Pioneers children are Reception and Year 1, aged four to six years old. Children enjoy a range of creative and engaging play based activities, as well as formal inputs, to support their development and growth. Children in Pioneers are taught by Mrs Hann, Mrs Gurney, Mrs McGill and Miss Greaves.
Learning begins the minute they walk through the door. The classroom is a carefully curated collection of wonderful things to allow the children to flourish. The classroom is theirs and everything in it is there for a purpose. What they chose to do may be completely different for each individual. This is when the learning happens. The resources are ready to use and accessible and the team work together to create, to communicate, to count and to grow
Each day starts with exploration of the resources and suggestions for learning set out around the room. The Pioneers will come together for teaching. This will happen in small groups, as a whole class and often one to one. Across the day we will gather for mathematics, reading, writing and phonics sessions, to share stories and to learn about the world.
PE kits are in school all week to allow us to do PE at any time. This term, the Pioneers have dance on a Tuesday afternoon.
Mrs Gurney teaches computing on a Thursday morning.
We are rolling with phonics and children will bring a book and their reading record home each day. Please read little and often and write a message in the reading record. All reading is good reading. This is such an exciting time.
Please look out for a text message to let you know when we will go to the forest. We will use our wonderful outdoor space as much as we can and this will not always be on the same day each week.
Children’s progress and activities are recorded in their own Learning Journeys. These act as a summary of the journey children embark upon during their time in Reception and Year 1 and demonstrate the progress and success that has been achieved, as well as the next steps that may need to be taken.
Getting Sticky. Cool Badger Food
The addition of flour and water made the compost much stickier and the children experimented with the consistency. They were very restrained when helping themselves to their required ingredients. They helped each other and at one point I heard a little voice say,”We are a team.”
Look out for some fabulous writing done on Friday. This will be displayed in the classroom from Monday.
Cool Badger Food.
So many beautiful moments in learning.
Mrs Hann,we love badgers.
Following on from our trip to the forest,the badger came and ate all the sandwiches we had made. He left us a message asking us to make some more and write him a list of all the things we used. This caused a lot of excitement and a huge desire to write. Some spent the whole morning writing for the badger,filling two pages of ingredients. Some constructed their own sentences asking for help when needed.
The excitement continued outside where more sandwiches were made using dough and stuff.
Lucky Badger and his naughty brother had lots of food.
All of the work done is up on the walls in the classroom.
More Badger snacks will be created soon to extend our exxploration of sandwich fillings. It could get messy!
Celebrating Chinese New Year
We celebrated Chinese New Year by learning a bit about the traditions around the event. The key focus is on family. The celebrations bring together family who often live far apart for the rest of the year. We discussed stories,language and food. We used “Noodle Sticks” and had a sniff of some powerful spices.
Everyone went home with a fortune cookie. Some went home with some Five Spice Powder on their clothes and some had a good covering of black paint!
A lovely afternoon.
Disgusting Sandwiches in the Forest
After reading The Disgusting Sandwich we went to our beautiful forest to recreate the tasty treat for badgers and foxes. The sun shone and it was so lovely. The Pioneers collected grit,grass,sand,bark and the odd log to fill their sandwiches. Some children realised that dry ingredients didn’t make for great sandwiches when all the filling fell out or blew away. This led to some unintended extra learning about texture and consistency!
We took the opportunity to sit quiet;y and listen to the birds. In a very short time the birds came back to the trees and the tweeting increased. We filled up the bird feeders and trudged back to school.
Back in the classroom we will be able to write lists of ingredients for our own sandwiches.
Pop in to see the progress.
Very happy learning.
Addition and Subtraction-Woop Woop
This week has been full of counting. The Pioneers are very excited to be using symbols to represent their thinking. Their focus and excitement to know what comes next is just fabulous.
Numicon is the most fantastic resource and coupled with the fun of Numberblocks we are seeing real progress.
Go Pioneers.
Next Pet Please-Looking after our pets
One of the Pioneers said that he would like to be a vet when he grows up so we turned our role play into a vet’s consulting room and reception. During the week we have looked at what pets need,what might be going on on the inside and doing some wonderful writing,drawing and reading.
The cats and dogs all have name tags on now and have been well fed and have a cosy bed to lie on.
Look in reading records for a photograph of our sentences to read together.
Happy Learning
Maths Magic
The new year has started with new maths. Many of us are ready to use numbers to represent our thinking.The Pioneers are so organised that we can all sit on the carpet and work together with Numicon. This is really amazing.Everyone has returned with an excitement about number so we have worked hard this week. We have had fun with the number wheel,talked lots about zero and written down our calculations using plus and equals.
So much going on. So many questions.
Happy Maths.