20.10.21 – Year 5 Groundbreaking Greeks Celebration Event.
Today Year 5 took part in a Greek style ‘Olympic Games’. They enjoyed competing in activities such as:
- running races
- shot put
- javalin
- discus
- hammer throw
- long jump
- horse and chariot races
Great fun was had by everyone – even when it poured with rain! It was the perfect way to end our learning journey. Everyone had to demonstrate collaboration in their team spirits, resilience when they came across activities they hadn’t done before and empathy when some of their team became injured participants.
We would like to say a huge thank you to MR Baxter for running todays events.
Year 5 were able to determine what healthy and unhealthy friendship cakes were today in PSHE. One the recipes we came up with was:
First, mix together helping, caring and respect,
Next, sprinkle on some kindness and trust,
Lastly, cover you cake in laughter as icing.
The children in Art Club had a fantastic afternoon learning how to make sun catchers. We worked together as a team and carefully filled in the templates with tissue paper. After our creations were laminated, we held them up to the light to see how the colours worked as sun catchers. We listened so carefully to Miss Banning’s instructions and were so proud of our creations!
Well done Art Club! 🙂
Foundation had a very exciting day exploring our new fancy dress area. The children transformed into Gruffalos, Princesses, Pirates and Dragons! Despite all of the excitement, the children remembered to respect our learning environment and made sure that they hung their costumes up after they had finished with them.
We also collaborated with our friends and helped one another to get in and out of our costumes. We played lots of different games using our fancy dress as inspiration and made sure everyone had an important role to play.
Today, Year 6 have been working extremely hard on ensuring the skills learnt in their most recent literacy unit can be embedded into their writing.
Right back from their very first lesson where they were feature detectives, the children have built on prior knowledge to successfully write some fantastic stories based on our learning journey – Frozen Kingdom.
Using their learning values, the children were resourceful and collaborated well when they were stuck in the learning pit. Well done Year 6!
This week Year 5 took a chapter of our class book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time, and had to take on the role of a character. They had to delve deep into their characters thoughts and feelings noticing their personality and their state of mind.
After their role play the children then had to create a freeze frame. Every child had to be tracking their characters thoughts because if they were tapped on the shoulder they had to speak as their character and hold improvisation dialogues with their characters.
All of year 5 were highly collaborative during this lesson, really showing support for one another, it also showed how they deeply understand the text we are currently reading.
Well done to all of the fantastic new children in Beech and Ash. We are all so proud of how well you have settled into your new school.
This week, we have been focusing on building relationships and getting to know our new learning environment. We have had so much fun playing with all of the resources and using our imaginations to create exciting games. We even collaborated at tidy up time and worked as a team to make sure the classrooms were looking beautiful and ready for learning!
Take a look at some of the amazing work we have already done. We have been drawing self portraits and focusing on what makes us special:
Foundation had an amazing time on the inflatables today. They really enjoyed navigating their way through obstacles and challenging themselves to keep going! The children worked collaboratively and developed their gross motor skills by negotiating space. Well done Foundation! 🙂
Oak Class had great fun today enjoying all things sporty. It was great to see such determination, teamwork and smiles. A big well done to everyone!
Foundation had a fantastic day on Sports Day! They were so excited to experience their very first Sports Day and showed their enthusiasm by trying their very best at each activity. The children loved collaborating with their friends and used their brilliant relationships to encourage and support one another.
Foundation also showed amazing resilience by not giving up, even when it was really challenging! First, we took part in some running races and then took part in some exciting activities using lots of different resources.
Well done Foundation, you are super sportspeople! 🙂
In Foundation, we have been developing our fine motor skills. Fine motor skills involve the use of the small muscles in our hands and wrists. They help us to write with a pencil, do up our zips and gain control when we are eating . Children’s hands need to develop dexterity and strength, so we provide lots of different fine motor play for the children.
The children always enjoy using individual play dough, pom poms, tweezers, and tuff spot writing to develop their muscles. Opportunities for children to practise manipulating, pinching , squeezing and twisting items all help develop their fine motor skills. These engaging activities will train not only their muscles but the links between their bodies and brains.
