A busy couple of weeks!

What a busy time we have been having in Willow class! Thank you for all your help with the nativity and the Christmas party. The children had a great time and loved the tasty treats!

Maths

We have been working hard finding halves and quarters of amounts. We used shapes, objects and even hula hoops to help us find quarters. We have also been practising our measuring skills and compared objects to see which was the longest and shortest.

English

We have been writing instructions on how to be a zoo keeper. We thought about all the jobs a zoo keeper would need to do including the smelly ones and decided which ones we thought were most important. We then used pictures to help us order our instructions. We enjoyed using imperative verbs to make sure everyone knew what they had to do.

Design Technology

We used lego to create our own class zoo. Everyone was given an animal to create an enclosure for and we had to think about all the things that animal would need. We remembered the enclosures from our trip to help us with design ideas.

Music

We wanted to recreate some of the sounds different animals might make. We didn't want to just do traditional animal noises but instead think about what sounds they make when they walk or eat. We thought about when animals play together or hunt for food do their noises change? We used a range of different musical instruments to recreate these sounds.

Innovate week

As part of our independent activities week I presented the children with a challenge. I gave everyone a flat monster and we had to follow the instructions to create our own box monster. We had to fold different parts and make flaps so it all stayed together. To begin with we couldn't see how this flat piece of card was going to make anything but we soon got the hang of it!

Nativity and Christmas party

We had a fantastic time performing our nativity to everyone. We have been working really hard learning the songs, dance moves and lines. We thought about why this time was important to Christians and used the play to help us remember the Christmas story. Thank you for all your help with costumes and lines. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Week 5

This week in celebration assembly we celebrated a great first week for Kate, Liam's fantastic attitude to his learning and the whole class received a special mention for their behaviour on our class trip. Jasmine has a piece of work on the maths wall and Miah on the English wall. Liam is our good citizen this week for been helpful in the class.

Maths

This week in maths we have been finding doubles. We have been using mental strategies and equipment to help us find doubles. We then moved on to finding half of an amount. We used the division symbol in our sentences for the first time and we shared items into 2 groups. We had to check our groups were equal. We have really enjoyed finding doubles and halves. Please continue to practice these at home.

English

This week we have been writing a recount of our trip to the wildlife park. We have been working in chronological order and used time connectives to help us order our work. We thought about description of the different animals and about our feelings. We agreed as a class that the meerkats made us laugh the most!

Art and Design Technology

Following our trip we made animal masks showing our favourite animals from the park. We drew around an outline and then added the key features of the different animal. We then cut them out and put them on our display. We think they look fantastic!

Our trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park

On Tuesday we went to Yorkshire Wildlife Park. We wanted to find out more information about different animals. It was very cold when we arrived at school but we were soon on the coach on our way. We saw lots of amazing animals including lions, camels, tigers, snow leopards, giraffes, monkeys and polar bears. We learnt more about their natural habitats and what food they like to eat. We took part in a special polar bear talk where we learnt more about Victor. We played polar bear dominoes and a game explaining what is happening to the polar bears natural habitat. We discovered we can all play our part in keeping polar bears safe by reducing our energy consumption.  Thank you Mrs Davidson and Mrs Hawkins for coming with us. We all had a great day!

Week 4

What a busy week! This week Luey received a mention for his super shopping list for the tiger. Our good citizen is Miah for helping others with our time work!

Maths

This week we have been learning all about time. We began the week looking at clock faces and recognising the different hands and numbers we then began to think about o'clock times and moved on to half past. We have used training clocks to help us and have had some fun activities including time dominoes and time board games to help us along the way. Please continue to help your child with time as they have worked really hard this week and made great progress.

English

This week we have been looking at familiar stories and we decided we wanted to use The Tiger Who Came to Tea. We began the week by sequencing picture cards and then retelling the story to our friends. We then used drama techniques to recreate different scenes from the book. We thought about what it would be like if the tiger came to our house for tea so we wrote shopping lists to make sure we were ready!

