St Michael's Primary School, Withyham

What are KIRFs?

To develop your child’s fluency and mental maths skills, we are introducing KIRFs (Key Instant Recall Facts) throughout school. KIRFS are a way of helping your child to learn by heart, key facts and information which they need to have instant recall of. 

KIRFs are designed to support the development of mental maths skills that underpin much of the maths work in our school. They are particularly useful when calculating, adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. They contain number facts such as number bonds and times tables that need constant practise and rehearsal, so children can recall them quickly and accurately.

This term we continue the theme of Once Upon a Time. In English, our writing focus will be to inform, where the children will be writing letters, diary entries and information leaflets. This will be based on our core texts, 'Jim and the Bean stalk' and 'Look inside a castle'.

In maths, the children in Year 1 will continue practising addition and subtraction, whilst children in Year 2 will continue with multiplication and division. Both year groups will  then be looking at length and height, and mass, capacity and temperature. 

Science lessons this term will focus on plants and seasonal changes. We will be looking at compass directions in Geography and the children will be using maps and keys to create a map of the school and local area. Elm class will enjoy lots of outdoor learning in their topic work this term!

In Term 3, we will be looking at Traditional Tales in English. The children will focusing on character descriptions, describing settings and re-writing their own versions of a story. We will continue to look at different materials and their properties in Science. The children will finish the term by designing and creating a 'safe' house for the three little pigs, using the strongest materials that they have researched throughout the term! In Maths, the children will be looking at measurements of length, height, volume, capacity and temperature. We will learn more about continents and oceans in Geography this term and research animals that live in the different areas.  The children will also look at the physical features of the continents such as deserts, rivers, mountains and lakes. 

In term 2, the children in Elm Class will be learning about The Great Fire Of London. The core book that we are reading is "Vlad and the great fire of London". In maths the children are building their knowledge on addition and subtraction and number bonds. We are covering different materials and their properties in Science and understanding why certain materials are used for certain things. History will taught alongside English with our core book and we will be looking at how the fire services have changed through the years. 

We have a text the class focus learning around to develop vocabulary. Our term 1 text is below:

Let’s Play – Term 1

In term 1, the core books in Elm Class are ‘The Robot and the Bluebird’ and ‘Traction Man’. English lessons are based on the core text and are read to the class on a daily basis. Children have additional English and maths tasks planned throughout the week as part of our continuous provision. In the afternoon, activities based on our topics are available in the classroom to enhance their learning, where children are able to choose tasks to complete.

Our Science topic this term is seasonal change where the children will be looking at temperatures, wind speeds and rainfall. They will be performing simple tests by making their own anemometers to measure wind, reading thermometers and build rain gauges!

In History, we will be learning about how toys have changed in the last 100 years and attempting to make our own versions of toys from the past.