Year 2 and Year 6 assessments
The STA has published an information leaflet and two videos for parents/carers of children in Year 2 and Year 6 about national curriculum assessments. The purpose of these materials is to help you understand more about the end of key stage assessments that will be administered in primary schools in May. (The end of Key Stage 1 is Year 2; the end of Key Stage 2 is Year 6.)
The materials provide basic information about the purpose and format of the tests, how parents can best support their children and how results will be reported.
Cannon Hall Farm Fun
What a fantastic trip we had!
This week, we visited Cannon Hall Farm for our end of term trip. The children enjoyed seeing lots of different animals and impressed our guide Darrell with their life cycle knowledge.
The highlight of our day was seeing two lambs being born. The children were captivated watching Farmer Robert deliver the lambs. The general consensus was “that was awesome but gross”.
Eureka!
On Friday, we had a great trip to Eureka in Halifax. Here are the highlights!
Pics, Mix and Three Little Chicks!
This week, Foundation learnt and re-told the tale of The Little Red Hen.
Linked to the story, we’ve been baking bread- just like our main character! The children had a go at measuring and adding the ingredients, mixing them together and kneading the dough. We hope you enjoyed them 🙂
On Friday, Foundation had a fun afternoon- a Spanish lesson with Miss Castro and a sports session with Five Star, which they thoroughly enjoyed.
Can your child tell you some of the new Spanish words and phrases they have learnt?
The most exciting part of our week by far has been the arrival of our new fluffy friends. Our chicks began hatching on Wednesday and by Thursday we had welcomed three new lives into the world. The children have named them Rosie, Anna and Peter. On Friday they each had a turn to hold a chick. The chicks have bought some fantastic learning opportunities: discussions on the life cycle of a chicken, growth and how to care for living things. F2 children have been writing name ideas for the chicks and describing them. Most importantly, the children have gained so much pleasure and joy from observing the chicks, it has been wonderful to watch their faces light up when they see them. Take a look at our video of pictures which really captures how the children feel about the experience.
You may have noticed that there has not been a second reading book change this week for F2. Due to the many lovely events taking place throughout this busy week, we have practised our rocket words and letter sounds as an alternative and will change all reading books on Monday.
The life cycle of a frog…
This week, we’ve learned all about life cycles in our Life Forces topic.
First, we learned about the frog life cycle. The children were shocked at how many eggs a frog lays!
Have a look at our learning below of the life cycle of a frog.
We were very excited to see the newly hatched chicks in Foundation and learning about a life cycle of another animal. We’re looking forward to going to see them next week and holding a chick.
Sport Relief 2018
Thank you for your donations supporting Sport Relief. The children had a fabulous time this afternoon taking part in different sports alongside KS1 and KS2 children.
The Gingerbread Man- Super Story-tellers!
This week in Foundation, our focus story has been the traditional tale of The Gingerbread Man.
We’ve enjoyed making messy mixtures, using gingerbread playdough and designing our own gingerbread men.
Gingerbread men have also been used as a counting tool in the maths area and as objects for our fiddly fingers tweezer challenges.
Foundation have looked very closely at the story throughout the week; writing about our favourite parts, creating story boards and using ‘Talk for Writing‘ to map out the story and prepare for re-telling. As a class, we decided on the actions we would use to tell our story and by day 2, the children were able to recite the story independently using their picture prompts!
This method is great for learning how stories are structured and it enables children to develop literacy skills that will help support their own creative story-telling and writing.
Take a look at Foundation’s fantastic story-telling video of The Gingerbread Man!*
*Please note this video is unlisted on YouTube and does not appear in any searches made by the public on the site.
What does it mean to belong?
This term during RE lessons, Year 1 and 2 have been looking at what it means to belong to a church or a mosque. They’ve looked at the similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions.
To support their learning, Year 1 and 2 had a visit from Nabilah from Leeds Grand Mosque. The children learned what it meant to Nabilah to belong to a mosque and she shared some of the traditions she follows as a Muslim.
Snow and skipping
After a slightly disrupted few weeks, we’re now back on track with learning and thankfully warming up again.
We did manage to enjoy the snow by getting out for a mass snowman building contest and snowball fight.
We’ve also begun practising for our skipping competition, which will be taking place next term. The competition will see us demonstrating skills like the butterfly, the pretzel and the speed bounce. As well as this, we will be performing a high-energy skip dance routine.
Watch this space for updates!
Snow, Sun and World Book Day Fun!
Thank you all for coming to school in your wonderful World Book Day costumes on Monday. We had a great time exploring different popular stories throughout the week and celebrating the importance and enjoyment of reading.
We were a little surprised by the snow on Wednesday! Foundation love exploring the snow, so we took the opportunity to go outside in small groups to do a bit of mark-making with our bodies and sticks.
When the sun came out in the following days, we saw some fabulous child-led learning, as the children collectively decided to work together to make their own stage using the large construction blocks. There were some amazing performers and performances!
The children have enjoyed their first week observing the chick eggs in the classroom. We’ve had lots of discussion and are working together to take care of them. We gently turn them over each day as we count them and are marking off the days until the very egg-citing hatching!
Foundation have all been working on their special cards for Mothering Sunday. F2 have been writing about why their mummies are so fantastic!
If you were able to attend the assembly, we hope you enjoyed seeing our ‘people who care for us’ artwork and hearing about all the lovely things the children wanted to share with you all.
We wish you a very Happy Mother’s Day.
