Friday 11th October
Design and Technology - Improving a design for a Stone Age Dwelling
This half term, we have been learning about Stone Age homes in Design and Technology to link in with our History topic of The Stone Age. We started off learning about the different types of Stone Age homes and that because of availability of resources, different types of homes were made in different locations. Next, we designed our own Stone Age homes.
Last week, we started to make our designs using sticks and clay. This week, we have come back to our creations and evaluated them. We have used clay or sticks to repair or strengthen parts that needed it. We have refined as our work has progressed, continually evaluating the product design.
We had to use our growth mindsets in order to be resilient or try another technique when things didn't go to plan. Well done Northern Europe! You have great stickability!
Friday 4th October
National Poetry Week - Poetry Showcase
We have had a wonderful week this week with all our English lessons being based on poetry. We have read poems, listened to poems, used poems as inspiration, created shared poems and individual poems. We have played with words and created banks of words and phrases. We have rhymed and not rhymed. We have warmed ourselves up with free writing in a continuous flow of what pops into our head about a particular topic - which was such fun! The children's ideas have been amazing!. We have celebrated the end of the week with our phase. Year 3 and 4 got together for a poetry showcase where each of the children shared a poem they had written and we all really enjoyed listening to these. It was lovely to see the children's enthusiasm for poetry and hear them explaining why they like it so much!
Friday 27th September
Guided Reading - The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon by Mini Grey
We are really enjoying our new guided reading scheme 'Take One Book'. We have loved spending time really getting to know the book and the characters. We have had some amazing observations from the children when looking at the pictures. They seem to spot the tiniest details in the pictures and link this to what is happening in the story.
This week we had a fantastic 'Would You Rather' game linked to a part of the text where the characters become very rich and famous. The children had to chose 'Would you rather...
- Become a millionaire
- Be happy for the rest of your life
- Be young forever
- Be famous
We had lots of different answers and some wonderful explanations. The rest of the class listened and either agreed, built upon or challenged what the person had said, using their Oracy stem sentences and hand signals.
Some of our reasons included:
I want to be young forever so that I can always be at school!
I don't want to be young forever because all my friends will get old and then I'll be all alone.
I want to become famous so that my parents will be proud and I can look after them so they don't have to work and that will make me happy.
I was blown away by the children's thinking and reasoning skills and how they responded to each other's ideas.
You are amazing Northern Europe!
Friday 20th September
Music - Penny Whistle
I was really impressed with the children's enthusiasm for our Penny Whistle lesson today. They had taken them home for the first time last week and so many children had practised at home! Wow! When we recapped last week's learning, they were able to tell me which hand goes at the top (left), how to stop your penny whistle from screeching (blow gently) and the word we say 'to to to' which makes our tongue move so that our notes are clear and precise.
The progress they have made in just 2 weeks is incredible! Most children can now make a clear 'non screechy' sound! This week we learnt the note B and also started to play in unison using music. We played for 4 beats, rested for 4 beats and played for 4 beats. Well done Northern Europe! Your listening, hard work and growth mindset were fantastic!
Friday 13th September
Northern Europe’s Polish Vegetable Bigos
Throughout this week and last, we have been learning lots about our class continent; Northern Europe. Today, Emma from Tiny Tasters came in and we made a traditional Polish dish called Bigos. This dish is a vegetable stew which includes ingredients such as dried porcini mushrooms, sauerkraut and a small amount of allspice. We had lots of fun exploring these unique ingredients, learning new cooking techniques and trying food we had never eaten before (and as you can see from the photos, some of us were not as keen as others!). We all took our bigos home with us to sample and enjoy with our families.
Friday 6th September
First Week Back
Miss Rochester, Mrs Bachoumis and I have absolutely loved spending time with our delightful new class! The children have demonstrated kindness to each other, showed good listening skills and worked really hard. We have had a great week! We have learnt about Northern Europe and used atlases to find the countries, their capital cities and flags. We have also learnt about the artist Paul Klee and created our own drawings based on some of his work. We attended a wonderful online assembly this morning 'Celebrating differences and overcoming adversity' and realised the importance of community and how we can all celebrate and support each other. We were super impressed with the children's ideas around these topics. Well done everyone!