Blue Class

Welcome

In Blue class we have nine children ranging from year one to year three. We work hard on our phonics and maths skills every day alongside lots of other curricular learning such as science, art, music, PSHE, PE and much more.

We work on our attention and listening skills through Attention Autism ‘Bucket’ sessions. Blue class have got so brilliant at watching the various stages and resisting the urge to touch the resources! They love taking part in the stage three activity when invited by the adult.

Alongside our curricular learning, we have lots of opportunities to play! Our social skills are always developing along with our ability to turn-take and share resources. We love messy play, encouraging children to step out of their comfort zone to explore new textures and sensory experiences.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our Staff

Gemma Eades

I am the class teacher in Blue Class. I have taught at The Mendip School forfiveyears across Key Stage 2, Key Stage 1 and Early Years. I absolutely love my job and believe making every day fun with lots of continuous provision and play-based learning makes school memorable and promotes a love for learning. The most important thing for me, is that my class love school and look forward to coming in each day. In my free time, I enjoy camping, arts and crafts like scrapbooking, walking my dog and making house and garden renovations! In May 2022, I am expecting my first baby so I will be on maternity leave from the Easter break.

Tia Mortley

I am a teaching assistant in Blue class, and joined the Mendip school in 2017 and absolutely love working here, every day is different and it’s extremely rewarding. In my spare time I enjoy making new memories with family and friends and going on long dog walks.

Vicky BanfieldI am a teaching assistant and Thrive Practitioner and currently on my 5th year at the Mendip school. This year I have worked across the school but recently joined Blue class full time. I am a qualified Thrive Practitioner and love delivering Thrive sessions and supporting the children’s social and emotional wellbeing. I am looking forward to spending the rest of the year in Blue class.

Term 3 2022

After a lovely Christmas focused end of term two, we have returned to focusing on our phonics skills in English, as well as lots of reading and learning to draw information from what we have read or listened to through comprehension style questions. 
In Maths, we have been using part whole models to sort collections of objects into ‘parts’. We have also been using these models to calculate simple additions. We will be going on to look at ‘measure’ in the second half of the term for our Shape, Space and Measure topic. 
So far in Science, we have been exploring forces. We have learnt about push and pull forces, exploring different toys and how they work using forces. We have also explored the terms sink and float, estimating if everyday objects in the classroom will sink or float, and then testing our predictions with practical investigations.

This term, we have also been enjoying Sensory Circuits with our Occupational Therapist, Susy. We have been learning how to wake up our bodies, make our bodies feel good, and then how to calm our bodies down using lots of OT movement and strategies. 

 
Term 2, 2022

In term two, we focused our English skills on the composition of a story through Talk for Writing. We learnt the story ‘Dear Zoo’ with the help of a story map, and were able to recite this story, using Makaton signing, to the rest of our class. We innovated this story as a class, and then independently to create our own versions with different animals and reasons for returning them to the zoo. 
In Maths, we focused on matching quantities with the correct numerals, and extending how far we are able to count in Number. We also worked on naming and identifying the properties of 2D shapes in Shape, Space and Measure. 
In Science, we explored various materials; deciding which material lots of everyday objects were made of, going on a material hunt, and looking at properties and uses of materials for specific purposes. 

Along with lots of other fun subjects, we also really enjoyed Sensory PE sessions with Nova sports. We learnt the rules of various sports including rugby, skateboarding, skiing, volleyball and tennis, exploring these sports through lots of multisensory activities. We also included offsite visits in our weekly timetable, exploring the local community through welly walks and trips to the park to work on our physical development alongside having lots of fun. 

 
Term 1, 2022

Blue class had a busy first term, focusing on our phonics skills of reading, word building and writing in English lessons. 
In Maths we focused on counting with ​one-to-one correspondence in Number, and imitating, continuing and creating our own repeating patterns in Shape, Space and Measure. 
In Science, we learnt about our own bodies by playing body part bingo, drawing around our friends and labelling to scale body outlines, and began thinking about organs inside the body too. 

We enjoyed Attention Autism ‘Bucket’ sessions twice a week, working on our attention and listening skills as well as turn taking, as well as lots of lovely play activities to bond us as a group.

 

Term 1 update

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