Team R: Winter weather and welly-walk
This week has been ideal for us to appreciate the season of winter. It was very exciting to see a few flurries of snow and to gather and play with the flakes and ice the cold weather provided us with. We went for a ‘Welly-Walk’ around the school field noticing buds lying waiting to burst into leaf when it warms up, crystals of ice that had formed on the grass, sticks that had been blown down by strong winds and soggy ground underfoot from the heavy rainfall. We were surprised to see a whole raised bed of carrots grown by last year’s YR and are looking forward to when we can grow our own plants!
In our language lessons, we have been drawing our own story maps, thinking about the important elements of the text we are reading. Using a cartoon drawing website, we followed instructions to draw wonderful versions of the Gruffalo, with each drawing capturing a different side to his personality. We have been learning how two or three colouring pencils can create a different effect if used together.
Team 1/2: Jumping skills
Year 1/2 have been practicing their jumping skills in PE. They had great fun this week working in teams and picking their own skill level such as jumping and landing with two feet, or adding a twist! The children used the spots on the floor to challenge their landing accuracy and ending their jump using a balance. The children then worked within their groups to coach each other; celebrating their skills and helping each other to improve.
Tear 3/4: Adding and subtracting fractions
In Year 3, we have been using practical resources to visualise what happens to fractions within 1 when they are added or subtracted from each other. We then moved to pictorial representations, before testing our new knowledge with reasoning problems. We had to make sure that the denominator did not change, so we talked about visualising pizzas, cakes and chocolate bars when dealing with adding and subtracting; for example, if I have 5/6 of a pizza and I eat 2/6, how many sixths do I have left?
Team 5/6: Exploring speech and dialogue
Upon our return after the holidays, Years 5 and 6 dived straight into our writing head first with some speech. The children had to decide whether the dialogue was being used to advance the action and plot of the story, or whether it was showing us elements of a character’s personality and emotions. This was then placed on a continuum. Once we had done this, we used our ‘Explain, Change, Create’ method to start to create our own speech between characters from the Highwayman.
