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Applebee Wood Community Specialist School

Respect, Belonging, Trust, Resilience, Aspiration

Morpurgo Class

Class Teacher: 

Miss Mason

 

Teaching Assistants:

Mrs Holland

Miss Iddon

Mrs Holding

Miss Collins

 

Our class has 8 children; 4 boys and 4 girls. We are working on a tailoured curriculum that supports our learning styles. We learn through lots of hands on activities that support our sensory needs. 

 

Have a look at what we get up too each week!

Spring 1 'Move it' Curriculum Map 2024 - 2025

Autumn 2 - 'Exploring food' Curriculum map 2024

Autumn 1 - 'All about me' Curriculum Map 2024

Visual timetable 2024 - 2025

Take a look at our classroom environment!

W/C 16.12.2024

 

We've had a wonderful build up to Christmas this week! 

 

Across the week we have done lots of Christmas craft activities ready to bring home to our families ready for the festive season and holidays to begin. We've had lots of different things going on across the week, including Party afternoon, Santa's Grotto and our class Nativity - I am so proud of how well all the children did! We've enjoyed making reindeer food and our calendars for 2025. 

 

Morpurgo Class team send a huge well done to all the children for their hard work this term and are looking forward to welcoming you back on the 6th January for the Spring term. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week certificate - goes to all Morpurgo Class for their amazing efforts in the Nativity, well done!smiley

 

Have a happy, safe and wonderful Christmas & New Year. 

 

Miss Mason, Mrs Holland, Mrs Holding, Miss Iddon & Miss Collins

Autumn 2 week 7

 

We've had another fabulous week in Morpurgo Class! 

 

The festivities have begun and we are enjoying our santa countdown by adding cotton wool to Santa's beard to represent each day getting closer. 

 

In literacy this week we have started to look at 'Stickman' By Julia Donaldson. We loved watching stickman getting back to his family tree by Santa. We have done some activities this week including decorating our own stickmen and made lots of other crafts to bring home in our wallet for the holidays. 

 

In maths this week we have been doing Christmas numicon activities including making our own numicon Christmas trees and baubles. 

 

In topic this week we have been busy! 

On Monday we made our own Rudolph Hot chocolate cones, some for us to take home and the rest for our Christmas fair stall - which was a huge success; they all sold! In cooking we built and decorated our own gingerbread house, we loved seeing our end product and tasting it, we even had leftovers to take home. On Wednesday we enjoyed our usual swimming lesson and our Christmas jumper and dinner day , we went into Park Class and had our dinner together. We've done more Christmas crafts including making our Christmas cards, Christmas tree threading and wreaths. On Friday we practiced our nativity in the hall and we did amazingly well! In the afternoon we made our own spiral snowman, we had some Christmas songs for rewards and enjoyed some calm relaxation time. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Bobbysmiley

 

Next week events are:

-Christmas party (Tuesday) 

-Swimming as normal (Wednesday)

-Our nativity play (Thursday morning) 

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo Class! 

 

Miss Mason & the team

Makaton - WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS - Singing Hands

Autumn 2 week 6

 

We've had another fantastic week in Morpurgo Class! 

 

In maths this week we have finished off our money topic and some of us have looked at £10 and £20 and could recap the coins from 1p to £2. The rest of us have done a numicon linked activity to our class story decorating tiger patterns with numicon pieces and paint. 

 

In literacy this week we've looked at the story 'Tiger who came to Tea' By Judith Kerr. We have done some activities around the story including making our own visual invitations for the Tiger to come to our school and in colourful semantics we have made our own sentences linking to the story. In phonics this week we have focused on the sounds 'd' and 'ch'. 

 

In topic this week we have been very busy, On Monday afternoon we started to make our Tiger food boxes using cereal boxes ready to put our tiger food in later in the week. On Tuesday, in cooking we decorated our own tiger cupcakes using stripes with icing. On Wednesday we enjoyed swimming and in the afternoon we completed our PSHE lesson looking at consent and being able to communicate yes and no - we all tried very hard with this! On Thursday at Forest School we enjoyed cooking sausages and exploring the outdoor world. On Friday we made our fabulous Hen for our shared class nativity and focus song 'Shoo little hen'. In the afternoon we enjoyed making tigers using pattern tissue paper and we enjoyed our rewards time. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Rileysmiley

 

Next weeks events are: 

- Christmas Jumper and dinner day on Wednesday

- Christmas fair (after school) On Thursday 4-7pm

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo Class. 

