Topic – Old and Modern
This half term, in Topic, we’re historians. That means we’re leaning about the past. We’re exploring the history of toys and games in living memory.
This week, we’ve been thinking about the words:
old – having existed for many years, from the past
modern – new, up to date, things we see today
We looked at a range of toys spanning living memory and considered whether they were old or modern. We thought about:
- What material is it made from?
- Does the toy need batteries or charging?
- Are their buttons or electronics on it?
- Does it look worn our or scratched?
Help at home by exploring toys with your child. Can they tell whether it’s old or modern, explaining their answer?
Living and Learning – Rules and Laws
This week, we’ve been learning about rules and laws and why they are important.
We talked about how rules help to keep us safe, help everyone feel happy and make sure things are fair. The children shared great ideas about what could happen if rules were broken such as people getting hurt, feeling upset or things becoming unsafe.
We looked at rules we know well:
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No running in the classroom
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No name calling
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No talking to strangers
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Wearing a helmet when riding a bike
The children did a fantastic job explaining why these rules exist and how following them helps everyone enjoy school and other places calmly and safely.
Help at home by asking your child about the rules you have at home.
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Why do we have this rule?
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How does it help keep us safe or happy?
Living and Learning; I know that rules and laws are there to help us
This week in class, we explored the British Value of the Rule of Law and discussed why laws and rules are so important. We talked about how laws help to keep people safe, ensure things are fair and help the world work smoothly.
We linked this to our school rules and thought carefully about what might happen if we didn’t have them. The children shared great ideas about how school could become unsafe or unfair without rules in place, helping them understand why rules matter in everyday life.
The class then had lots of fun creating their own laws. Alexa suggested that children must go to bed before 10pm on Christmas Eve, otherwise Father Christmas won’t come! Arthur decided that children should not be allowed to stay up late to watch football matches because they need their sleep, but they can watch the replays in the morning instead.
We also talked about real-life laws. Miss Gilliland shared how Australia has recently passed a law about social media, meaning children under the age of 16 are not allowed to have social media accounts. This helped us understand how laws change to protect people, especially children.
The children showed fantastic thinking and engagement throughout the discussion and demonstrated a growing understanding of how the Rule of Law helps everyone in our community.
Help at Home:
Discuss with your child:
Have we got any rules at home?
Why have we got rules?
If we could have another rule, what would it be and why?
Sorry about the circle thing …
It’s been great hearing from so many children about how they’ve been picking your brains about how many sides a circle has. I hope the debates haven’t become too heated!
If you want to get your own back, you could get them puzzling over this brain teaser:
How many triangles are there?
I think this unit about perimeter is our favourite maths unit so far.
Help at home: You could watch this video together Area and perimeter and discuss the difference between area and perimeter.
If you’re looking for a more hands-on activity … in class the children have loved measuring the perimeter of various objects and shapes using a piece of string and a ruler. Challenge your child to a competition to see who can find a shape that has a perimeter of 10cm. You could measure and cut the string to the correct length then race each other to see who’s finds an object first.
Living & Learning – British Values – I know what democracy is
Following some great conversations in class about what democracy means and why it is important, I have turned this website post over to our JLT representatives.
And here it is in action:
Watch this space for more information from our JLT about some exciting initiatives coming up this year!
The Gingerbread Man
This week we have continued our learning using the story ‘The Gingerbread Man’ the children have really joined in with the repeated phrase and have even added a little wiggle when they say it.
They have made their own Gingerbread Men in the play dough and talked about how many buttons they each added.
“I’ve got two buttons on my Gingerbread Man.”
“I’ve got 5, that’s all my fingers!”
This week, in Maths, we have been representing numbers in lots of different ways with our fingers, on a five frame and with marks. We have been counting carefully and finding out about the “stop” number. The concept that the final number counted is the total number of items in a group.
Next week we will start some new learning about weight. We will be using words such as heavy, light, heavier and lighter to compare different objects.
Help at home: You could continue this learning at home by asking questions during everyday activities. Which bag from the supermarket is heaviest/ lightest? Which toy is lighter? Can you find something that is lighter than the bottle of milk? Can you find something that is heavier than a packet of crisps?
Lost and Found
This week, we’ve continued to enjoy the story Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.
We explored a world map and located England and Antarctica, before tracing the journey the boy and the penguin would take from where we live in the UK all the way to the South Pole. We revisited what we already know about maps, with some children remembering that blue shows oceans and green shows land. We also talked about the hot line called the Equator and how the countries on or near this line where deserts and orange on the map.
