Thursday 28th March
As part of our Enrichment week, we have been learning all about British Values and Protected Characteristics. The children have really enjoyed all of the different aspects of this learning.
Also, this week, we had so much fun taking part in our Easter Egg decorating competition. The classroom was full of glue, glitter, paint, different pieces of coloured tissue papers and of course the smell of eggs!
The children had so much fun working on their very varied creations. As you will see from the photos we had so many different designs.
A really fun afternoon.
I can’t believe we’re already at the end of another busy term – Happy Easter everyone! Enjoy the rest.
Friday 22nd March
This week we have been so busy practicing for our amazing Year One class assembly.
We performed a play called The Chocolate Shop with our England class friends.
The story is all about a chocolate maker who makes some chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs to put in his shop window.
Unfortunately, the eggs are very cross when the bunnies are put in front of them taking pride of place! Luckily it all turns out well in the end and everyone becomes friends.
The children have learnt so many words and songs and were so incredibly confident when they performed their play to their very proud parents – and teachers!
Friday 15th March
This week in Design and Technology we had the most amazing time! We have been working on a project to design and build rockets. This has linked to our work about the astronaut Neil Armstrong.
This week was our building week. The children were so enthusiastic. When the children designed their rockets, they had to consider carefully what materials they might be able to use. They brought in lots of different resources from home to supplement the resources from school that could be used to build their rocket.
It was fantastic to see the children using different skills to fix the different parts of the rockets together.
As you can see from the photos the finished rockets are amazing. We will be evaluating our designs next week to think about all of our successes and about some of the things we could improve upon next time.
Friday 8th March
In Music this week, we were learning all about ‘rhythm and pulse.’
We found out that a ‘pulse’ is like a heart-beat and it runs in the background of every song. The pulse is what makes you feel like tapping your foot when you listen to a piece of music. It is made up of beats that are all the same length.
The ‘rhythm’ is a pattern of sound that is all different lengths.
We had fun listening to some pieces of music and then we tried to tap the pulse and the rhythm. We did find that the pulse was easier to tap.
We split the class into two groups. One group had to clap a steady beat and the other group had to clap a rhythm to the words:
‘I like play-ing mu-sic’
clap clap clap-clap clap-clap
Then tried to make up our own rhythms that we put to a steady beat. It was really tricky but we used our ‘growth mindset’ to keep going even though it was a real challenge.
Friday 9th February
This week in Scotland class we have been thinking about Safer Internet Day.
It took place on Tuesday and we completed some different activities to think about how we stay safe when using the internet.
We had a very interesting discussion about what we did ‘on’ the internet. We found out that most of us like to listen to music, play games and watch films.
Most of our discussion focused on what we do if something changes while we were using the internet. All of the children were fantastic at knowing what to do to enable themselves to stay safe. They knew that they must ask for help from a grown-up if something happened that made them feel worried or frightened. The children also knew that they must not ever click on a pop-up and that they again must ask for help.
Some of the children were so inspired by their learning that they produced a fact file at home that supported their learning further!
Super Scotland certainly know how to keep themselves safe in the digital world of the internet!
Friday 2nd February
In our music lesson this week, we have been using the untuned percussion instruments to create some music.
The lesson has followed on from a series of lessons that has used the work of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ as a starting point for learning.
In the first week, we listened to the piece and talked about our responses to it. Did we like it or not? Why did we feel like this? We have also tried to recognize the different instruments that are playing in the piece and have identified which family they are in in the orchestra.
Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ music was inspired by some short poems. Who wrote the poems is still unknown. Vivaldi wrote some of the words above the music so his musicians knew what they describing as they were playing.
This week, we were able to use the words from the poems as we were playing our own compositions. We thought about how we could use the instruments to make the sound of dripping icicles and other sounds of winter.
We read some of the lines of the winter poem as we played our instruments:
“Frozen, trembling on the ice
In gusts of horrid wind, we run
Stamping our feet to keep warm
Our teeth chattering”
Friday 26th January
This week in our Art lesson we have been continuing our learning journey all about sculpture.
We were given the challenge to make our own 3D sculpture using colourful thin card and glue.
We had a look at some examples of how to create a variety of different ‘tube towers.’ We were able to use different sizes of cylinders from in the classroom to roll our card around. This helped us to create the cylinder shape we needed.
Some children used pencils, some used glue sticks, some used paintbrushes and some children decided to roll their tube up ‘free hand.’ Once the tower was ready, the next process was to use scissors to make some cut out shapes in the cylinder to make fun patterns. Some children also cut the tops to make different patterns.
Once we had made all of our towers, we were able to place them on our base card. It was good fun to move all of the towers around until we were happy with the composition. Then the towers were glued to the base.
We left the towers to dry overnight. As you can see from the photos the children created some amazing sculptures.
Friday 19th January
Another busy week in Scotland class.
This week, I would like to share with you the work that we were doing in our gymnastics lesson on Monday.
Our focus has been on moving like different animals. We have been choosing different animals and then trying to replicate these movements around the hall.
We have been giraffes, lions, pumas and snakes amongst many other animals. Some easier to move like than others!
As part to our gymnastic lessons, the children are being encouraged to move at different heights - high, mid and low level.
We put all of our actions together to form a gymnastic sequence.
We then added some equipment to move over like the different animals we have been moving like on the floor.
Friday 12th January
What a great start we have had to our new year. Everyone has come back full of stories of the Christmas holidays and everything they have done in the time away from school. It seems as though Santa was very busy indeed!
We have begun learning a variety of new topics this week in our lessons – but one the children particularly enjoyed - was sculpture as part of Design and Technology curriculum.
All of the children were given a ‘lump’ of salt dough. At first, we began by seeing what we could do with the dough and how we could use our hands to manipulate it. We pinched it, rolled it, squashed it and made it into sausages.
It was great to explore the texture of the dough and to see what it could do. The children made all sorts of shapes!
We had learnt about the city of York on Tuesday, so during our initial sculpture session we looked at some of the building in York to see if we could sculpt them out of salt dough.
Our ‘growth mindset’ came in to play as we moved the dough in different ways to create towers, Tudor building and even York Minster.
A very enjoyable afternoon as you can see from the expressions on the children’s faces in the accompanying photos.