 

Miss Mason & the team

The Tiger Who Came To Tea!

Autumn 2 week 5

 

Wow what a busy week in Morpurgo Class! 

 

This week we have carried on our story 'The Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle. We have completed activities around the story including decorating our own butterflies and learning about the process of how the caterpillar turns into a butterfly. We have done colourful semantics around the story and looked at the sound's 'm' and 'z' in phonics. 

 

In maths this week we have continued our money topic, some of us have explored coins in the sand, decorated purses with coins and the rest of us have looked at £1, £2 and £5 note and have done really well with this! 

 

In topic this week we have been very busy. On Monday we made our own tea plate for the Hungry caterpillar, choosing different foods for him. On Tuesday in cooking we made Hungry Caterpillar biscuits and did very well at following the instructions on the communication board. In PE with Mr Banks, we showcased our MATP skills to some of our parents, we felt proud of all our achievements in MATP this term. On Wednesday we enjoyed our swimming lesson and in the afternoon in PSHE we learnt about how to look after ourselves if we have a cut or graze. We practiced cleaning dolly's leg and putting a plaster on, then we looked at items in a first aid kit. On Thursday in topic we learnt about carbohydrates and what foods those come in like, pasta, bread and wheat. We made our own carbohydrates plate with pasta shapes. On Friday in messy play with Mrs Birtwell we decorated our hen headbands ready for our Christmas production and in the afternoon, we enjoyed rewards. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Ahmadsmiley

 

Next week our class story will be 'The Tiger who came to tea' By Judith Kerr

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo Class!

 

Miss Mason & the team. 

Autumn 2 week 4 

 

What another amazing week we have had in Morpurgo Class. 

We started our new class story “The Hungry Caterpillar” By Eric Carle. We enjoyed looking and finding out what fruits the caterpillar ate and how he became a beautiful butterfly. 

We have done some activities around the story including our own caterpillar picture collages following the illustrations from the book. In phonics this week most of us have looked at the ‘n’ sound and the rest of us looked at the ‘z’ sound. 

 

In maths we continued our topic on money. Most of us explored coins further through paint printing and posting coins through quantity and number. Some of us have been looking at larger coins including 10p, 20p and 50p, we’ve done really well with these concepts. 

 

In topic we have been extremely busy. On Monday in topic we learnt about different groups of food including fruit and vegetables and what they look like. On Tuesday in cooking we made our own Hungry Caterpillar fruit kebabs and in the afternoon we enjoyed PE with Mr Banks. On Wednesday we enjoyed our swimming and in PSHE we learnt about personal hygiene and how to look after ourselves including wiping our noses and medicines. On Thursday we enjoyed Forest School with Mr Banks and in topic we learnt about dairy and where milk comes from. We found out that milk comes from a cow and we even did an activity that was like milking a cow and then Miss Mason made banana shakes with the milk.

Lastly on Friday we enjoyed our trip to the Space Centre. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Mandysmiley

 

Have a wonderful weekend Morpurgo Class. 

 

Miss Mason & the team

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Animated Film

Autumn 2 weeks 2 & 3

 

What a fantastic last two weeks we've had in Morpurgo Class! 

 

We have been reading the story "Don't put your finger in the Jelly Nelly." We looked at what food where behind each picture and listened to the rhyming words. We have done activities around the story including our colourful semantics word building and activities around different foods. In phonics we have been very busy looking at what we know in our phonetical knowledge. 

 

In maths we have been looking at the topic - money. It has been a tricky concept to learn but we have all worked really hard! We all listened to the '5 Currant Buns' song and each gave Miss Mason a penny in exchange for a currant bun, we all enjoyed each taking a turn. In our activities some of us did foam splatting with the current buns and coins, some of us used the piggy bank to post coins and explore numbers 1-5 and the rest of us started introducing real coins 1p, 2p and 5p - we looked at the different shapes, colour, size and what they represent. 

Next week we continue this and do more exploration and some of us will look at larger coins - 10p, 20p, 50p. 

 

In topic this week we have been very busy, with lots going on!

