Pioneers Class

It has been another busy week of new learning for the Pioneers. We are following our interest in eggs and popped down to the forest to consider,discuss and build some nests. We asked,”What does a nest need to be?” and “Where should a nest be located?”

The Pioneers selected materials and discussed the shapes and structures required to keep the egg safe. No eggs were cracked in the making of these nests.

The nest needs to be “comfy” and the tree selected should be “stable”. We had a walk around to look for the best tree. “Nests should be in a tree to be safe from badgers and foxes”. “They are predators”

Way back in October when we were all small, we had a fiddle around with some seed heads and collected some for planting in the spring. The time has come to get them potted up and labelled.

Some are even poking through the soil already.

Exciting times.

Maths Magic has been taking place all over the place as Pioneers discover how amazing arrays are. We looked at different ways to arrange 12 and spotted columns and rows.

So much maths chat.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us with our learning this week. Sleights is a wonderful place to learn.

Happy Learning

We make a regular visit to our school library on a Friday but this week we went on a journey to The Mobile Library and that was an adventure.

Mr Grason accompanied us on our walk and helped the Pioneers to locate The Mobile Library. We were all looking for the big lorry however it had broken down so a smaller van packed full of books had come in its place. The sun was shining so this was just fine for us. The Pioneers sat in the Carpark with boxes of books and the very patient librarian talked each Pioneer through the checking and scanning of the books.

This showed our Christian Value of Service in action.

We now have a selection of borrowed books in the classroom and we will make a return visit soon.

Thank you to the library service for wonderful service. 

Happy Reading!

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.

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.

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…

This week has been all about Trolls,bridges and goats,making plans and writing labels. It has been a wonderful week of learning together and our classroom in ablaze with writing and photographs and paintings. The floor is a bit wet too as we had to try out some Goat Boats to allow the goats another way across the water to the lush,green grass.

We discovered that like us,all trolls are different and all trolls are beautiful so we have started work on some troll description.

Our Christian Value is Justice and we spent a while talking about the story of the Hare and the Tortoise. Great chat.

Very Happy Learning

World Book Day was wonderful and the maths that went along with it was wonderful too.

Everyone enjoyed a selection of maths books and we began w The Door Bell Rang by Pat Hutchins. Then we took a look at The Button Box and arranged and sorted,poured and filled.

We looked at Zero and One and painted numbers to use to build our fairy story based number book.

We finished the day with a look at How Many Legs. 

So much maths and so much fun.

Happy Learning.

It has been a busy week in Pioneers. Our rocket is now in good working order and we have written instructions to ensure everything is in place for future flights. The Pioneers took their instructions outside and followed them from getting the rocket out of the box to the 7,6,5,4,3,2,1…Blast Off. Later in the week we all got to fly Zach’s rocket too.We had to wait for the best weather conditions and the result was good.

We have talked a lot about light,our mirror ball and the lens blocks. This week we talked about rainbows and their colour sequence. The Pioneers painted on a variety of surfaces and we read the Bible story of Noah and his Ark. Next week we will story map and have a go at building an ark for 8 animals.

The floor has been pretty wet this week but the exploration has been fun. The Pioneers have been finding out about capacity by pouring and filling and emptying.

So much learning.

Our Christian Value is Perseverance and we have had to persevere this week. We have experienced a number of setbacks with our rocket-a leaky pump, a tricky connection and then it shot over into a neighbouring garden. A mission was launched to recover our rocket lost in the wilderness.

The day after the rocket went missing another Elf letter arrived asking for help. One of our elf friends had gone to get the rocket and was stuck in a tree. Luckily the Pioneers were on hand to rescue him. We were most grateful to our helpful neighbours for their support in this matter.

Meanwhile, back in the classroom we build our own junk models. These began as rockets but have now turned into complex robots. Through this work we have found out about joining techniques and the need to wait for glue to dry. The Re-Bot and his friend the U-Bot (re-Use-Bot) are incredible and on display in our classroom.

In maths we have been comparing using a balance scale and this has got us thinking and talking and estimating. It’s tricky stuff.

And the Beebots have featured too and they have some beautiful new mats to roam on. The Pioneers have been giving them complex sets of instructions to make their way across.

A lovely week of happy learning.