Pilgrim Academy February 2026

Cygnets

Cygnets have been looking at ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ during English lessons. The children have produced some great non-chronological reports about penguins.

Instead of bug club, we have introduced 'Mystery Reader' where one of our adults comes into school and reads a story to us.

As part of our History topic, we had a Florence Nightingale workshop. We spent the afternoon learning about the Victorian Era, and then all about Florence Nightingale and why she is an important figure in history.

Swans

This term, Swans have been reading ‘The Emperor’s Egg’, a book all about Emperor Penguins. The children have been really engaged with their learning; creating free verse poems and composing music to accompany them; writing about the penguin life cycle; producing some amazing setting descriptions and finally an informative paragraph! Well done Year 2, keep up the hard work for next term!

Kingfishers

Kingfishers have immersed themselves in their Design and Technology unit this term, creating torches for a specific purpose.  They used a range of everyday resources to create their prototypes, ensuring it had a switch, and a place for the bulb.   Our PE topic has seen us working on our balance and posture, using transitions to move between them. We enjoyed sharing our routines with our classmates and coaching each other to help improve.   In English we have been delving deep into stories from the book: 'The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Tales'. We wrote persuasive letters to a prince and princess, advising them about their choices, and wrote detailed summaries about what we read.   Our computing unit has been fun! We have gone back to the basics, learning how to use paint and all the functions within it.

Turtles

Turtles have had such a positive term, plenty of positive posts and dojos earnt by all for consistently showing our school values of courage, kindness and respect! They have worked so hard in maths during our fraction and decimals topic and absolutely blown us away with their knowledge. We are so impressed with their efforts on their times tables, we have several children already on the ultimate quiz because they whizzed through their all of their times tables!   Turtles also worked extremely hard this term on their handwriting and presentation. The children have written some lovely work related to our book: 'The Great Kapok Tree'.   We are eager to see just how much they continue improving and impressing us next term.

Sea Stars

What a busy start to the new year for Sea Stars; they have worked incredibly hard in all areas of the curriculum, learning lots of new content and producing beautiful work.

In art, children were inspired by the work of Charlie Mackesy and produced sketches showing depth and emotion based on a cherished memory. This further linked to their work with dance in PE as they created a reflective dance routine which captured a moment in time from Reception to Year 3. As a class, we regularly top the leaderboards for ‘Most Class Dojo’ points, and many children also feature on the weekly TTRS leaderboard. We’ve further celebrated homework effort and success by ‘Spinning the Wheel’ to recognise their hard work! Mrs Backhouse, Mrs Ireson and Mrs Allen have thoroughly enjoyed their first-half term in Sea Stars – what a fantastic class in a wonderful classroom environment.

Blue Whales

Blue Whales have had a brilliant start to 2026. In English they completed a balanced argument entitled: Are Pigeons Worthless? This linked beautifully to our class text ‘Twitch’.

In history, pupils have loved developing their understanding of Victorian times by studying an original census from 1851.

Moving across to geography, the class sharpened up their map skills and continued to learn more about the world around them. Mrs Ireson, Mrs Backhouse and Miss Jones also enjoyed handing out lots of certificates to celebrate their efforts with home learning!