On Monday we did an activity linking to Remembrance Day - we watched a clip from Cbeebies showing what the Poppies represented and what happened, some of us even spoke about what they saw on the video i.e. 'The rabbit is scared of the dark'. We decorated our own Poppies in respect of Remembrance Day. On Tuesday in cooking we made edible sparklers using breadsticks, melted chocolate and sprinkles - we enjoyed this! On Wednesday we had a wow Wednesday afternoon linking to 'kindness' as part of Antibullying week and we made our own kindness trees, looking at symbols of what we can do to be kind. On Thursday in PSHE we learnt about making healthy choices and we made choices of what foods we'd put in our lunchboxes, some of us named the items independently. On Friday we celebrated Children in Need and decorated our own Pudsey bears! 

 

smileyOur Pupils of the week is Maddison & Aydasmiley

 

Next week events:

  • Starting to practice our Christmas song for the production. 

  • Space Centre Trip (Friday) Letters have gone home in your child's diary. 

Poppies Remembrance Animation

Autumn 2 week 2 

 

What a fantastic first week back in Morpurgo Class. 

 

We’ve made a start on our new topic “Exploring food” and linked this with “Halloween” for this week. 

 

In literacy we’ve read the story “The Hungry Caterpillar Creepy Crawly Halloween”. We explored the book finding different creepy crawlies and found the Hungry Caterpillar eating sweets behind the pumpkin at the end! 

 

In maths this week we’ve used numicon in paint to decorate our pumpkins, some of us explored up to 2, some to 5, 10 and beyond. We used a communication board to say what numicon we want to use. 

 

In topics this week we have been very busy. On Monday in topic we enjoyed various Halloween songs. In attention Autism we did pumpkin stew, we enjoyed listening to the song and watching Miss Mason stir the stew, some of us came up to have a turn. In cooking we made pumpkin biscuits and in PSHE this week we learnt about keeping ourselves at Halloween and bonfire night. On Thursday we made pumpkin collages and enjoyed Forest Schools. On Friday we enjoyed making our bubbling cauldron pictures and rewards time. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Bobbysmiley

 

Have a wonderful weekend Morpurgo Class. 

 

Miss Mason & the team. 

Autumn 1 week 6 & 7

 

What a fantastic last two weeks we have had!

 

We finished off our 'All about me and my friends' topic and enjoyed learning about one another. 

This week we have been learning all about Autumn and read the story 'The Leaf Thief'. 

We learnt about how leaves fall off the trees during the Autumn season. 

 

We have done lots of activities around Autumn including making leaf collages, squirrel pictures with leaves, making squirrel biscuits and lots of fine motor activities. 

 

After half term, we will be starting our 'Halloween' topic for the first week back. 

 

Halloween activities will be going on Seesaw if you wanted to do any over the holidays, we will look forward to seeing what you all get up too. 

 

Swimming will resume every Wednesday after half term up until the Christmas Holidays. 

 

Have a lovely break. 

 

Miss Mason & the team. 

The Leaf Thief | Read Aloud Animated Children's Book

Autumn 1 week 5

 

What fun we've had this week in Morpurgo Class!

 

Special events taken place this week: 

- WOW French Day 

- Poetry Day

 

In literacy we started looking at our new book "Time to make friends - By Penny Tassoni". We have begun to start activities around our story and will continue this next week. 

In maths this week some of us have used the coloured bears to match to the numicon shape, some of us up to 3, 5 and 10. The rest of us have begun to explore number lines using numicon and then covering numbers up on the number line to see if we could find the next number to follow on, we all tried very hard with this! 

 

In topic this week, we have been super busy! 

In topic we made pasta friendship bracelets, we enjoyed choosing different shaped pasta to go on our bracelets, they were tricky to thread, but we tried very hard with our fine motor skills. In cooking we made friendship pancakes, making them into heart shapes, spreading jam and adding love and sprinkles on top - these were very yummy!

We have enjoyed two special days this week including our WOW Wednesday French Day and World Poetry day on Thursday. We explored French nursery rhymes and counting to 10 songs in French, we decorated our own French flag, did some French food tasting and decorated our own Eiffel towers with pasta. On Thursday we focused on the nursery rhyme 'Incy Wincy Spider' linking to Poetry day - we made our own spiders and made our own Spider cupcakes - we loved these! On Friday we did some colour matching activities, tested our new trampoline and enjoyed our rewards time. 

 

smileyOur Pupil of the week is Rileysmiley

 

Have a fabulous weekend Morpurgo Class! 

 

Miss Mason & the team 

Autumn 1 week 4 

 

What another busy week finishing off our Owl Babies story. 