Geography

This week we have been looking at where we might find big cats around the world. We have been looking at the big world map identifying the different continents. It was really interesting to see where in the world some animals live.

New books

We had an exciting delivery of new books in Willow class this week. We love our new traditional tales books which are colour coded for different reading abilities. We have been independently reading them and sharing the stories with our friends. Thank you Mrs Liley for our lovely new books.

Week 3

Friday mentions today was a sight of spots, bright colours and Pudsey ears! This week Cameron received a Friday mention for his fantastic maths work and Poppy received a Friday mention for her great piece of edited writing! This week Ruby is our good citizen for always been a great friend.

Maths

This week in maths we have been learning more about money. We have been identifying the different coins learning more about their values and buying things from our table shops. Please can you continue to help your child with money as this is a skill we need to keep practising.

English

We have been learning more about fact files this week. We began by looking at different animal fact files and identified the key features. We then used the IPads to find information out about our chosen animal. Once we had lots of facts we created our first draft of our own animal fact file remembering all of the key features. We edited these and then created our final version on the laptops. What a busy week!

Science

Continuing with our animal work this week we have been finding out more about the different groups of animals. We learnt more about Amphibians, Reptiles, Fish, Birds, Insects and Mammals. We sorted different animal pictures into different groups according to their features.

Children In Need

What a great day we have had raising money for such a great cause. We all look fantastic in our outfits and have really enjoyed guessing the number of spots on the cake and playing Pudsey games. Thank you to everyone for supporting such a fantastic cause!

Week 2

A big well done to the whole of Willow class who received a Thursday mention for their great behaviour during the visit from the animals. We were very proud of everyone!

Maths

This week in maths we have been learning more about different measurement. We have been comparing different lengths using the correct vocabulary, different weights and different capacities. We had great fun predicting which object would be the lightest/heaviest and even recorded our findings in a results table.

English

This week we have been writing poems. We have been looking at acrostic poems and learning the key features of them. We decided that we wanted to write about poppies in the run up to our remembrance service on Friday. We described the poppies and learnt more about the different things The Royal British Legion do thanks to the money raised from the poppy appeal.

Science

On Wednesday we had some very special visitors in Willow class. Miss Day and two of her colleagues from Barnes Wallis Academy brought a range of different animals into class. We did four different activities which involved excavating for fossils, learning more about reptiles and amphibians, identifying the different classification of animals and handling. We were all very brave and learnt lots of things about the different animals! Thank you Miss Day for a great afternoon.

DT

As part of our maths work we used scales to weigh out different ingredients to make poppy biscuits. We looked at full and empty and then read the scales carefully to weigh out the right amount of ingredients. After our remembrance service we came back inside and enjoyed a poppy biscuit.

Art

As part of our animal topic we decided we would like to use different drawing pencils to create outlines and shading of our favourite animals. We investigated using the different pencils to see which ones we would like to use.

Week 1

What a fantastic first week back at school! A huge congratulations to Adam and Oscar who received Friday mentions this week. Our good citizen this week is Toby for his super caring attitude in class.

Maths

This week we have been working with digits and number words. We have been matching, reading, ordering and writing numbers. We have had great fun doing lots of practical activities.

English

As part of our new topic we have been looking at pets. We had a question and answer session based on Poppy. We thought carefully about how to look after her and things she needed to stay healthy. We thought of some fantastic questions and wrote some beautiful sentences about pets we know.

Science

This week we have been learning more about the different seasons. We have looked at how some trees change during the different seasons and some different activities we might do in the different seasons. Please help your child at home to think about the different months of the year and how these fit into the different seasons.

Lights, Camel, Action!

We have began to read through this years nativity. It is going to be a great production in December! Shortly your child will come home with further details so please keep checking book bags.

Welcome back!

I hope you have all had a fantastic break and are looking forward to an exciting new term. This term we are going to be learning all about animals.