I hope you have all had a fantastic half term and are ready for a new topic. We are going into the woods for this term to learn more about what we might find and how it survives. We will be focussing on plants and trees and the animals we might find in our woodlands. I am looking forward to seeing all the great research homework you have been doing over the holidays.

Week 6

This week has been innovate week. This is an opportunity to put all our skills together and produce some super cross curricular work to finish off our topic.

Tea Party

We decided that we would like to hold a tea party for special guests to come into school and see all the amazing things we have been doing this term. The children worked very hard to ensure everyone had a great time! We began by writing invitations remembering to include all the information everyone will need to be able to attend. We then created a list of all the things we would need. We remembered to think about decorations as well as tea and cake! We wanted to make our classroom look very special and so made our own bunting.

We used our design and technology skills to create animal masks for our table decorations. It was great fun selecting different materials to create our masks. It was brilliant to see lots of woodland animals suddenly appear in the classroom! 

We were very lucky to have a baking master class from Mrs Hawkins. She helped us to create super biscuits and Easter basket cakes for everyone to enjoy at our tea party.

With decorations, animal masks and food there was only one more thing we needed...guests! Thank you to everyone who joined us for our tea party the children loved having you in class and sharing all our learning with you.

Week 5

We have had a very busy week this week in Willow class. It has been assessment week so we have been trying really hard in all areas of our learning and we have all made great progress! Thank you to all parents who attending parents evening it was great to share our learning with you. Because we all tried so hard with our assessments the whole of Willow class received a Friday mention in assembly today. This week our good citizen is Jessica for always following the school rules.

Maths

Along side our number and reasoning maths assessments we have been looking at addition and subtraction number sentences with missing information. We have used equipment and mental strategies to find the missing number and even had a go at using the inverse!

English

We received a special letter from Fiona the pheasant this week wanting to find out some more information about where Phil has been! We learnt more about the key features of letters and then wrote her a reply making sure we answered all of her questions.

On Friday we designed posters to persuade people to buy a red nose for comic relief. We looked at the amazing work comic relief do and used persuasive language to try to encourage others to join in.

Geography

During our walk to church last week we spotted lots of interesting things which helped us to know where we were. We decided to create our own model of our local environment out of Lego to show all the interesting things we have in our local area.

Design & Technology

We set a mission to create a den which would be somewhere that Miss Burnett and Phil the pheasant could go and have a picnic. We used lots of different materials and worked together in two teams. It was great fun choosing which materials we would use and then setting about creating our dens. One team decided we needed a table and chairs outside whilst the other team felt we needed a drain off the roof in case it rained!

Red Nose Day 2017

Thank you to everyone who supported Red Nose Day this year. We all looked fantastic in our red outfits and special noses!

Week 4

A big well done to Luey and Adam who both receive Friday mentions this week for trying really hard and following the school rules. Well done to Holly Carr who is this weeks good citizen.

Maths

This week in maths we have been continuing our measurement work. We focussed on measuring weight and capacity and the different equipment we could use to measure those things. We compared different objects to see which one we thought was the heaviest and then used scales to see if we were right.

We then thought about how we could measure different liquids. We decided the weighing scales would not be right so we found some measuring jugs and containers. It was great fun measuring out the different amounts of water and reading the scale in ml.

English

We began this week by looking at different images of different plants and wild flowers. We thought about what made them unique and remembered their names. We then played a game of who am I? where we had to ask questions to decide which plant our friend was pretending to be!

We then moved on to look at different examples of instructional text. We read through some instructions and highlighted the key features that we could find. We liked the bossy words! We then wrote our own instructions to let everyone know how to make a woodland crown. We then used these instructions to make one which was great fun!

Science

This week in school it has been science week. We began the week with a mysterious pot with a magic liquid inside. We had a good look at the pot and had some great ideas what it might be inside and what might happen during the course of the day.

On Wednesday we had a special visit from Sodium Sam. She came into school to show us lots of wow science things. We made bubbles bounce, heard how different things can create different sounds, made watched electricity in a special ball and even made our own slime!

Art & Design

To go alongside our work in English on Instructions we needed to create the materials we needed to make our woodland crowns. We first cut two strips which are the band for our crown. We then used templates for leaves, acorns and berries and carefully drew around them. After that we cut them out and chose different coloured paints to paint them.

Once all our painted items were dry we positioned them on our bands and stuck them on to create our own woodland crowns!

Religious Education

This week we had a special celebration in Willow Class. We held our own baptism at St Michael Church. We attended the ceremony in our smartest clothes and chose parents and god parents for our pretend baby. We went through the baptism with Rev Margaret and Miah read a beautiful piece from the Bible. We had a great time at church. Thank you to everyone!

Geography

We have been looking at where we live and what landmarks are around our school. On a walk in our surrounding area we looking for different things that we might see on a map but what also might help us to remember our way. It was great fun spotting lots of different things.

