Geography: St James’ does Magna!
We recently took our geography learning to Magna in Sheffield. It was a great way to kick start our Natural Disasters topic and got us all excited to find out more about the world around us.
From the epic singing all the way there on the coach to the fire room, water pavillion and volcano making and erupting – Magna had it all!
Check out how we got on…
Reading: non-fiction
Today, in our Reading lesson, we read a non-fiction text about the Chinese New Year celebrations happening this upcoming Sunday.
A non-fiction text is a text that contains facts and information. A fiction text is a story that is made up. We then decided to search in an atlas, another type of non-fiction book, to locate where China is and which continent it is in. We used the indexes at the back of the book to help us find out.
Help at home: ask your child what an index in a book is. Search for any non-fiction books at home together. Do they all have an index at the back?
Living and Learning: I know that some drugs can be harmful.
Years 5 and 6 have taken part in some fantastic discussions this week about our living and learning statement: I know that some drugs can be harmful.
We looked more specifically on managing risks in social situations, and how media influence can blur our opinions on drugs, alcohol and smoking.
Firstly, we discussed where we might see or hear about drugs in the media. Here’s what we came up with:
- TV adverts
- radio adverts
- posters
- shop flyers and signs
- advertising on items, for example birthday cards
- TV programmes and soaps
- newspapers and magazines
We then looked further into some examples (below) and reflected on what the mixed messages were.
Here were some responses from the children:
“The picture in the middle suggests that relaxing, fun and partying all happen because of alcohol.” Harley
“The last one makes me think that men might not feel good if they don’t want to drink beer.” Kara
“The colours in the word ‘vape’ make it seem appealing, but the black and white smoke suggests that it’s not good for our bodies.” Jacob
These three pictures hold mixed messages about drugs and alcohol, which can be difficult to see without talking about them.
Towards the end of the week, we combined this learning with our current writing skill (direct speech) to create a short conversation between two people. We had to goals for this learning: to punctuate our direct speech correctly; to react appropriately/safely in a tricky social situation.
Here’s an example of how someone in our class would react to a situation they were uncomfortable in.
Welcome back!
Happy New Year!
We have welcomed returning children into nursery over the past two weeks, but we’ve also had some new faces appear! So a warm welcome to our new nursery children, we can’t wait to get to know you all.
Here is what we’ve been getting up to so far!
We used puppets to retell the story of Little Red Riding Hood
‘ the wolf dresses up as grandma and tries to eat them’ – Beau
‘ they walk in the forest to grannies house’- Deacon
We explored ice- the children used different tools to try and break down the ice
‘ its melting because its warm in the classroom’- Gracie
‘ its like glass’ – Child
Our focus number this week was one, we looked around the classroom to see how many we could find
‘ I’ve got one tiger’ – Austin
‘I’ve found one object Miss Ward’- Cora
We also enjoyed a lovely story time session with Mrs Payne in the library, this weeks book was all about polar bears.
Polite Reminders
- If your child has a pair of wellies that you would like to leave at school this would be really useful. Due to the continuous rain the playground has become quite muddy and we are encouraging the children to change into their wellies.
Week 2 – animal fact books
We have had great fun exploring ice and learning more about different animals this week. We used different cutting tools to create ice sculptures and discovered that the more we held the ice pieces the smaller they became.
We created igloos in our construction area using different building materials and snowflake designs on pegboards. “It is tricky to make the band go around the peg. My fingers are working hard” Aurelia.
We love reading in Reception. We enjoy exploring different books. This week we learnt more about fiction and non-fiction books. We sorted books from our reading corner into two piles and then used the contents page to help us find specific information.
We can’t wait to see everyone in our classroom for our phonics lesson on Monday 16 January. Please come to the office for 9am and then we can start learning together.
Geography: creative geographers!
Check out what some of the Year 4s got up to at home to get into our geography topic: Natural Disasters…
It’s great to see the children getting stuck into their learning and getting creative! Great stuff, Year 4!
Living and Learning – drug education
This week, we have been learning about medicines and how it is important to tell a trusted adult if we feel unwell so that they can help us to get the help we need to feel healthy and well again. We talked about how we should only use medicines with the help of a trusted adult.
The children worked in groups to read scenarios and suggest what will help the characters to feel better.
After, we thought of people who help us to stay healthy and well and how they do this.
“The doctors and nurses. They might take our temperature and ask us how we are feeling and sometimes they give us medicine”.
“Our grown ups, they might give us a cuddle to make us feel better”.
Challenge: Can you name one thing that can help someone feel better?
Living and Learning: drug education
Recently, in our Living and Learning sessions, we’ve been thinking about drug education.
‘Some drugs can be harmful’.
‘Some drugs can help us get better when we are unwell’.
We’ve been developing our understanding of the drugs that can help us get better. Usually, they are called medicines and we would receive them from a doctor or a chemist. Even though they are drugs to make us feel better, we know we must be safe and let an adult help. There are also some medicines which we don’t need from a doctor, such as sleep or rest.
‘They should go to the doctor to get some eardrops’.
‘A trusted adult should help them take the eardrops’.
‘They should have some Calpol from an adult and go to the doctor if it gets worse’.
‘They need to rest’.
‘They won’t need to go to the doctor but they can put a plaster on it’.
‘Wash their hands’.
Super maths stars!
Year 1 are maths superstars!
In September, we completed a maths challenge to see how many numbers the children could write up to 100. Today, we re-completed that challenge.
Every child in the class has made progress! Well done, Year 1.
Here are a few examples to show you the progress that they have made.
Help at home: keep practicing reading and writing numbers and log in to Numbots to practice their number fluency skills.
Writing: nouns and adjectives
In our English lesson today, we recapped our knowledge of nouns and adjectives to write about the illustrations in our new class novel Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers.
A noun is a thing, place or person.
An adjective gives information about the noun.
We wrote about these two illustrations. See some of our exciting sentences and expanded noun phrases below!
Help at home: do you have a book that contains some beautiful illustrations? Use nouns and adjectives to describe the characters or places that you can see in your book. You could write them in your homework books and bring them in to show me!