Author: Scott Grason-Taylor

Digging in the Dirt

Scott Grason-Taylor

We started our new term by digging in the dirt. It was the best kind of dirt for digging in too as it was soft and wet and even wetter by the time we finished.

The objective was to expose the root system of the plants and to talk about the function of each plant part. We also made comparisons,looking closely at the leaves and the flowers on our field and in the forest. We used a key to spot and name the plants we had found.

On return to the classroom we looked with magnifying glasses,watched videos and chopped up the plants with scissors.

Later in the week we painted the flowers!

 

Our First Week Back After Easter

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello Visitors,

Our first week back has been jam-packed with lots of learning about new topics.

In RE we have started to explore the question: ‘What would Jesus do?’. We have focused on the parable of ‘The Two Builders’ this week, from Matthew 7:24-27. We discussed the parable’s meaning: if we trust in God, and live the life that he wants us to live, we will lead a successful and happy life. 

We have also worked hard to complete a poster about animals in English lessons. We have included conjunctions and relative clauses within our writing, and practised drawing the animal of our choice. Did you know that snow leopards can’t roar?

Finally, we wanted to share our new Christian Value with you all: Service. We will be exploring this in Collective Worship each day, and completing activities that are related within our prayer spaces. 

We hope you have had a great week too.

Discoverers 

 

Welcome back!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello families,

I hope that you had an enjoyable Easter break.

Leaders have enjoyed their first week of the Summer Term and it has been lovely for me to get to know them more this week. It is certainly going to be a busy final term at primary school for the children, with lots to look forward to.

This week, the children have been introduced to our new Christian value: service. Over the coming weeks, we will be looking out for acts of service in our class that we can share and celebrate together.

Throughout this week, the children have impressed me with their incredibly positive and mature attitudes towards SATs preparations. We have been busy revisiting learning and practicing answering a range of questions in preparation for the week commencing 9th May.

In addition to SATs preparations, we have also started our new topic for the Summer Term, which is “Animals”. Over the next two weeks in English, the children will be focussing on animals that are leaders – like our class name – with a particular focus on lions. This week, the children have watched video clips of lions in action in order to begin to describe an event. A range of vocabulary and sentence types have been used and I am looking forward to reading the finished descriptions next week.

In art, the children created some creative double page spreads in their sketch books, which showcase their research into the life and techniques of Leonardo Da Vinci. This term, our art specialism will focus on drawing and the children are looking forward to developing their skills over the coming weeks.

First week of Summer term!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello families,

After having two weeks off, it was so lovely to see all of our friends again! We have started our summer term with lots of new learning. In Religious Education, we have started exploring the question of ‘What kind of world did Jesus want?’ We thought about what the world is like today and what we would like it to be like. This fits perfectly with out current Christian value of ‘service’ and in worship this week, we have explored things that we can do to help each other. 

In art, we have started to explore the work of ‘Dante Rossetti’ and have learnt some facts about his life. We have also started to look at the Ancient Greece period in history. Lots more fun learning to come!  

Thank you for reading and see you here next week!

Adventurers 

 

 

 

Summer term is here already!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a lovely Easter break!

We have lots of fun activities to look forward to this term. Learners Class will begin swimming lessons on Tuesday mornings this term. Please make sure to give your permission on Parent Pay if you haven’t already.

Mrs Gurney will be teaching computers on Tuesday afternoons this term.

This week in Maths, we have enjoyed learning about position and direction. We have made quarter turns, half turns, three quarter turns and full turns with lots of objects around the classroom and have had lots of discussion around clockwise and anti-clockwise.

In Science, we have classified animals in to 6 main groups depending on their features and enjoyed drawing pictures to demonstrate our learning.

In English this week, we have been making posters about animals that are good ‘Learners’ – like our class name! We each has our own ideas of animals that were smart and were able to back-up our opinions with facts.

In Art, drawing is our new topic and we have been looing at the artist Pablo Picasso. We learned about his style of drawing portraits and had a go ourselves. We thoroughly enjoyed this and the finished pieces were fantastic!

As part of Hedgehog Awareness week, next week, we will be having a ‘hedgehoggy day’ on Thursday 5th May. We will keep you posted!

Learners love to learn!

10 is Exciting

Scott Grason-Taylor

Its been a long time coming and the excitement has been building but this week we have done a full and thorough investigation of the composition of ten.

The Pioneers have made 10 with Numicon and spotted patterns in their calculations. We have build different shapes with numberblocks and written the calculations to match the shapes. From this we have counted in 2’s and 5’s and are now ready to go beyond 10.

A snowy end to the week!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Who would have thought, we would be ending the week with flurries of snow? There’s nothing like the British weather!

I think hedgehogs will stay in hibernation for a little bit longer! Despite that, this week we have started some persuasive writing around how we can persuade the other classes in school to join our plight to protect the hedgehogs in our surroundings! We have been thinking about the features of persuasive writing this week and next week will be writing a speech to share and persuade our peers to hep us.

In maths, we have been learning about fractions and in particular we have explored equal parts of a whole and have been finding a half of an object.

In RE we have been thinking about Salvation, we are able to explain the meaning of Salvation ( Jesus rescuing people) and to articulate how Salvation links to the Easter Story. We are really enjoying learning about the Easter Story and it is prompting some very meaningful discussions.

We delighted in playing out in the snow flurries this week, but now need some sunshine for our newly planted seeds to grow! Roll on summer!

Learners Class

 

 

Our Visit to St John’s

Scott Grason-Taylor

On a beautiful sunny Tuesday, the Pioneers made their way to visit St John’s Church. We managed the walk and arrived to be greeted my Mrs Jones. We had a bit of time to explore and then Mrs Jones told us all the Bible Story of the Shepherd and the Lost Sheep. The Pioneers then went off to find this retold in a stained glass window.

We discovered lots of new vocabulary-pew,pulpit,aisle,organ and font and vestments.

So lovely.

Reading,Writing and Measurement

Scott Grason-Taylor

Every Friday we go to the Library to select a new book. In the process we have noticed how the books are arranged on the shelf and how the are stored with the spines facing out so we can read them. We are getting quite good at returning books too.

Trolls and giants have featured heavily in this week’s learning and we have been measuring using different bricks. The Pioneers took great care with this work and their attention to detail was amazing . The maths chat was wonderful.

Having written stories about the troll and the goats and discussed other versions of this,the Pioneers were delighted to have a go at constructing their own story maps for their own traditional tale. The focus and the ideas were brilliant and everyone presented their own story. This all happened late on Friday afternoon at the end of a very busy week. These ideas will for the basis of our writing next week. They are so good.

To be continued…