We have been very busy already! Please have a look at the fabulous learning, teamwork, sharing of ideas and practical work we have been doing.
Times Table Champions
Every week, for homework, we practise multiplication and division facts for a particular times table. Then we 'battle' in our groups to be the CHAMPIONS! This takes hard work as it tests our instant recall. Have a look at our champions.
PE Stars
Every week in our Indoor PE with Mr Simmons, he chooses someone who has impressed him with key PE skills. This may be teamwork, a positive attitude, resilience, helping others or showing tenacity with a particular skill. Have a look at our superstars!
Art
In preparation for our new classroom and a new year in Key Stage 2, we reflected on ourselves. We thought about what our dreams and wishes were for the next school year, what we were looking forward to and how much we had changed over the previous year. We looked in the mirror and carefully examined our own reflection. We built upon our understanding of symmetry in maths to show mastery of drawing techniques and create a self portrait. We had to think carefully about where we placed key features and mimic the sizing of these carefully.
PE: Striking and Fielding
We have begun our PE learning by developing our throwing skills. We have learnt how to throw to a target. Next, we have developed our fielding skills by being aware of our surroundings and working with others. Now we have become more aware of our surroundings, we have developed our catching skills and incorporated throwing and catching into playing games.
PE: Gymnastics
We learnt that we can jump in different ways. We refreshed our understanding of how to jump safely from Year 2 and thought carefully about using every part of our body to perform a jump that showed finesse. We then explored crating sequences using the equipment and making different shapes with our body.
Reading: Comprehension
We have been developing our retrieval and inference skills. We have been working together to find the clues and proof in a text to prove an answer correct.
English: The Twits
We have been reading the Twits and can't help but chuckle at how horrible and cheeky they are! We have used our reading skills to retrieve and infer about the main characters: The Twits; learnt about the features of a letter and learnt about apostrophes for contraction. We developed our understanding of different word types, sentence types and how to be particular with our choice of vocabulary.
Science: Rocks and Soils
We have looked at different rocks and developed our ability to compare and group. We have learnt new vocabulary to describe their properties and found similarities between them. Next we built upon this understanding that rocks have different properties to investigate the hardness of different rocks. We were also pleased that we could recognise the names of lots of rocks from last week.
Maths: Place Value
We have been developing our place value understanding so that we can now explain numbers up to 1000. We have used concrete resources to make sure that we are confident with this! Some of use struggled to understand number lines so we took number cards into the playground, used the lines on the floor and practised jumping the 'steps' of a number line. This helped us to understand what it represented. Then we could spot missing numbers and jump on the correct spot to represent a particular number. By the time we went back to the classroom we were number line whizzes! We have worked together to help each other when we struggled with the tricky task of exchanging to find more and less then.
Music
In music with Mr Nash, we will be learning how to play the recorder. We began by learning key notes in music notation so that we can read rhythm. We then learn basic technique of how to hold a recorder. We now know that we use our left thumb and first finger to play the note b.
We have even been lucky enough to apply our understanding of rhythm to playing the ukuele!
Art: Pencil Drawing
This half term, we will be exploring different pencil skills in order to create the different aspects of a picture such as tone, texture and crosshatching. To begin, we explored using different pencil types to create different tone. We learnt that tone can be light or dark and that pencils of a different HB can be one of the things that impacts this.
Computing Science
In computing this half term we are learning that computers have programs which make them work. We are exploring the first step in this by creating algorithms. To begin we learnt what the key words algorithm, debug and errors mean. We practically explored creating an algorithm: instructions and how to make them as clear as possible.
Spellings
We think spellings are important! We think we should practise our spellings at every opportunity. For this reason, we practise every morning and take opportunities to practise when we can and in different ways to ensure we understand the words we are learning as well.
Obstacle Course
Every year we do a school, sponsored obstacle course. This year our course was mixed up a little by Mr Simmons but we rose to the challenge and had a great time doing it! It was lovely to see how everyone encouraged each other!
Remembrance Day
We noted Remembrance Day and took the time to learn In Flander's Field. We discussed the significance of the poppy. The importance of acts of memory and how a poem can be just that. We practised performing the poem in small groups.
English: Clifftoppers
Linked to our Geography topic on Coasts, we have been reading Cliftoppers in our English and Reading lessons. We have learnt the features of an adventure and explored the different characters in it before having a go at writing our own adventure.
Geography: Coasts
Our Geography topic this term has been Coasts and we have become geography experts. We have really enjoyed developing our mapwork skills, becoming more aware of the different coastal locations around our country and understanding the human and physical features that make these places as they are. We have also enjoyed learning about erosion and how this causes coastlines to change and can impact the lives of the people living on them.
Black History Month
For Black History Month we learnt about Mohammad Ali and how he confronted stereotypes and prejudice to set a new standard in sport for black figures. We learnt about his life by reading his biography and learnt about what segregation in America was like.
Our Class Assembly
We performed our class assembly about our learning on Black History Month and Mohammad Ali. Have a look at how well we did.
PE: Invasion Games
In our second half term, we learnt how to play invasion games successfully. We developed our throwing and passing skills in order to become more competitive. Have a look at what we have been up to.
RE
In RE this half term we have been learning about Special Days. As part of this we have learnt about different birthing ceremonies.
English: The Creakers
We LOVED The Creakers by Tom Fletcher. We loved exploring the different characters in the book and being kept hanging about what might happen next!
DT
We learnt how to sew in order to make a christmas present. We looked at different bookmarks, the materials they were made of and the designs in order to design our own. We learnt how to do running stitch, half cross stitch and a full cross stitch. We found it really tricky but we excelled in perseverance and were really proud of ourselves.
DT
We learnt new skills in order to make christmas cards for our loved ones. We learnt that we can make cards pop up in three different ways, cutting, folding and sticking. We designed our cards and then used the techniques we had learnt to make our cards.
Christmas
We had a lovely time at Christmas but we had a mischievous visitor....an elf! He left a santa cam in our room, snowy footprints, his sleeping bag, didn't tidy away his breakfast, covered our christmas tree in toilet roll and much more!
We also made an advent calendar door to count down to christmas!