Category: Class

Preparations Are Under Way

Scott Grason-Taylor

The week began with discussions about Advent and Hannukah and lighting a candle in the darkness.

The Pioneers made wreaths together and talked about any risks involved-sharp points on the holly and cocktail sticks to hold the candles and the risk from fire. They all knew what may cause harm and worked carefully together. The odd bug escaping from the greenery caused a bit of a distraction!

We watched the wonderful ballet,The Nutcracker and talked about the dancing and the music and how this linked with the story. We then composed some sentences together to describe the beautiful Nutcracker and the Sugar Plum Fairy. We painted taking great care and paying attention to detail. They added extra once the paint was dry. The results are splendid.

The Pioneers then composed and wrote their own descriptive sentences. Every day we are reading and writing more.

 

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas….

Scott Grason-Taylor

We have been bursting with writing ideas this week, inspired by the Aldi Advert ‘A Christmas Carrot’. We have enjoyed making story maps and using these to re-tell the story. We have looked at what makes a great story opener and we have used descriptive language to describe the characters and we have loved every moment of it! It is wonderful to see such enthusiasm for writing!

In RE this week, we have been learning all about the Christmas Story and thinking about the importance it holds for the Christian religion.

We are continuing to enjoy our dance sessions with Hannah Verity Dance and our Christmas routine ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ is really starting to take shape! 

We are starting to feel Christmassy and are enjoying Christmas stories and singing Christmas songs – it’s safe to say we are quite excited!

Learners’ are a happy, hardworking and fun class.

 

Rocks and The Bronze Age

Scott Grason-Taylor

Adventurers have started a new topic in science all about rocks! We have been learning all about the three different types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic and having a close look at different specimens and sorting them into the three groups. We plan to explore further the different properties of these rocks and look at their uses.

In history, we are learning about the Bronze Age  and how people started to make tools and weapons from metal instead of just stone. This has linked nicely to our science topic as we have discovered that people first started to separate copper (a type of metal)  from copper ore (a type of rock) which they mined by digging large pits. We have been very interested in finding out how they made swords and jewellery.

A Cracking Good Week In Pioneers

Scott Grason-Taylor

We have had another wonderful week of learning in Pioneers,full of elephant poo and phonics and the number 6. All of which caused great excitement.

We have been finding out what animals need to survive and the Pioneers were all very clued up on this.Impressive.

We had watched the video of all the animals on our playground so popped outside to see if they had left any other clues. Again,the Pioneers knew what they were looking for-fur,footprints and poo.

We were astonished to find a pile of elephant poo on the cement. We needed a dustpan and brush to bring it inside but not until it had been measured and checked against Plop Trumps.

We moved on to animals closer to home and did a bit of sorting. We discussed nocturnal and diurnal and predator and prey and food chains. The Pioneers love a bit of cardboard and tape and they all made animal homes and experimented with some ambitious writing. Again,impressive stuff.We enjoyed a book called 1 Fox and the children produced some wonderful numberline story maps.

We use anything and everything to get to grips with counting. This week everything has been adding up to 6 and the Numicon Towers were great. Lots of learning took place when selecting the pieces to put on top. Was it one more or one less? What can you see?

So much wonderful Maths Chat.

Happy Learning

 

 

Brrrr a cold week!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello everyone,

Learners have been on weather watch this week. Our Science topic is seasonal change and this has been a great week to study the seasons. We have been filling in our weather charts each day and recording the temperature from out thermometer outside. We have even found time for some weather themed painting.

In English, we have been preparing for our new narrative writing topic. We will be using the Christmas advert ‘A Christmas Carrot’ to inspire our writing. We are all very excited to start writing next week.

We hope you will tune in on Tapestry at 6pm each evening in December for our advent calendar style Christmas story ‘How Winston Delivered Christmas’. Get cosy with a hot chocolate and a biscuit while you listen each night.

Look out for a new challenge on Sumdog this week!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Learners Class

Building Stonehenge.

Scott Grason-Taylor

Adventurers have been loving their history topic on the Stone Age and we have completed lots of cross-curricular activities including: printing cave paintings in art, building houses in Forest school, advertising a Neolithic house in English and building Stonehenge from clay.

The children have really worked hard to make their models of Stonehenge look very realistic and today as we learnt more about the stone circle we have included people in our models and built rafts that they used to transport the stone. W

e have studied more about the purpose of Stonehenge and shone light through our structures to see the effect the sun had and what this might have meant 5,000 years ago when people worshipped the sun.

Overall, we have learnt lots of interesting facts from creating our own Stonehenge.

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Excited About Writing…Oh and Reading!

Scott Grason-Taylor

The Pioneers have been incredible this week and writing is happening all over the place.

We have now got to grips with sh,th,ch and ng so so may words can be constructed using the phonics we have to play around with. We read Oi Get Off Our Train and then made our own phrases with animals in or on things. We constructed,read and then wrote these and then went off and tried them on our own. The resulting writing was incredible.

We also visited our Library and this will be a weekly event. There was much excitement and learning how a library works. 

Your Pioneer may have let you know about the visitors to our playground. The zebra,elephants,rhino and giraffes were quite a shock to see.Although we didn’t see them in person,the Pioneers were very clear about the clues we should be looking for. We will be searching for clues next week…

We will keep you posted!

 

Friday’s Weekly News

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello Everybody, 

This week has been another busy one, with lots happening. 

We were visited by Paddy from the radio, who recorded our beautiful singing, many of us joined our first ECO committee meeting and we have started our new design and technology project: sewing. 

We also visited the forest, and created some wonder stick stars using a clove hitch and square lashing. 

Finally, we have some exciting news for you all:

WE ADOPTED OUR CLASS PANDA! Its details will have arrived by next Friday, so we will update you with their name then 😀

A Sporting Week!

Scott Grason-Taylor

I have been really impressed with the progress all the children have been making in swimming. Their confidence has improved greatly and it has been lovely to see some children swim several strokes independently whilst others are swimming with their faces in the water.

The whole class is so enthusiastic for their swimming lessons, even on a cold winters day. Well done everyone!

Adventurers have also been enjoying gymnastics in P.E lessons. We have learnt how to do a pike and straddle sit last week and this week we are progressing to tucked and straight shoulder stands and performing a sequence of movements.

We’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather!

Scott Grason-Taylor

This week in Science, we have been learning more about the weather. We have thought about temperatures and how these are reflected in seasonal change. We have made our own weather charts and will be recording the weather every day next week. We also have a class thermometer ready and will be recording the temperature outside our classroom each day and also recording this information on our charts. We have been watching the weather reports in class, but who knows what the weather will do?

On Wednesday, we enjoyed Forest School.  We made some forest memory sticks. We took our time and really focused on improving our skills. We chose a stick and wrapped around some string, using knots to secure each end. This took considerable concentration and perseverance and our efforts certainly paid off! We then attached some pretty leaves and plants to our forest memory stick. The sense of achievement was awesome! 

In English, we have been comparing our own homes to that of Victorian homes in preparation of becoming Estate Agents. We have used our knowledge of Victorian houses  in order to use persuasive language in a way that will encourage a prospective buyer – we are excited to get writing! 

We are excited to be included in Paddy Billington’s “Sleeps for Santa” song on our local radio station and he will be coming to school this week to record us. We have enjoyed practising the song this week and are starting to feel a little bit Christmassy! More details of when this will be airing to follow!

Learners’ Class are such happy, busy Class.