy practising and preparing, and our hard work really paid off! Everyone took part enthusiastically in a range of events including the running race, hurdles, bean bag race, egg and spoon race, and even a javelin competition. We were overjoyed to see the smiles of pride and to hear the cheers and applause from families who came to support. Thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate the our sporting achievements!

Our family members also come equipped with their trainers, ready for the three legged race. We had to work together as a team, to move our legs at the same time. It was tricky but very enjoyable!

This week, we are proud to celebrate Oakley as Fox Class’s ‘Champion of the Week’! Oakley truly impressed the adults during our cooking session. He listened carefully to Nicola’s instructions and confidently applied what he had learned to independently make scrambled eggs on toast. It was fantastic to see Oakley toast the bread, spread the butter, crack an egg, and use the microwave—all with growing confidence and skill. Well done, Oakley! We are so proud of your independence and enthusiasm.

It’s been another action-packed week in Fox Class, filled with exciting learning experiences and special achievements. In class, we’ve been exploring the life cycle of a hen, using the principles of Colourful Semantics to help us retell the story of Oliver’s Vegetables and continued our work on the artist Brian Wildsmith, using watercolours to produce our fabulous pieces. In addition to our classroom learning, we’ve enjoyed another fantastic swimming session at Oak Park and our much-loved weekly soft play session, which always brings lots of smiles!

A special moment this week came on Tuesday, when Ollie had the exciting opportunity to visit Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Stadium, representing Fox Class. Over the past few weeks, we have been working with Beth and Dan, our art teachers, on a bug hotel competition. We’ve all contributed by planning, designing, and helping to build our hotel, even collecting natural materials to make it as inviting as possible for mini beasts. Ollie was presented with a medal and certificate, celebrating the efforts of everyone in Fox Class and our contribution to this fantastic project.

Well done, Foxes—what a week! A reminder, on Thursday, our families are invited to join us for our Sports showcase session.

Despite the hot weather this week, we have all continued to show great enthusiasm and focus in their learning. Our motto, this week, has certainly been ‘Keep Cool and Carry On Learning’!

In English, we’ve started exploring our new key text, ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ by Alison Bartlett and Vivian French. We are already enjoying diving into the story and this week have focused on describing the vegetables that Oliver finds in his Grandad’s garden. We are becoming experts with using the principles of colourful semantics, to help organise our ideas. If you would like to listen to the story at home, you can watch the video below.

We were also excited to welcome back Bev, for our music sessions. This week, our focus was on exploring the pulse. We worked together brilliantly to follow a steady four-beat rhythm. As our confidence grew, we experimented with how the four beats could be played. We varied the notes by adding pauses. Some of us even tried conducting our own short rhythms for our peers to follow. Everyone showed fantastic musical skills, especially when applying our skills to play the djembe drums. It was such a great way to feel the beat and express creativity!

On Friday, when we arrived to school, we were excited to see that 8 butterflies had emerged from their chrysalides! Watching the butterflies emerge and take flight was such a magical moment for us to witness! We were filled with wonder and excitement as we released them into the world. It has been such a beautiful way to explore life cycles and celebrate growth.

This week in art, we explored the work of the talented artist Brian Wildsmith. The children were fascinated by his use of colour. Inspired by his work, the children designed and created their very own oil pastel owl pieces of artwork. They carefully considered colour choices, using the techniques we observed in Brain’s work to bring their own creations to life. Look how stunning our final pieces turned out!

This week in Foxes, we are thrilled to be celebrate Luke as our Oakwood Champion. We are so proud of the confidence he has shown around food this week. Luke joined his peers at the Breakfast Club dining table, where he independently poured his own cereal and milk. In our cooking session, he also tasted a croissant – a huge milestone for Luke, as trying new foods can sometimes be a challenge. Well done, Luke!

On Wednesday, we enjoyed a fun-filled visit to Lower Drayton Farm, in Penkridge. The trip was designed to enhance the learning that we’ve been doing in school. We began our day with a tractor ride around the farm, where we had the chance to see a variety of cows and sheep up close! Our guide, Farmer Lloyd, who also drove the tractor, shared fascinating facts about life on the farm and the animals he cares for. One highlight of the ride, was stopping by at the potato fields, where we saw firsthand how potatoes grow underground. Farmer Lloyd even dug one up for us to see! It was a fantastic opportunity to connect what we’ve been learning in Science, as we were able to identify the leaves and roots of the potato plant, reinforcing our learning on plant parts.