Today, Cherry class used collaboration, relationships and empathy to understand and discuss what makes a friend. We talked about if there was a difference between best friends and a friend. Then, we created drama pieces about what a kind friend looks like. Lots of our dramas showed friends listening carefully, solving problems, being kind and spending time together.
We have seen some wonderful collaboration in Oak Class this week from finding out about the oceans as a team, improving sentences and solving problems in maths.
Here is a photo of two children in particular who we taking in turns and having purposeful discussions to help move their learning on.
How have you collaborated this week? What could you do next week to show your collaboration skills?
Celebrating 100 acts of kindness with a movie and popcorn!
The Nurture Room pupils have been collaborating to achieve 100 acts of kindness over the last half term.
This included, good manners, kindness towards others, and recognising the impact it has.
What a positive experience, which will be on going!
This week, year 1 and 2 have been helping to get the pond ready for its liner. This mostly involved moving stones out the was to prevent it from being punctured and getting it ready for levelling by the Year 6 children.
An enormous thank you to everyone who came along to help with the construction of the pond on Saturday. We couldn’t have done it with out you. Here are some photos of the amazing team. One of our old pupils, whose now at secondary school, also came back to lend us a hand.
One of the Green Team members have contacted our expert ‘The Pond Man’ and we hope to update you about the next stage soon.
We’ve been using our problem solving skills to solve the following problem:
By working in a systematic way, and utilising our mathematical reasoning skills, we’re well on our way to solving the problem. Some of us have been very resourceful, using physical resources to support us.
Answers to follow…
In Year One we work hard to be part of a team. We use collaboration to succeed in our learning. Take a look at some of the ways we collaborated today.
Today we made the frames for our Christmas lanterns. The children (and adults) had great fun collaborating, sawing, measuring and snipping.
Have a look at some of the great shapes we made ready to be covered on Thursday.
Thank you to everyone who came to help.
Well, success! Only yesterday I posted the challenge of making a Tin Man in Ten minutes using the video on our school Blog. Today, in walked Jessica Newton with her tinfoil ballerina made at home last night. Jessica stated quite proudly that she had spent some lovely time working on the figure with her Mum, having watched the video on a Smartphone in the lounge.
A huge well done and here is the tin foil figure.
Dear All,
As you should be aware, “ME, MYSELF AND I” our whole school learning journey is revving up nicely with the children thinking about themselves and their aspirations. As part of thinking about themselves, the children will be producing various miniature versions of themselves in different materials. Please, could you have a go at this at home with your family and then show off your efforts by bringing them to show at school. You can choose any size you wish, the video is just a starting point. Good luck and thank you for helping out.
Mr T.
First day back and I am impressed with the maturity shown by the whole class who have come back ready and raring to learn!
In maths today we were thinking about ‘When do we do maths in everyday life?’
This question really got us all thinking and realising how important maths is for simple tasks like cooking, catching a us and shopping. “Maths is everywhere!” Was a comment made by one of the class.
Welooked at different professions and also looked in depth at what maths we are actually using for each task. Baking for instance uses time, weighing, multiplying, subtracting and adding to name a few!
When do you ‘do’ maths and what do you do?
Collaboration, resilience, relationships and resourcefulness are just a few of the learning values we have been focusing on in Year 1 during our afternoon shared sessions.
We have been enjoying our shared learning sessions with each other and working with tremendous creativity and imagination!
We had to figure out how to pass a hula hoop around the circle without breaking the circle.
Then we had to pass two hula hoops in different directions.
After that, because we worked so well as a team, we had to do it without out dropping a ball that was between our knees.
do you think you could collaborate as well as us to succeed?
Good morning, Maple Class…
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the building of the tallest tower possible…
You may select any 6 team members, but it is essential that you collaborate, take turns and listen to each other’s ideas…
You have five minutes to recruit your team together to receive your full assignment.
Be advised of the two rules:
-
Your tower must stand up by itself.
-
You must ensure it survives the ‘blow’ test.
This message will self-destruct in precisely five seconds…
5
4
3
2
1
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
T
Wow, How challenging is division?
