George and the Dragon writing
This week in Year 1 we have been looking at the story ‘George and the Dragon’ by Chris Wormell! It is a very funny story about a huge, fierce dragon who is terrified of… mice!!
We learnt a class version of the story and then began to change it to make it our own. We invented our own dragon and thought about how fierce it was! Then we decided what our dragon would be so fearful of. We had some great ideas: frogs, snails, worms, birds and even chickens!!
The next step was drawing a story map of our ideas and practising telling it to our classmates. We had a great time sharing our stories in the sun!
The final stage was the writing! We were very keen to get going and showed amazing stamina for writing! Everyone in Year 1 was so proud of the finished writing! Well done to all the children!
A busy week ahead!
We have a very busy few weeks ahead of us as we reach the end of term.
Balanceability
These sessions will be held on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Please make sure your child has long trousers and suitable footwear.
Meanwood Valley Urban Farm
Please send your child in their school uniform and with a packed lunch. It looks like it will be a sunny day, so please send your child with a hat and apply sun cream before they come to school.
Topic
The children are enjoying learning about oceans and the animals that live there.
They have been role-playing in our ‘ice-cream shop’ and reading in our ‘under the sea’ reading area.
The children have been visiting the Year 1/2 shared area and enjoyed finding new equipment and challenges.
Living and Learning: money workshop
Today, visitors, from HSBC, came to deliver a money workshop as part of our Living and Learning curriculum.
The workshop, to buy or not to buy, included learning about:
- the difference between a need and a want
- people making different choices about saving and spending money
- prioritising needs over wants
- saving for the things we want
Our visitors were very impressed with the knowledge and participation from the children. The visit supplemented our recent learning about money education so it was great to hear this.
Parallel and Perpendicular!
In today’s maths lesson, our learning objective was:
What are parallel and perpendicular lines?
We learnt that…
parallel = lines that are opposite, equal distance apart and will never meet
perpendicular = lines that are at a right angle to each other
Part of our learning involved finding parallel and perpendicular lines in the playground.
Here’s what we found:
Can your child identify all the parallel and perpendicular lines in the photos above? Can they find any at home?
Reading books
Over the next two weeks, we will be using the children’s home reading books and reading record books in class.
Please could your child bring these into school every day.
Books will continue to be changed on Tuesdays and Fridays as normal.
Design Technology – textiles
This half term, our topic learning will be all about textiles and design technology. Over the next few weeks, the children will learn all about the design process, different types of sewing stiches and make their own puppet.
At the end of the topic we will evaluate our product and discuss what went well and anything we could have done differently.
This half term’s topic vocabulary.
First week back!
It was really good to see the children eager to learn again after a half term break. They have clearly enjoyed their week and have been making excellent choices because we won the choice chip cup this week! Well done everyone! It is fully deserved.
We have also started our DT topic this week. We are studying textiles, in particular, joining pieces of material together by sewing. Today, we got some plastic needles and sewing cards out to practise threading needles, tying knots and beginning a running stitch. It was difficult and the children showed brilliant resilience to keep going! We were all very proud of ourselves.
It would be a great help if you could practise tying a simple knot at home! Thank you!
Amazing skipping
Today, the day had finally come. It was the event we had been building up to after all our skipping practicing – the Year 2 Skipping Festival!
Jodi, Chris and Katie welcomed us and the other five schools to the event at Armley Leisure Centre. First of all, there was a skipping warm up for everyone before the individual skippers did their events. The children were so encouraging and supportive to their class mates and every child tried their best and performed amazingly well.
Next, it was time for the group events. The children worked so well together in their teams and once again, we were so proud of what they have achieved. Even in the last few days, we have seen some of the children mastering these new skills.
Finally, it was time for the results. The tension was mounting…
Double bounce – Rory 1st and Erica 1st
Single bounce – Daniyal 2nd and Roshni joint 1st
Side straddle – Aaron 2nd and Haleema 1st
Side swing – Ibrahim Sh 2nd and Grace 3rd
We were so pleased to have received so many awards. Sadly, we weren’t the winning school but we were amazed to hear that we were in 2nd place out of six schools and that it was very close between us and the winners.
The children have been so resilient, determined and have definitely believed in themselves (even when it has been hard learning new skills) and we are very proud of them all.
To be told by one of the class at the end of the event, ‘thank you for teaching us to skip’, made it all worthwhile!
Here’s some of the action. Keeeeep skipping!
We are designers!
Welcome back Year 5!
I can’t believe we are in our final half term of the year. It has absolutely flown by!
Our final topic of the year is design technology. This week, the children will be looking into historical inventors and designers and how they have influenced the world we know today. Some particular designers/inventors of interest are Isambard Brunel, Lewis Latimer, George Stephenson and Jony Ive.
Underneath is our topic vocabulary. It may be useful to have a look through this regularly with your child to improve understanding of each piece of vocabulary. Another beneficial idea is to dive deeper into the designers listed above. Find out more about a specific person of interest and how they still have impact on the world today.
Year 2 Lexia learning
Nearly 50% of the class have either achieved the end of Year 2 certificate (Level 9) for Lexia or are currently working on this level. Well done to all those children!
As we start our final half term in Year 2, it would be great to see as many of the class as possible achieve this target by the end of this year.
Just ten minutes a day, at home, can help to achieve this.
Please let us know if you have any difficulties with your child’s log in.