Category: Class

Inventors and Inventions

Scott Grason-Taylor

We have embraced our new topic of ‘Inventors and Inventions’ this week.

We have explored the history of Lego. We now know when, where and who created it and can explain the story behind it’s invention. 

In History, we are looking at key inventions over time….. what better place to start than with the wheel. We found out the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia 6000 years ago, we thought of as many modern uses for the wheel as we could – there were ALOT ranging from ferris wheels to scooters.  

We have been busy learning our 2 times table in Maths this week and perfecting our multiplication and division skills by transferring our knowledge to answering word problems.

In English, we have been watching an animation called ‘The Shirt Machine’ to inspire our writing. We delighted in each creating a unique shirt that had a special function – we had an edible shirt, a shirt that plays musical instruments and a shirt that would hypnotise your parents to think it was Christmas Day every day and many more…..

Year 2’s have spellings to learn at home this week – please check book bags! There will be a spelling test each Tuesday.

Please read with your child as often as you can at home (and write in their reading record). This is the most important way you can support your child at home!

Learners Class love to learn!

 

The Elves and the Shoemaker

Scott Grason-Taylor

The Pioneers have been visited by the elves who have come to help in the Shoemaker and his wife in their shop. They are intrigued by the sewing machine and all of the tools and leather that a cobber may need.

The elves have come with letters to introduce themselves and over the next week we will ensure that their needs are met.

We are becoming familiar with the story and are using a story map for retelling.

It is great to be back.


 

Our First Post of the New Year

Scott Grason-Taylor

Happy New Year Everybody,

We came back to school on Wednesday, and have already got stuck into our new topics!

We have started to explore Ancient Egypt, in history. We can’t wait to find out more!

In English, we have began writing an explanation text, explaining how the water cycle works. Do you know anything about it? We will share our work with you in the coming weeks. 

When exploring the water cycle, we created it on a plastic bag which holds water, and taped it to the window. We have been watching as the water has evaporated and turned into condensation, and then dripped back to the bottom of the bag. 

We also have an exciting, new book which we are reading as our class text, its called The Wild Robot. We can’t wait to read the first part this afternoon, but it has been strongly recommended and the blurb makes it sound fun. We have read some other Peter Brown books, and enjoyed them all!

Here are some pictures of our water cycle bags:

Happy New Year!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Happy New Year Learners and families.

It’s hard to believe we’ve only been in class 3 days this week as we have achieved so much.

Our new topic this term is ‘Inventors and Inventions’, we are so keen to find out more about this and all agreed it sounds exciting!

This week, we have been exploring the book ‘Junk DNA’ by Clare Thompson. We collected some bits and bobs of scrap metal and pieces of junk and created some wonderful art to inspire our writing! Take a look at some of the pictures we created!

We have introduced a new Christian Value this half term of ‘perseverance’ and have been considering how we can use this value ourselves in our everyday lives. On Thursday we were interested to learn about Epiphany and how the 3 Kings persevered on the their journey to follow the star to worship Jesus.

In Geography, we studied the Oceans of the World and as usual found a catchy song to aid our learning.

This term Learners will have Mr Gokool’s PE sessions and Mrs Gurney’s computer sessions on Wednesday afternoons. Please make sure your child has a PE kit in School.

Next week, Year 2’s will start to bring home Spellings as homework. Please look out for these in book bags. 

If you need any further information or if I can help in any way, please don’t hesitate to ask me.

Mrs Brown

Celebrating Christmas in School

Scott Grason-Taylor

Adventurers have had a lovely week taking part in lots of activities to celebrate Christmas.

We really enjoyed our Christmas Party day on Monday, playing lots of games, dancing and eating a delicious party lunch!

Later in the week we made Christmas cards and snowman and reindeer paper chains. For our part in the nativity play, Adventurers learnt verses from the Nativity and sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in French and English. One of our children had the great idea to make star headbands and wrist bands so we could twinkle as we sang!

Christmas lunch was a BIG hit on Wednesday, we even had crackers to pull!

To finish off the week we have played more party games to get us in the Festive spirit!

We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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