‘Wheely’ good fun in topic
We’ve gone way back in time this week, right back to the Stone Age when the wheel was first invented. Through our Reading, Writing and Topic lessons, we’ve learnt all about the wheel (and axel), made our own Lego chariots, and written some great instructions for how to make them.
At home, ask us about the wheel and about our learning this week. It’s been really fun!
Traffic Survey into Maths
Yesterday, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit from Anne from Leeds City Council who came to take us down Shadwell Lane to conduct a traffic survey.
We recorded lots of data, including how many people were in each car, if they were wearing seatbelts and the many different types of vehicles we saw.
We also recorded whether drivers were doing anything to distract themselves such as eating, drinking or using a mobile phone which is illegal!
Using the speed camera Anne brought with her, we were able to see how fast the vehicles were travelling as they reached the 20mph zone. It was shocking to see that drivers took ages to slow down, some reaching 40mph at the 20mph cut off zone. Luckily, most slowed to under 20mph as they passed us or before.
Today in maths, we totaled up our tallies from the data we collected yesterday to produce some bar graphs. (This will refresh our statistics brains before we look at line graphs and two way tables in the coming weeks.)
We wrote conclusions about our results: “I know 69 people were wearing their seatbelt and 14 people were not,” and “I know that 4 people were using their mobile phone,” or “I know that most vehicles had only one passenger in them.”
Wheely cool art
Continuing with our Time Travel – Inventions big topic, we looked at the invention that started them all turning: the wheel!
We designed and built three different chariots out of Lego and tested them on how well they carried passengers, traversed rocky terrain and competed in a race.
Next came the evaluation: we rated each category out of five and gave it an overall score.
We’ve also done some wheely cool art this week. We explored complementary colours on a colour wheel and practised shading. Tone, which is the lightness or darkness of a colour, was something else we practised using our coloured pencils.
We decorated the colour wheel with pictures of inventions that have a lot to thank wheels for such as cars, segways, penny farthings, scooters and aeroplanes. The results were fantastic!
Can you spot the complementary colours, different tones and shading technique?
Living and Learning – Remembering a crazy journey!
This week’s Living and Learning session focused on remembering. We played a memory game where we had to watch a conveyor belt and remember as many items as we could.
It was quite tricky because they were completely random and moved quickly along. We did well, though, averaging about 7 or 8 out of 12.
Next, came the remembering trick. We discussed remembering items by thinking of a route in our heads that we knew really well. At landmarks along our imaginary journey, we placed one of the items there. Our journey looked like this:
Here comes the trick part. At your first landmark on your the journey in your head, you imagine the item there but in a silly, crazy and unforgettable way! Imagine it’s vegetarian sausages at the school gates. You could imagine the entire school gates are made out of sausages that squelch between your fingers (William), an amazing sausage smell hits you out of nowhere (Dan) or instead of Mrs Weekes at the gate, it’s a giant, dancing sausage instead (Maggie)! Whatever it is, make it ridiculous, make it funny and make it stick!
We tried the memory game again but with different items and using our imaginary journey to help us. Bananas in Pyjamas were playing tig in the hall, a palm tree had erupted through the floor of the 3/4 shared area and SpongeBob Square Pants was taking his coat and bag off in the 5/6 cloakroom! Here are some notes from our second try:
Almost everyone in the class managed 12/12, including Mrs Charlesworth! Quiz your child: can they remember the items, even now?
Local Area Walk
Last week, Year One went on a walk around the local area to kick off our ‘Time Travel’ topic. The aim of the walk was to compare old and new houses. The children took pictures of all different houses and wrote notes about the differences between old and new houses.
Bounce into basketball
School Savings Club
The School Savings Club paying in sessions for this year are at 3.15-3.45pm on the following dates (the penultimate Thursday of each half term).
- 18 October
- 13 December
- 07 February
- 21 March
- 16 May
- 11 July
If you’re unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be deposited to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.
If your child would like to open an account, please ask at the office.
There is an extra incentive for pupils in Year 3 as Leeds City Council will add £10 to your child’s account.
Road safety assembly
Anne, from Leeds City Council’s road safety team, delivered some great safety messages in our assembly this morning.
Can you remember the green cross code?
- Think!
- Stop!
- Look!
- Listen!
Pedestrian road safety
Today, we worked with Wendy from Leeds City Council road safety team to learn all about being safe around roads especially when we are walking to school.
Before we went out on the road, we remembered (one of our 8Rs for learning) the green cross code.
- Think!
- Stop!
- Look!
- Listen!
Then, it was time to go out to put our learning into practice.
Mass park and stride
Thank you to all families who joined our mass park and stride this morning from Marks and Spencer. Special thanks as well to Leeds City Council road safety trainers, Dom Jacques and Living Streets representatives and especially Kerby for supporting this event to mark the start of International Walk to School month.
It was great to see so many families join the walk to school using Marks and Spencer to park their car rather than parking near the school gate.
Keep up those active journeys to school for a happy and healthy start to the day.