Week 3

A huge well done to everyone in Willow class this week who all received a Friday mention for their fantastic money work in maths! Our good citizen this week is Oscar who is an excellent role model to others and always follows the school rules.

Maths

This week we have been working hard learning more about money. We began the week looking at the different coins we use and trying to find ways to help us remember them. We looked at the shape, colour and any other features that they have. We then looked at the values of the coins and ordered them starting at the smallest value. We created our own piggy banks using different coins to make specific amounts. We found this quite tricky and so need to keep practising using different coins to make different amounts. We ended the week with a money word problem challenge!

English

This week we have been thinking about stories based in the woods. We broke down the story of Hansel and Gretel into the beginning, middle and end. We sequenced cards and told the story in our own way. We then moved on to creating our own woodland story. We looked at an image of a magical path going through a mysterious wood. We all had some great ideas some even included fairies and magical animals. We ended the week with a recap on the correct use of capital letters and full stops. We do need to keep remembering to include full stops in our great descriptive writing.

Science

Continuing our work with plants this week we used phone scopes to take a closer look inside plants and flowers. We learnt more about the parts of a plant and how a plant stays alive. We then played a fun game where we had to ask questions to find out which animal one of our friends was pretending to be. It was a great way for us to use our new animal facts!

Art and Design

As part of our woodland animals work we decided to create sculptures of the different woodland animals. We made a sketch first so we could think carefully about the proportion, lines and different parts of the different animals. When we used the clay we thought about ways to join different parts together and then how we could add detail to show fur and feathers.

Week 2

A big well done to Max and Miah who both received Friday mentions for their super writing this week. We have put work from Miah and Lexi on our celebration walls and Jasmine is this weeks good citizen for always trying her best and following the school rules.

Maths

This week in maths we have been working on time. We began the week revisiting o'clock times and creating them on our own clocks. We thought about the different lengths of the hands and where they need to point to for an o'clock time. We moved on to finding half past times and then drew our own o'clock and half past times on blank clock faces.

We played time dominoes and created time jigsaws to help us match written times, digital times and clock faces. We have all really enjoyed learning about time!

English

We began this week thinking about questions. We thought about what a questions needs, which words we could begin a question with and which punctuation mark we needed to remember a the end. We then thought of questions we could ask to find out more information about Phil the pheasant. It was great fun using the internet to find out our answers. We discovered that pheasants can swim!

Religious Education

This week we worked with Maple class to find out more information about Shrove Tuesday. We learnt more about why this is an important time for Christians and how some people celebrate this differently across the United Kingdom. Mrs Spencer then gave us a cooking demonstration and we all had a little taste of pancake!

Science

This week in science we designed our own investigation to see what plants need to grow. We thought about the different things we thought they needed and then decided we would take one of these things away so that we could see if it made a difference. We have put five plants into our investigation. Plant one has got everything, plant two is going to have no water, plant three is in the dark cupboard, plant four is in the freezer and plant five is under a bucket outside with no water. We are going to observe our plants for three weeks to see if we can spot any changes. We made predictions and are looking forward to checking them next week.

World Book Day

We had a fantastic world book day on Thursday. Everyone looked fantastic in their outfits!

Art and Design

We used sketching and pastels to create some beautiful pictures of our plants this week. We began by creating a sketch thinking about size and proportions. We then had a practice with the pastels using smudging and lines to create different effects. Our pictures look fantastic and we are going to create a display in the corridor near our classroom.

Week 1

What a fantastic first week we have had in Willow Class. A big well done to Harry and Layton who received Friday mentions this week. Charlie is this weeks good citizen for trying so hard in school and helping others.

Home Learning

A big thank you to everyone that completed our holiday homework challenge. I am very impressed with the fantastic home learning projects that have come into school this week. It is clear that a lot of work went into them and the children said they enjoyed doing them too.

Maths

This week we have been looking at measurement. We have been thinking about different ways to find the length of different items. We have ordered items in relation to their height and used a ruler to accurately measure things to the nearest cm. We discovered that measurements can be very important and for some items we have to know exactly and estimating is not good enough.

Science

Our new topic has a strong science focus and this week we have learnt lots of new things. We discovered that there are different categories of trees and sorted trees in our locality into deciduous and evergreen trees. We looked at different leaves to see if we could spot which tree they had come from.

We had a fantastic walk on Wednesday to the woods near school to spot signs of spring and different trees. We managed to spot some snow drops and daffodils too.

We also thought about how plants grow and what they need to turn from a bulb or seed into a beautiful flower. We sequenced picture cards to help us remember how to look after plants and then planted our own bulb. Fingers crossed we can help them to grow into beautiful flowers.

Religious Education

This term we are going to be thinking about the importance of Easter to Christians. This week we thought about why Easter is special to us and the things we do to celebrate Easter time.

Physical Education

Our dance topic continues this term in PE. This week we learnt a range of different dances which involved sport moves. We had to follow and practice the routines very carefully but learnt moves from tennis, basketball and boxing.