We also compared our weather with the weather in Antarctica and talked about how different it is. Our word of the week is climate and we’ve been using it to describe what the weather is usually like in different places.
Maths; the staircase pattern
In Maths, we’ve been looking at counting and ordinality- specifically, the ‘one more’ relationship that creates ‘the staircase pattern’.
Phonics
This week, our phonics learning focused on the digraphs oo, ar and or.
We also learned the tricky words was, you and they. Tricky words are read by sight, as they cannot be sounded out easily.
Romans In Britain
We have begun our exciting new half-term topic, all about the Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
We started by exploring the word chronology, learning that it means putting events in the order they happened. After examining key moments from British history, we successfully placed them into chronological order and did a fantastic job.
To gain context about life before the Roman invasion in 43 AD, we explored Iron Age Britain. We learned about the Celts, who lived in tribes, and discovered what daily life was like during this time.
We then moved on to discuss why the Romans wanted to invade Britain. We learned that Britain’s rich natural resources, such as precious metals and fertile farmland, made it an attractive place for trade and expansion.
When the Romans finally succeeded in expanding their empire into Britain, it was a huge cause for celebration, as they had been trying to conquer it for many years.
We imagined what Emperor Claudius might have said to his Roman citizens and wrote some amazing speeches. Using our fantastic oracy skills, we performed our speeches with confidence and enthusiasm.
Here is an example of one of our brilliant speeches:
Help at home: Can you child put some events from their life in chronological order?
Celebrating What Makes Us Unique in Year 2
This week in Living and Learning, Year 2 have been learning about individual liberty, tolerance and respect as part of our work on British Values.
The children discussed the many things that make us unique, including our ethnicity, religion, interests, likes and dislikes. We talked about why differences should be celebrated and how showing respect helps everyone feel valued and included.
The children shared some lovely reflections:
Thomas “It would be boring if we were all the same.”
Ava “Everyone is special in their own way.”
Alfie “We should be kind even if people are different to us.”
Help at Home
Watch this short video with your child and discuss.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zqkptrd
Managing Feelings – Dodgeball Edition
This half-term, Year 5 are learning how to play dodgeball. This sport can be a lot of fun – the children have to mix many fundamental skills together to be successful (running, jumping, throwing, catching etc). Whilst taking part, you may experience many different feelings for lots of reasons.
On Wednesday, Year 5 had a good dodgeball lesson. However, towards the end, some feelings (shown below) took over. After the lesson, we held a feelings first session where we shared any feelings we experienced within the lesson – these are shown below:
As a class, we reminded ourselves that there’s no such thing as a negative feeling – it’s completely normal to feel the ways we did. We discussed some reasons for those feelings:
It was overwhelming when we were playing because there was lots of noise and lots of dodgeballs to look out for. – Beau
I got annoyed because people didn’t like me throwing the ball hard and I ended up walking off – anonymous
I felt happy through the lesson but I think my competitive side got the better of me – anonymous
I was getting cross and frustrated because our team kept on getting out really quickly and we wanted to keep playing – Isla
When people were winning, sometimes they were over celebrating and it made me a bit annoyed – Emily
We then used the feelings battery (shown above) to help us understand how to handle certain emotions. If we show too much of a particular emotion, it can lead to reactions that often don’t match our personalities. When playing a high-intensity game like dodgeball, it’s vital that we manage our feelings well and stay ‘in the green zone’.
So, what did we do?
Today was our next dodgeball lesson. To begin, we reminded ourselves of the feelings we might experience. We then decided to create some rules and challenges to help us stay in the green zone. Here’s a few that we came up with:
- Playing games of silent dodgeball. This way, the children could completely focus on the skills of throwing and dodging.
- Having a fixed referee to help the games (Mr Freeman did this).
- Offering pointers and tips throughout the session to each other
- For children with a powerful throw, a challenge was to throw from the very back line only. This challenged those particular pupils and relieved those potential ‘cross’ and ‘frustrated’ feelings for others.
After the lesson, we looked at each other and just smiled. What a fantastic lesson we had. Everyone was happy and healthy and we all managed our emotions well. I am so proud of all the children and we all cannot wait for our next dodgeball lesson!
Help at home:
Discuss some of the feelings with your child that they felt in dodgeball. How did our rules on Friday help manage those feelings? Do you have any more top tips ahead of our lessons next week?