St James’ goes to Magna!
Last week, we 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.
We started by creating our very own erupting volcanos. Check out how we got on…
In the afternoon, we explored the different pavilions, water, ice and fire. We watched The Big Melt which showed us how steel is melted. Sparks were flying everywhere!
It was amazing! 
Topic: Local walk
As part of our Geography topic, we went on a walk around our local area and visited 5 places. Before we left school we spoke about ways to keep safe on our walk.
“We listen to our grown ups.”
“We need to wear our hi-vis jackets.”
“We need to stay in our groups and hold our partners hand.”
“We need to stay on the path and only cross the road when a grown up says it’s safe to.”
At each of the 5 places we completed a survey looking at the noise levels, litter and number of bins/recycling bins. We gave each area a score from 1 to 5.
Challenge: Can your child tell you the 5 places we visited? Can they tell you about any other places we saw on our local walk?
When we came back to class we looked at our surveys to see which place was the best. We talked about why we felt this way. Have a look at our amazing work!
Writing: nouns and adjectives
Wow, we’re very impressed with the writing Year 1 have produced recently. We’ve been reading books by the author Oliver Jeffers and using his books to inspire our writing. We’ve been focusing on nouns and adjectives and using them in sentences.
Have a look at our super writing!
PE: meeting a footballer!
In PE this week, we met a footballer named Bex Rayner.
She told us all about herself and how she started out as a footballer. She also gave a live demonstration of her skills – one of our lucky Year 2 children had a go at copying!
Then, we completed a circuit of different exercises that Bex does to help her stay healthy and active.
What’s a fronted adverbial?
This week, year 3 have been learning about fronted adverbials (sounds tricky)!
We started by recapping adverbs. These tell us how, when or where a verb is done. We then moved the adverbs to the front of our sentence. This creates a fronted adverbial!
The children thought of some of their own sentences using fronted adverbials. We had to be careful to make sure we changed the capital letters and used a comma after the fronted adverbial.
Check our some of out ideas- we tried to link some sentences to our recount about a volcanic explosion!
Quickly, the boy ran to the park.
Frantically, Miss Gledhill marked the Year 3 books.
Suddenly, a cloud of toxic black smoke shot from the boiling volcano.
Outside the magnificent temple, people were shouting at each other.
Watch this video about fronted adverbials.
Word classes can be tricky to remember. When reading with your child, why not see if they can identify nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs?
Wake up Shake up!
Today, Wake up Shake up happened indoors! Check us out in action…
Geography: the streets around our school
Today, we went on a local walk around Wetherby to survey some areas. We considered the amount of litter, bins, traffic, plants and trees and we talked about how safe we feel in our environment. We noticed that most places with lots of litter did not have many bins. When we returned to class, we discussed which areas we liked the most and why.
Help at home: wrap up warm and go on a walk around Wetherby. Have a look at what you can see. Talk about your favourite places.
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.