 

This week in literacy we have finished learning about our focus book "Owl babies" and we have done more activities around the story including making our own Owls using pinecones, cotton wool and googly eyes, they look amazing! Later in the week we completed our colourful semantics work using, communication boards and symbols to convey meaning to our sentences. In phonics this week we have focused on the 'p' and 'x' sound, applying it to our mark making, writing and reading. 

 

In maths this week we have continued our numicon activities focusing on, comparing sizes of the numicon shapes, through exploration and printing in paint to see the finished results. We explored the shape through touch in a feely bag and then used a communication board to communicate which number we found. Some of us practiced our number formation, writing our numbers to 10 and beyond, we all tried really hard with this. 

 

In topic this week, we have had lots of fun! 

In cooking this week we made Owl rice cakes using jam to spread, apples for the feathers and bananas and raisins for the eyes, each owl looked unique which Miss Mason loved the most! In PSHE we have continued to learn about 'How we can be a good friend and relationships with friends.' 

 

Our new topic for the last few weeks is "My friend and me - How are we all different?' and our class story is 'Time to make friends - By Penny Tassoni'

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo Class,

 

Miss Mason & the team.

 

Owl Babies Animated story

Communication - Makaton signs for Owl Babies Story

Autumn 1 week 3

 

What another busy week we have had in Morpurgo Class! 

 

This week in literacy we have started our new story called "Owl Babies". 

We enjoyed learning about how owls come out at night time and sit on a branch. We have done lots of activities around the story including decorating our own owl pictures and finding pictures, symbols and making sentences about the owls in our colourful semantics work. In phonics this week some of us have been focusing on the 't' sound and the 'w' sound. We have used letters to mark make in the sand, and make CVC words like, tap, sat, at.

In communication we enjoyed choosing some of our own Singing Hands songs and using our PEC's to communicate what we want. 

 

In maths this week we have carried on with our numicon, we introduced colour matching with numicon, matching the numbers to coloured plates. Some of us even used two of the same colour to add numbers together. We also used coloured pegs to match with the numicon and we all matched the colours and some of us counted the pegs and could add them together. 

 

In topic this week we have been very busy and creative! 

In cooking we decorated our own owl biscuits using oreos cut in half for feathers, chocolate buttons for the eyes and a carrot for the nose. 

In PSHE we made our own friendship stew using different coloured rice to represent what we'd like in our friendships using a communication board. Red rice - for loving one another, Green rice - for help our friends and blue rice - being kind. We loved this activity stirring and sprinkling the rice. 

In Art we enjoyed making our own owl collages, using brown paint to spread the feathers, gold tissue paper for the feathers and cupcake cases for the eyes. We loved the paint! 

In messy play with Mrs Birtwell we made our own nature collages. 

 

smileyOur star of the week is Maddisonsmiley

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo Class, 

 

Miss Mason & the team. 

Autumn 1 week 2 

What another fantastic week we've had in Morpurgo Class! 

We've enjoyed carrying on our learning 'All about me'. 

 

This week in maths we have started looking at numicon and the relationships with numbers. We started off by exploring numicon through a sensory activity. We used the numicon to print in the playdough to see if we could feel the shape and some of us even started to count the dots in the playdough. We then looked at how we can match numicon to a flash card and see if we could look at the colour. 

 

In literacy this week we have continued our story 'From my head to my toe - By Eric Carle'. We have continued doing our colourful semantics work, making sentences about the story and sequencing and looking at key pictures from the book. In phonics this week our focus sounds have been 'a' and 'v', we explored hearing, saying, reading and mark making with the letter a and v. 

 

In topic learning this week we have enjoyed making our face biscuits, mixing icing sugar and adding our eyes, mouth and hair on to make our face - the best part was eating! We have enjoyed PE and learning about safety and forest school with Mr Banks. On Thursday we learnt about how to be a good friend in PSHE and on Friday we enjoyed messy play with Mrs Birtwell and in topic time we decorated our own monkeys using brown crayons and feathers. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Ahmad for having a excellent week in classsmiley

 

Enjoy your weekend Morpurgo Class!

Next week our new story is Owl Babies. 

 

Miss Mason and the class team. 

 

From Head To Toe Song | Eric Carle Picture Book Song with Movements

Autumn 1 week 1 

 

What a brilliant start to the year we’ve had in Morpurgo Class. It has been lovely to welcome all of our new friends to our class and we’re all starting to settle in really well. 

 

This week we have started our first topic “All about me”, learning all about our features and what we each have as an individual. 

