4 months ago
Posted on 22nd Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Bicycles in the past

On Tuesday we bought our bikes into school, in the afternoon we compared our bikes to photos of bikes from the past. We talked about the similarities and also the differences. Children identified that wheels were different, paint colours, that really old bikes had wheels made from metal. We learnt new vocabulary such as saddle, hand bars.

4 months ago
Posted on 20th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Learning about cooperation

In our weekly PSED session we helped Ziggy solve a problem he was having with his friend Zaggy. They both wanted to use the wooden blocks to build but they wanted to build different things, what could they do? We read a book called “Together we can” which helped us to think about how we can work together (like our school learning power – TEAM ANT) to achieve a goal. During our afternoon exploring session we looked for lots of great cooperation happening in the classroom, especially at tidy up time.

4 months ago
Posted on 17th Jan 2026 by Laura Bessant

National Year of Reading 2026!

Hodnet School is excited to embrace the National Year of Reading in 2026.

What is the National Year of Reading?

The National Year of Reading is a UK wide campaign by the Department for Education and the National Literacy Trust. The campaign’s theme is ‘Go All In’ meaning read about things that really matter to you. Whether it’s sport, music, fashion so something else, if people ‘go all in’ on a topic, the hope is that they will enjoy what they are reading and do it more.

Why is this the National Year of Reading?

Studies have shown that reading is connected to lots of lifelong benefits, including wellbeing and confidence, and improving writing and conversation skills. Unfortunately, reading for pleasure among young people is at its lowest for 20 years. We need our young people to read in order to improve their own life chances, both in education and the workplace.

Is reading just about books?

Definitely not! The National Year of Reading is promoting all types of reading including comics, magazines, online blogs, e-readers, instruction manuals and audiobooks. The campaign wants everyone to read in a way that works for them.

What is happening during the National Year of Reading?

Throughout 2026, there will be lots of events across the UK. At Hodnet School, Mrs Bessant has created a calendar of events to ensure that we enjoy a reading event every month of 2026.

National Year of Reading Calendar

Our first event is ‘Reading Resolutions’ – allowing our children to set a reading goal for the year. This could be about trying a new format of reading or perhaps trying a new author or genre.

The Department for Education want children and families to read for at least 10 minutes every day and Hodnet School we want that for our children as well. How amazing would it be if we could all achieve that goal!

4 months ago
Posted on 14th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Road safety

Ziggy asked us how we could keep safe near the road, we watched a video and then went outside and practised and some of us used small world items to help us practise crossing the road safely.

4 months ago
Posted on 14th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Forest Schools map work

Today, we received a letter from the Forest Fairies asking for help. Some of the characters from our phonics stories were playing hide and seek with the Forest Fairies in the woodland but they wouldn’t come out from their hiding places. The only way that they would come out is if the fairies were able to read what each of them had received for Christmas. Unfortunately, the fairies are not as good at reading as us so we had to help them. Using a map with coloured dots to show us where the characters were hiding, we had to be detectives and follow the map to find each of them. We worked with our partners to use our phonic knowledge to read each of the words containing the oa digraph or igh trigraph. Finally, we linked each character to their present on our activity clipboard so that we could tell the fairies the answers they needed.

Great team work and some excellent discussions about how we needed to orientate our maps.

4 months ago
Posted on 14th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Ordering quantities and matching numerals

This week in our maths sessions we have been focusing on counting, ordering and matching numerals. We have been ordering block towers and ensuring they are in a step pattern.

4 months ago
Posted on 10th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Woodland Wednesday – spotting changes

We were delighted that the weather was a little milder for our Woodland Wednesday session this week and we headed outside. Children spotted new plants growing and we took photos of them to look at in class. We were worried that some of our friends throughout the school might stamp, stomp or step on the new plants so we got busy making signs to warn them about the new plants. We talked about what colours would be good for the signs and the images we could draw on the signs to help people understand.

4 months ago
Posted on 10th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Matching CAPITALS and lower case letters

In our phonics sessions this week we have been matching lower case and capital letters, in our woodland Wednesday session we searched for CAPITAL LETTERS and wrote the lowercase letter to match them using chalk.

4 months ago
Posted on 10th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

The Four Seasons

We created calendar pictures, colour mixing paints to create the correct colours to help us add the leaves to a tree in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. The class were inspired by an photographic image of the same deciduous tree in the 4 different seasons.

4 months ago
Posted on 10th Jan 2026 by Emma Noden

Super subitising

This week in our maths mastery sessions we have been focusing on subitising. We have been looking at linear groups and subitising within them, for example in a line of 4 dots we might explain that we can see 2 and 2. We have been focusing on what we can see, rather than counting. We were able to choose from lots of activities to help us develop that skill, making playdough cakes for the number blocks, playing dice games (making a snowman) matching the correct number of snowballs to a numicon shape, playing the subitising guessing game.