After our exciting tractor tour, we headed indoors to explore the Animal Zone – a real highlight of our day! We were thrilled to get up close with a variety of smaller animals, including rabbits, guinea pigs, and even a beared dragon. We all had the chance to gently stroke the animals, showing great care and confidence – some of us were especially brave! We also enjoyed seeing baby chicks, terrapins, and a tortoise, which sparked curiosity and discussion between us all.

Our adventures continued back outside, where we helped feed some of the farm’s larger animals, such as pigs, cows, goats, llamas and ponies. We carefully shared the food between the animals, showing fantastic teamwork! It was such a hands-on learning experience that really brought our learning to life.

After a morning full of hands-on learning and animal encounters, we had the chance to enjoy some of the farm’s fantastic play areas. One of the highlights was the giant bouncing pillows, where we laughed, jumped and shared joyful moments with our friends. It truly was the perfect way to end a busy and exciting day – full of smiles, teamwork and wonderful memories made together!

Our caterpillars are growing well. They have been eating lots, getting bigger and bigger. When we arrived at school, this morning, lots of caterpillars were hanging from the roof of the tub in a ‘j’ shape. This suggests they are ready for the next stage of the lifecycle. We are expecting to see 10 chrysalises, on Monday.

Fox class have 11 Champions, this week! It was so difficult to pick just one, after our amazing day at the farm. The children were brilliant, listening well, engaging positively and behaving impeccably! The Fox staff team are so proud of each and everyone one of you.

We have had a busy but enjoyable week, on return from the Whitsun holidays. We have continued to engage in activities relating to our class topic, ‘Gardeners World’. This term, we will be swimming at Oak Park on Monday afternoons. Our PE slot will continue to be on a Thursday afternoon. Please ensure are sent into school ready for our sessions.

In English, we started to read a new story, ‘Ben Plants a Butterfly Garden’ by Kate Petty. If you want to listen at home, you can watch here.

We decided to use a range of media to design our own butterfly gardens. Some of us used patterned paper to create abstract flowers whilst others used painting and crayons. They turned out beautifully and clearly caught the attention of some special visitors ….

10 tiny caterpillars have arrived!!! Already, they have started to grow longer and longer. We are eagerly awaiting the next stage of the butterfly lifecycle where the caterpillars will transform into chrysalis.

The rainy weather hasn’t stopped us preparing for our upcoming Oakwood Olympics event. Please check your child’s bag for further details and your reply slip. We have started to develop the skills and techniques needed for the running race, hurdles, egg and spoon race and the beanbag race.

This half term, we are going to be developing our independence during cooking sessions. Our focus will be on breakfasts. We have started off with a cold breakfast cereal option. This will be perfect in organising our cereal during breakfast club. Our first step was to locate the ingredients and utensils. We found cereal in the cupboard, milk in the fridge, a spoon in the drawer and our bowls in the cupboard. We then developed our pouring skills to fill our bowls with milk and cereal. Next week, we are going to move onto making a hot breakfast cereal option – porridge.

We have had two Champions in Fox class, this week. Alfie amazed us with his independent swimming, on Monday. He developed his confidence to swim a whole width of the pool, totally independently! WOW! Logan was also awarded Fox Champion for his improvement with behaviour both at school and at home. His staff in Fox’s and Nanna at home, are all so proud of him. Well done Logan!

On Monday, during our community visit session, we visited Grasmere Garden Centre. Ruth set us the task of finding a range of plants, seeds and bulbs. We enjoyed exploring the different colours and smells around the garden centre before making our choices. These will be used to plant around our playground.

Our newest member of Fox class come to join our classroom. We were all so thoughtful being kind and gentle to baby Charlie. He certainly seemed to enjoy our foxy cuddles! It was such a special treat. Jade even showed us how make a baby bottle. We already can’t wait for Jade and Charlie to come and visit us again.

In cooking, we built on our skills learnt from last week. We remembered how we have to combine the ingredients by rubbing in. Once our shortbread biscuit was baked we could then begin to layer. We melted both caramel and chocolate to pour so that we could build the different layers. It was then put in the fridge to harden.

