Super scientists
This week, we have started our topic “Living things and their habitats”.
We started learning about classification – we sorted ourselves into different groups such has fair hair/dark hair, has a pet/doesn’t have a pet and has a cardigan on/has a jumper on/has just a t-shirt on. We loved running around and classifying ourselves into groups in the hall.
We then used this knowledge to classify animals into our own groups. We had groups with legs/no legs, reptiles/lives in water/lives in the forest/lives on land.
Our two new vocab words this lesson were invertebrae (doesn’t have a backbone) and verterbrae (has a backbone). So we then sorted our animals into these two groups.
Living and learning – 8 Rs for learning
We have been talking about the eight Rs for learning.
Our current class novel, After the Fall (by Dan Santat), enabled us to talk about resilience and how it’s important to keep on trying and not give up, even when things are tough. Our Talk Time homework also enabled children to share when they had shown resilience.
I found it really hard to skip but the more I did it, the better I got.
I showed resilience learning to do handstands on my trampoline.
Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning
We’ve been thinking about and discussing which 8Rs for learning we have applied in different lessons.
These are our 8Rs for learning:
Risk taking
Talk about the difference between a safe and unsafe risk. At school, we want your child to take a safe risk by having a go at answering, even if unsure; trying something new and attempting harder learning.
Responsibility
Provide time and space at home so your child is able to organise themselves: their PE kit, reading book, homework, spellings and tables… Don’t organise everything for them!
Make a link between rights and responsibilities: your child has the right to a great education, but needs to be responsible for their own learning.
Responding
This could be responding to their teacher in class or responding to feedback in their learning.
Ready
Make sure your child is at school on time for a prompt start.
Make sure your child has had plenty of sleep so they are alert and ready to learn at all times.
Encourage your child to ask lots of questions – that shows they want to learn!
Resourceful
Encourage your child to be organised so they can play with a range of different toys.
Encourage your child to try new ways to solve a tricky problem.
Resilience
Encourage your child to keep going! Set a tricky challenge or puzzle for your child to do.
Encourage your child to think of different ways of doing things.
Don’t let your child win when they play a game – they need to experience losing, too!
Celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn – be happy that your child found some learning hard and encourage them to ‘bounce back’ and learn from the experience.
Relate this ‘R’ to Humpty Dumpty and our current whole school topic, After the Fall.
Remember
Make sure they have time to learn spellings, number bonds and times tables – a little practice daily is best.
Play memory games:
Kim’s game: show them objects for 30 seconds… can they remember all the objects?
Can they build up the sequence, ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple and a bike.’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple, a bike and a cucumber.’ etc … Take turns!
Reflect
Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about how they learnt, why they learnt it, when they’ll use their learning, how they would teach this to someone else, what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today…
In PE, we have been playing football rounders. We discussed that we need to be READY to kick the ball and to run, we need to be RESPONSIBLE by following the rules, we need to be RESILIENT when we miss the ball or if we are out of the game and we need to be REFLECTIVE after the game to reflect on what we have improved on (this week it was our fielding) and how we can improve further (next week it will be our football skills).
Well done!
Well done to the F2 children who did the home-link challenge! It was lovely to receive so many emails! We will be sharing all of the photos tomorrow afternoon.
All of your photos are now up on the parent notice board. Unfortunately, parents are unable to come into our classroom at the moment. I have taken a picture so you can see what we do with all the home-link challenges.
We’re going on a habitat hunt…
This half term, our science learning is all about living things and their habitats. A habitat is where animals and plants live. We explored different habitats around the school grounds and recorded the living animals and plants we found.
Teamwork!
On Friday afternoon, the F2 children worked cooperatively to create an amazing obstacle course.
The children planned and made decisions about how they were going to build a successful obstacle course.
They showed high levels of energy and fascination when building the obstacle course.
The children reviewed and changed some of the pieces when they realised it wasn’t working.
Humpty Dumpty and his aeroplane adventures.
Poor old Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and was scared to climb the wall again. He found a new love for flying paper aeroplanes but wasn’t quite sure how to make them or what to make them out of.
But fear not, Humpty, Year 3,4 are here to help!
During our science lessons, we have been experimenting with paper aeroplanes to find the best material and size plane for Humpty.
First, we checked we all knew how to make a paper aeroplane. To make sure that is was a fair test, we all had to make them the same.
Then we made three aeroplanes out of different materials; paper, sugar paper and card, and tested how far they flew. We found the paper was the best!
Once we knew this, we were able to test which size plane was the best: A5, A4 or A3 sized paper.
We found A3 sized paper aeroplane flew the furthest whilst learning about how a science experiment must be a fair test, making predictions and how to ask scientific questions.
Celebration certificates
We’ve had another great week in year 1 and 2. Thank you to everyone that emailed homework in. The children have enjoyed sharing their learning from home in class today.
As we can’t have our usual celebration assembly on a Friday at the moment, I will be posting the certificate winners on here each week.
For great learning…
Umar – for having a positive attitude towards learning this week. You are an excellent year 2 role model.
For sport and physical activity…
Willow – for amazing moves and enthusiasm in Wake Up Shake Up (WUSU).
For living and learning…
Chloe – for being ready to learn and working hard.
Fabulous Foundation
The children have had another fabulous week in Foundation!
We are really starting to get to know their interests and personalities.
They are all fantastic at following the school rules and classroom routines – I’m super impressed!
Here’s some highlights this week…
WAKE UP SHAKE UP!
Exploring in the water tray.
Our first lunch at school.
Using our senses to explore the classroom.
Next week, our first focus story is Pete the Cat – Rocking in my school shoes! The children will draw pictures of them rocking in their school shoes and come up with some actions to help us retell the story.
In maths, we’ll be introducing our first focus number which is zero and looking at other numbers that are significant to them e.g. their age, house number etc.
Home-Link Challenge
Writing
This week, we’ve been learning about fronted adverbials and using them in our own writing. Louisa has written a fantastic diary entry where she has written from the character’s perspective- Humpty Dumpty. She’s used fronted adverbials with commas and lots of other punctuation too.