The children today have shown great resilience towards their maths learning, with many taking risks, even when they were faced with the struggle of dividing to decimals and using the long division method.
They supported one another and also some went outside to ‘teach’ one another.
Some great learning values shown.
Palm Class were vocabulary detectives in our literacy session…
We collaborated together to find all the technical vocabulary in an explanation text about the life cycle of a butterfly.
There were lots of new words for us to discuss and define the meaning of.
We all discovered plenty of exciting vocabulary we hope to use in our own explanation about the butterfly life cycle. Which words will you magpie for your Big Write?
Here is a short list of just some of the technical words we found:
-
metamorphosis
-
species
-
cylindrical
-
hatch
-
transformation
-
appetite
-
caterpillar
-
pupa
-
emerged
-
hemolymph
-
flight
-
chrysalis
Pick 4 of these words to explain to someone at home.
Can you think of a way to remember how to spell them for your Big Write?
Monkey Puzzle have been extending their vocabulary, ready for their Big Write on Friday. They have ping-ponged the words and also played games to become familiar with them and knowing what they mean.
Do you know what these words mean?
unyielding / aghast / unassuming
Have a go at using them in a sentence!!
Today in literacy, The children of Monkey Puzzle worked collaboratively in groups to interpret and understand the vocabulary choices made by Moira Andrew in ‘Tsunami’; our lead text.
Keeping it a secret from their peers, each group embarked on the challenge of creating a movement piece that represented the text they were given. Each group were given a stanza from the poem and the others had to guess what they were performing.
Each performance was so fantastic, with everybody so focused that it wasn’t difficult to guess which stanza they were performing.
Well done Monkey Puzzle, you have made your teacher very proud of the maturity and engagement you showed to this task!
As part of their class reward, the children from Monkey Puzzle asked to spend time baking. With the amazing support of Mrs Hurt aka ‘superwoman’ and Mrs McGrane, all 30 children baked a variety of cakes and sweet treats. These included: Rock buns, Easter biscuits, jam tarts, flapjack, buns and chocolate Easter nests! Not only did they bake all of these amazing this, but they also did the washing up!
Well done to everybody of Monkey Puzzle for working well as a team and supporting one another.
We have been collaborating in our SOLE session to create some stunning images from ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’ story. Absolutely amazing effort Palm Class!
It was wonderful to see so many of you applying your new 2-D shape knowledge to these creations. What other scenes from the story will you make next? Which 2-D shapes will you pick?
Palm Class certainly rose to their Elicitation challenge today, by collaborating to create 2D shapes with our programmable toys. Which 2D shapes can you spot?
Which 2D shapes proved more challenging to make? Which ones were less tricky? Why do you think this? How could you record your instructions? Which position and direction words could you use to help you?
It really wasn’t quite as simple as we first thought… So watch this space, to see what we will be able to do next!
With only 2 more class points to achieve, Palm Class really excelled themselves today! They worked exceptionally hard as a team to collaborate and show resilience in all their learning.
Well done all of you! Our teddy bear picnic is getting closer and closer! What will you do to help us achieve those final class points? How will you make sure you are always doing the right thing at the right time?
Today Monkey Puzzle were introduced to our class text of Zoo, by Anthony Browne. We read the story and then thought about what it must have been like at that zoo. We were also lucky to have one of the characters (Harry’s brother) visit us too, so we could hot seat him and ask him questions. Additionally to this, we were thinking about how some of these zoo animals would feel being cooped up. We used our empathy skills really well.
Using our featured image, how do you think this gorilla is feeling?
Look what I caught this morning? During Carousel time, I spotted 4 children interacting and pushing their learning forward in maths by answering questions on our working wall. I was incredibly impressed to see the focus and collaboration skills amongst the group and the initiative to have a go without prompting. Does anyone else in their class do this?
We discovered that Homophones are words that sound exactly the same but are actually spelt differently and have different meanings.
We identified the different spelling patterns and had lots of phonic foam fun writing our homophones.
We then collaborated to create rhyming homophone sentences!