Welcome to Maple Class for Autumn Term 2026
About our class
Maple class is taught by Miss Searle, Monday to Thursday and Mr Lewis on a Friday.
Mrs Bufton works within the class every morning and some afternoons.
That is the Maple Team! Please come and see us or get in touch if you have any queries at all.
We also have two volunteers: Judy Balderson with Kerry (our therapy dog) and they come to support reading most Mondays. Nicky Thomas (who has completed a Teaching and Learning in Schools, Level 2 course) joins us most Wednesdays.
Curriculum Plans
See our Long-Term Plans, Year B (on the school’s website), to find out what we are studying across the curriculum this year. Below is an over view of this term’s curriculum.
PE is every Wednesday for the first half term. It will be inside learning dance skills with a teacher from Melody Dance. After half term we will be outside learning net and ball skills with Miss Searle, (so trainers, joggers and jumpers will be needed as the weather becomes more autumnal.) Please try and leave PE kits in school as they may be needed at other times.
Forest school will begin on Wednesday 17th September and will finish on Wednesday 22nd October 2026. Just like Monkey Puzzle class, on Forest School days children come to school dressed for Forest School, (long sleeved tops and long trousers with appropriate footwear and rain wear), and if they would like, they can change into other clothing when they get back to school. We don’t do Forest School after October half term to Christmas, as our focus for these weeks is the Christmas Production.
Values of the month.
These values are the focus for our assemblies and are reinforced during PSHE lessons.
September – Creativity
October - Cooperation
November - Flexibility
December – Gratefulness
PSHE lessons will focus on Rules and Responsibilities in class and in Forest School and how they keep us safe. We will move onto Be Yourself building on confidence and understanding of relationships and after half term our focus will change to what it means to be in a team.
Science focus is habitats, identifying things that are living and not living and learning about food chains. We will use our Forest School to study lots of these areas including observing the changes in Autumn.
Computing Online Safety learning this term is online relationships. Practically, we will look at computer systems and networks around us and learn to create media such as digital painting, photos and digital writing.
History focus is on important events: War and Remembrance.
Geography focus is called Magical Mapping. We will study maps, make maps and follow maps.
Design and Technology learning is about Moving Mechanisms. We will study moving parts and interactive books to learn how to use pivots to move our own images.
Art focus is sketching skills. We will look at sketching, making marks, colour mixing and our artist study is work by Kandinsky. We will also focus on autumn using natural patterns, shapes and colours in art.
Music focus is learning to play and appreciate Djembe drumming by reading simple notation and playing in rhythm. Towards Christmas we will sing and perform in the Christmas play.
RE focus is based on Who is a Muslim and how do they live? We will move onto ‘Why does Christmas matter to Christians?’ in the second half of the term.
English
We follow Twinkl Phonics to learn our sounds and develop a range of reading skills and writing skills. Monday morning children complete a spelling quiz which reflects the sound they have been learning during the week before and is part of their homework. Children have home school phonics books (red) in their book bag that contain the look, cover, write, check sheet to help them practice their sounds.
Children receive a Let’s Read mini book each week which helps them consolidate their sounds and tricky words that they have been learning that week. They also develop comprehension skills.
Rhino Reader books will be changed weekly on a Wednesday. These books link into the phonics sounds that the children have already been taught so that they can practice sounding and blending. They are designed to be read more than once so that the phonic sounds are consolidated.
In daily lessons we will study texts which will include,
Fiction - stories on a theme: descriptions. Using some lovely texts we will make predictions, describe characters. respond to characters’ feelings and write our own stories.
Non-fiction - our own recounts and instructions for playground games.
Poetry: poems about monsters.
Grammar is taught in both phonics sessions and daily class lessons. This term we will focus on capital letters and full stops in sentences, identifying nouns, noun phrases, different types of sentences and subordination and coordination conjunctions.
Handwriting focus will be on the ladder family (l, i, u, t, y, j) and the one-armed robot family (n, m, h) linking in with Twinkl phonics.
Maths
In Maths we will be building on learning from Reception and Year 1.
We will study place value including:
Counting and estimation
Teens and place value in 2-digit numbers
Numbers on a line; compare and order
Count to 100, 1 more/less; ordinals
We will study addition and subtraction including:
Partition numbers and learn number bonds
Add by counting on in 1s and 10s
Counting back
Use number facts to add and subtract
Add and subtract tens and ones
Use different strategies for addition
Coin recognition and finding amounts and change
We will study time including:
Understand units of time
Telling the time to half and quarter hours
We will study measures including:
Comparing and measuring lengths
We will also be developing an understanding of fractions and multiplication including:
Understanding halves and quarters
Doubling and halving including odd and even numbers
Counting in steps of 5 and 10
Learning at home
We encourage all children to read at home at least 3 times a week. We give stamps as a reward for reading and count up how many times they have read from the reading diaries. Please read the Rhino Readers and the Let’s Read mini books (as well as other texts).
Phonics homework for Level 5 and 6 consists of writing out their weekly spellings. For Maths, please count forward and back working towards 20, 50 then 100.