 

Our class story this week and next week is called “From my head to my toe - by Eric Carle”. In this story we have done some our colourful semantics work, looking at the characters in the story and what they do. We all worked super hard on making our sentences, with “who” “doing what” “where” and “when”. Some of us did intensive interactions with our teachers, doing the actions from the story, like wiggle my arms and clap my hands. In phonics this week we have started looking at the ‘s’ sound and applying it to our mark making skills by exploring the sand with our fingers. 

 

In maths this week, we have enjoyed finding out each others favourite counting songs, like 10 in a bed, 5 speckled frogs and one tomato, two tomato. We have started looking at our numbers, some of us up to 3, 5, 10 and beyond. 

 

In topic this week, we’ve been very busy. In cooking this half term our focus skill is spreading ingredients and we made marvellous me wrap pizzas, spreading tomato puree and sprinkling cheese with circle cheese for our eyes and peppers for our mouths - we loved having a taste as we decorated! In art, we created our very own mirrors using card, tin foil and stickers to decorate and on Friday we explored new expressive media and made our own pasta portraits of ourselves. We enjoyed PE and Forest School with Mr Banks and messy play with Mrs Birtwell. 

 

Our pupil of the week is Ayda - for having positive interactions during activity time. Well done Ayda! 

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo class, 

 

Miss Mason & the team. 

Morpurgo Class 2023 - 2024

Summer 2 Week 6

 

We have had a super week in Morpurgo Class. 

We have started our final topic of the year "Under the sea/ Summer holidays"

 

Our focus story is called "Rainbow fish" 

 

We have started activities around the story including making our own rainbow fish with shining scales using tin foil. We have made fish 2D shape pictures, a sensory bug picture in outdoor education and with Mrs Birtwell in messy play we celebrated England winning the Semi Finals by making the England badge using our hands. 

 

Next week: 

- Our class performance (Monday)

- Class trip to Mrs Dawson's Farm (Thursday)

- Continuing our under the sea/ summer holidays topic through cooking and craft activities.

 

Have a lovely weekend Morpurgo Class! 

 

Miss Mason, Miss Chadwick, Mrs Holland, Mrs Holding, Miss Iddon & Mr Harrison

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Singing Hands - Football Song

Spring 2 - Weeks 1-6

 

Happy Easter Morpurgo Class, have a look at the Easter learning and activities we have been up to over the last few weeks. 

 

Have a wonderful break at home ready to come back to school raring to go for the summer term. 

 

See you all on Monday 15th April. 

 

Morpurgo Class Team

 

Makaton Topic - Easter - Singing Hands

5 Little Easter Eggs - Singing Hands makaton

Spring 1 week 5 

 

What a super finish to the half term! 

 

We have started our new topic 'Field to fork' and we have learnt lots about where food comes from and what we eat. 

 

In literacy we have been reading the story 'The Enormous Turnip' and we have done lots of work around the story. We started off with a hook to the book by having a ginormous turnip, rope and soil. We learnt about how all the characters struggled to pull the turnip out of the soil. We then did some activities around the story including our colourful semantics work by making sentences and using language around the story including 'turnip, man, pull, ready steady go'. In phonics this week the phase 2 group have been focusing on the sounds 'g' and 'o' and have played the alphabet soup game with the tins and phase 3 group have focused on 'ch and sh' making words like, chop, chin, chip, ship, shop. 

 

In maths this week and last week we focused on 'Capacity' and we learnt about 'full, half full and empty'. We used different containers to represent capacity and filled these up with pasta. We enjoyed exploring, pouring and tipping the contents to practice modelling the key language. 

 

In topic this week we have learnt about where our food comes from. On Monday we did an activity about making our own vegetables patches and learnt about which vegetables grow in the ground. On Tuesday in cooking we practiced our chopping, scooping and peeling skills using different fruits like strawberry, kiwi and oranges. We then had these as toppings on our pancakes. On Wednesday in PSHE we learnt about healthy and unhealthy foods and we explored what these look like and also which foods are our favourites. On Thursday in outdoor learning we met a very special reptile called Bamboo the Bearded dragon, we learnt about the food she eats such as critters and vegetables, some of us even stroked her! On Friday we enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year by having a feast and trying different foods such as noodles, spring rolls, prawn crackers and fortune cookies. 

 

smileyOur pupil of the week is Maddisonsmiley

 

Have a lovely half term break Morpurgo Class and we look forward to seeing you all on Monday 19th February. 

 

Miss Mason & the team.