York Castle Museum Adventure
This week, Year 1 and 2 visited York Castle Museum to learn more about their topic: Time Travel – houses.
The children visited and heard diary entries from people who lived in the types of rooms they were viewing. They enjoyed trying to guess which type of house they were looking at.
Leah – “First, we saw some poor and rich Victorian houses that were fancy…After that, we looked at some old and new kitchens.”
The children also explored a Victorian street and spoke to some actors from the Victorian era – their favourite spots in the Victorian street were the police station and school.
Brooklyn – “I saw an old sweet shop. It didn’t have any Smarties.”
The children had a brilliant day with excellent behaviour by all – a member of the public commented to us to say how well she thought the children were acting, behaving and listening. Well done, Year 1 and 2!
Lest we forget
We continued our poetry theme by reading one of the best known poems from WWI, Flanders Field.
Some children performed the poem to the rest of the school in Collective Worship.
Narrative poetry
This week, we started to read the narrative poem- The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. There are some challenging words in the poem such as quaint, surcease, entreating and implore, so we spent some time predicting the meaning of these words and then using a dictionary to see if we were right or not.
We then watched a version of The Raven re-told by The Simpsons characters.
We answered some RIC (retrieve, interpret, choice) questions about the video clip and thought about what we liked and disliked about this version of the poem and how it’s presented.
“We will remember them”
Remembrance Day 2018
For reflection time this week, Foundation watched a presentation and had a discussion about the importance of the poppy emblems that many of the children have brought into school. We spoke about Remembrance Day, who we are remembering and about the centenary.
Ask your child if they can remember how many years it has been since the end of World War I
The children created some beautiful poppy decorations which they were very proud to take home in the afternoon.
If you’re attending any parades or services at the weekend, we’d love to hear about it in class. Perhaps your child could draw a picture or write a sentence about the experience, to share with their friends.
If you’re attending the parade in Wetherby this weekend, you may spot some familiar faces! Miss Beatson and some children from our school will be walking in the parade.
Home-Link Challenge:
Next week, for Anti-Bullying Week 2018, Foundation will be thinking about kind and unkind behaviours or actions. In preparation for this, we’d like you to have a discussion with your child about their friends. Please use this prompt: “Tell me about a time when one of your friends has been kind to you.” Please write down exactly what your child says, in their own words. We’ll use their responses in our learning this week.
Parent Reminders
Monday 12 November: Odd Socks Day- Anti-Bullying Week. Please send your child to school in odd socks.
Parents / carers of all Foundation children are invited to our interactive Fiddly Fingers Stay and Play, Wednesday 14 November, 3.15-3.45 pm. You’ll be able to take part in activities focused on developing fine motor skills. Whether you can stay for five or the full thirty minutes, we hope to see many of you there.
Friday 16 November: Children in Need. Please send your child to school wearing something yellow. We will be collecting donations for the charity.
Thank you.
Living and Learning: I can show perseverance
Our Christian value this half term is perseverance. This week it was the focus of our Living and Learning session. We looked closely at the words in this definition: ‘Persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success’.
Everyone closed their eyes and said the first thing that came into their heads related to the word ‘persevere’:
“To try and try again.”– Jessica
“Challenge yourself, don’t give up”. – Lily
“Be resilient, like one of the 8 Rs.” – Hannah
“When I persevere towards a goal I feel happy because I know I’m challenging myself.”-Emily
I posed the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’, but was very astutely corrected by Oliver: “No, practice makes progress, not perfect.”
Finally we watched an animated clip about one animal’s perseverance to overcome all the obstacles in his way. He didn’t give up and remained focused on his goal.
We left the session with a small task for next week:
Think of an achievable goal or target you are going to work towards.
You’ll need to demonstrate how you showed perseverance to accomplish your target.
We’ve all got until Christmas to work on our chosen goal.
Living and Learning: I can show perseverance.
Fantastic feast, scrumptious scran and brilliant banquet
The highlight of our week has been preparing and eating our very own Tudor banquet to go with our time travel topic on food and our current book, ‘A Medieval Feast’.
Our first task was – just like the serfs in the book – to prepare some of the food. We made a soup from a variety of winter vegetables, flavoured with parsley and other herbs.
Then came time for the actual feast. We had servants to announce each course with a drumroll, toasts to the king and queen and other honoured guests throughout the meal, jesters to entertain us between courses and, of course, the mouth-watering food.
We had the soup which we’d made earlier in the week with scrumptious corn bread. We followed this up with succulent roast chicken and fresh vegetables. All washed down with goblets overflowing with fruity red wine – not really! It was a feast fit for a king.
Living and Learning: I can participate in democratic decisions.
Last week the election for School Councillors gave us an opportunity to explore democracy, which is one of the British values.
We thought about how unfair it would be if important decisions affecting our lives, school and community were made without us having the chance to influence the decision. The process of voting in a democratic society gives us this opportunity.
Then, in preparation for the School Council elections, some of us gave short speeches to persuade our classmates to vote for us if we promised certain things. Issues raised included ‘all children should take 30 minutes of exercise each day’ and ‘children should not wear a uniform to school’.
It was brilliant to hear lots of well thought out responses.
The End of Autumn 1!
Wow! What a busy half term we have had. We have developed lots of new skills, settled in to the routines of school life again and shared some magic moments in our learning.
Foundation 2 are flourishing in their phonics. Sid the squirrel has been super impressed with how they have explored and used each sound that he has shown them over the past eight weeks.
We have worked hard to become story-tellers, with everyone in F2 showing they can re-tell a story and some can even write the words or sentences from them! We have been using our fantastic imaginations to share our own ideas and create new stories too!
In maths, we have explored every aspect of our focus numbers and challenged ourselves in our counting, shape and size comparison.
F1 have enjoyed their key worker time, exploring nursery rhymes as a link to lots of different learning. They have been listening to stories, counting, constructing and sharing their thoughts, feelings and ideas.
We have started our PE sessions, working on balancing and movement. We can hop, skip and gallop. Importantly, we have shown that we can listen carefully and follow instructions to make sure that we are safe.
We have now voted for our new themes after half term, based on the children’s interests: Superheroes, Dinosaurs and Toys!
Half-term Home-link Challenges
F2- Please help us build up our role play area by using your ‘fiddly fingers’ to wrap up an empty box (in Christmas or any other style wrap) and add a label (included with the weekly up-date sent home) of what is inside and how much it costs. Please encourage your child to sound out their words and write the label independently.
F1- Please draw either a superhero picture or a picture of a toy for our toy shop. Please write down on the drawing exactly what your child has said about their writing in their own words.
Most importantly: have fun! Have a wonderful half term, Foundation 🙂 See you on 05 November.
Meet your new school councillors
After a week of learning about democracy as one of the British values, we have voted for our school councillors. Each councillor – as well as the other candidates that weren’t elected – had to make a small speech and answer questions on why they should be elected as a school councillor.
We would like to wish them good luck in their roles and look forward to seeing them succeed and help make our school the best it can be!