Our champion, this week, is Ollie! Ollie has displayed such fantastic knowledge and recall from our recent topic on ‘Lifecycles’. Kelvin, one of our secondary headteachers, visits each morning and Ollie happily shares a new lifecycle with Kelvin! It has been amazing to see such brilliant engagement with learning. Well done Ollie!

This week, we have continued to bake sweet treats linked to our developed understanding of rationed foods. We have developed a new cooking technique, called rubbing in, which is required when making shortbread biscuits. We measured our ingredients and used our ‘fairy fingers’ to the combine them together. This made a breadcrumb consistency which was chilled before rolling out. Our biscuits certainly tasted delicious, We are going to build on this, to make caramel shortbread which will require layering ingredients.

Our focus in PE, this half term has been gymnastics. During our first session, we explored different ways of travelling, linked to animal movements. We carefully considered our body positions and heights to be working out. This week, we have linked these together with some simple balances. When performing balances, we tried really hard to stay still for at least 5 seconds. We also learnt how important it is to point fingers and toes. Once we were confident in performing a straight, star, arch, dish and tuck balance we incorporated these into a simple routine with some different methods of travelling. Have a look at our full performances on Evidence for Learning.

Two of our Fox boys were invited to complete their Level 1 bikeability training course with official A*Stars instrcutors. Seth and Ollie had to show that they were capable of driving the trikes, stopping when instructed and manipulating the bike to follow a simple route. The boys did excellently and were awarded their Level 1 certificates during Champion assembly.

Our champion, this week, is Khaled! Khaled’s effort during target sessions has been amazing. He has been working on developing his independence with reading, through the ‘See and Learn’ programme. Khaled initially started by matching picture cards together, slowly progressing to matching a picture card with a verbalised word to now recognising words independently to match to its corresponding picture card. The progress Khaled has made, in such a short period, is phenomenal. The staff in Foxes are so proud of you!

Our VE Day celebrations began last week, during our community visits. We took the minibus to the National Memorial Arboretum, in Alrewas. We explored the site, taking in the range of memorials, commemorating those who helped us.

On Thursday, preparations began for our VE Day Oakwood Street Party. The children made a past-time snack, jam sandwiches. We carefully spread the jam over the bread before cutting into halves and quarters.

We discussed the importance of VE Day and how the war had impacted Brits. We learnt that certain foods were rationed. We used this knowledge to make our own eggless cupcakes. We followed the step-by-step instructions to measure, mix and pour the ingredients.

With flags in hand and our food prepared, we were finally ready for our VE Day street party. We were joined by the other upper primary and secondary classes to share food, dance and sing along to 1940 songs and play wartime games. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, had by all.

Throughout the day, we engaged in a range of VE Day crafts. Here are our beautiful silhouette soldiers, standing in poppy fields! We have also painted our own Union flags and collaged paper plate poppies.

After such a busy week, Seth was awarded ‘Champion of the Week’ for Fox class. He impressed the staff during our English session. We have been reading the traditional tale, ‘The Enormous Turnip’. This week, our focus was sequencing the key events from the story. Seth showed confidence, joining in our discussions to order the story correctly. Well done Seth!

Welcome back, we hope our Fox families had a lvoely Easter break. We have had an addition to our Fox class. Jade, our amazing teaching assistant went on maternity leave, just before the Easter holidays and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy called Charlie! We are all so excited for Jade to come and visit us so we can meet baby Charlie and give him lots of snuggles. Here are some photos Jade has sent us to share with us.

On Monday, we returned back to school and could not wait to see our friends and familiar adults! Our classroom environment looked very different with flower decorations hanging from the ceiling. This is in preparation for us to become immersed in our new topic, this term, ‘Gardener’s World’. Below is our website overview, highlighting our intended learning for this term.

We have already started to learn about plants. In science, we have been locating the different parts of a plant. We learnt where the flower, leaves, roots, stem and petals are. We used this knowledge to dissect flowers, clipping each of the different parts off individually. Once cut up, we were able to group them together, into each of the different parts.

Next week, we will be celebrating VE Day. To mark the occasion, we are going to bake traditional wartime recipes. During the war certain foods became rationed. Here we are making British Victoria sponge cake. We successfully used our pre-learnt measuring, mixing and spreading skills.

Foxes Champion, this week, is Matilda! She has been extremely helpful around the classroom. We have really noticed her support during tidy up time. Matilda will ensure that she helps tidy all areas of the classroom, rather than just the activity she has been working at.