Who do you think you are?
In preparation for our themed week next week (20 November), it would be great if your child could bring in a photo of themselves as a baby and also something that is special to them. This could be a photo of special people, a special place or an object for the children to explain to the class so we can celebrate how we are all different but all equal.
We’ll use these in class on Monday 20 November if your child could bring them in on the day or Friday 17 November.
Hello from Addis Ababa
This week, Year 2 were very excited to speak with some children from Sandford International School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We’d already sent the children some questions to find out about where they live and how it might be different to Moortown.
It really brought it to life when we were actually able to ask the questions to the children themselves in our Skype call.
Ask your child what we found out and how Addis Ababa is different to, but also the same as, Moortown.
Through our comparison of this different location, we have been covering the following Year 2 geography age related expectations.
Making comparisons to a UK location, can your child describe and compare a non-European place using geographical words (eg an African or Asian village compared to a village in Yorkshire)?
Can your child describe a place referring to both physical (eg beach, coast, forest) and human (eg village, factory, port) features?
Can your child explain what facilities a town or village might need?
Can your child ask and answer questions about the geography of the school and its surrounding environment?
Super Vocabulary
In our writing lessons this week, we’ve been using our topic learning as a stimulus for our writing. We continued reading ‘The Land of Neverbelieve‘ but this time we focussed on the language used and the impact this has on the reader. We used our reading skills to work out what some of the trickier words might mean (learning about writer’s use of language) and then thought about how this impacts on the atmosphere/mood created (learning about atmosphere/mood).
Today, we looked at one page in detail…
…and thought about which different moods/atmospheres had been created by sorting each section into groups.
Tomorrow, we’ll create our own labels in the style of the author to add to our own made-up ‘Lands of Neverbelieve’ (learning about organising and combining visual and tactile elements).
More Veggie Burgers
We know that we talked about our cooking last week, but the rest of Year 6 did it today. We used the same skills: bridge and claw cutting methods, grating, frying, blending, moulding and – once again – washing up.
Once again, not everyone expected they’d enjoy it but everyone really liked them. Mushroom-based was the favourite of the group. We did the same recipes as last time: courgette-based, carrot-based and mushroom-based veggie burgers.
We took some more photos.
Pippa made a carrot avalanche or carralanche!
Some of us decided to taste them there and then.
Lots of children wanted to make the burgers at home so here’s the recipe.
- 2 shallots (chopped)
- 2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
- 2 tbsp of breadcrumbs
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp of cumin
- 1 tsp of paprika
- 150g of cheddar (grated) or 200g of feta (crumbled)
- 1 tin of mixed beans (optional)
- 2 carrots (grated) or 2 courgettes (grated) or a punnet of mushrooms (chopped)
Fry the onions and garlic (and mushrooms if you’re using them) and then place all of them into a large bowl. Use your hands to mix all of the ingredients together thoroughly. Once mixed, get a handful of mixture and use your hands to shape it into a burger. Place the burger shapes onto a baking tray and put in an oven (180 degrees) for 20 minutes.
Enjoy in a bun, with a salad or even with chips!
Written by Neive and Pippa.
Guided reading
In Year 2, as well as group reading, we also teach reading as a whole class using a variety of texts to support this. Today, as part of Anti-bullying week, we used our whole school definition of bullying to discuss word meanings.
When reading with your child at home, ask if there are any words they do not understand. Use a dictionary, the context of the sentence or any illustrations to help to understand what the word means.
In pairs, we then read through some scenarios to decide if they were bullying or not.
African themed dance
To link with our comparative location of Africa, Year 2 have been performing some great African themed dancing.
Here are some of the Year 2 PE objectives that we were working on as part of this learning.
Can your child perform most simple actions with control and coordination?
Can your child make a sequence by linking ideas from a stimulus into movement?
Can your child plan and perform a sequence of movements?
Can your child show contrasts in shape?
Can your child reflect on what other people have done?
There was also some thoughtful and constructive reflections to each other after the performances.
Christmas school dinner themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 07 December. Please contact the office, before Monday 20 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
From SNAP to Smell Journeys – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
Last week’s Living and Learning theme was I know we’re all the same and we’re all different. We used Our Rules that we created last week in our discussion of the pros and cons of being the same and different to everybody else. We decided it would be really boring if we were all the same all the time! In teams, we wrote a recipe for success for teamwork. Some ingredients we thought of were ‘problem solving attitude’ and ‘good listening skills’.
We took on the role of detectives in English this week, spotting features of an instruction text in cookery books. We had competitions to see whose text contained the most features – but we had to give evidence of each feature to win the point!
Maths has revolved around multiplying and dividing by 3! We’ve looked at finding groups of three and finding three equal groups which is tricky because they sound similar but are very different. There are lots of ways to represent one number sentence. For example: 5 x 3 = could be expressed as ‘3 x 5′, ’15’, ‘five threes’ or shown by fifteen counters. We played Snap to test our knowledge of this in a fun way.
Some of us had more luck than others. You had to be quick!
To round off our Explorers topic in a creative way, we went on a Smell Journey around school, after discussing artwork by Kate McLean: NYC’s Threshold of Smells.
This inspired us to write a descriptive recount of a walk to school where we were bombarded with stinky stenches and awesome aromas. We also wrote a class Pongy Poem, which we displayed in the style of a smell.
Next, we experimented with colour and shape using watercolours to represent what the smells might look like if we could see them. (There were some interesting discussions about certain smells!)
This week’s Creative Homework task was to show understanding of addition and subtraction and I was absolutely bowled over by the quality of the submissions! The children had clearly gone to so much effort to show what they had learnt over the past few weeks and they were so proud of what they had done, which sparked some great conversations between pupils. It was fantastic to see. There were lots of board games with their own rules using addition and subtraction at their core, there were online quizzes and mazes and puzzles, there was even a video presentation (see the bottom of the post)! We all thoroughly enjoyed discussing each and every one, so I would like to say a massive well done from me, once more. Check out some of their brilliant learning below:
Well done to certificate winners Hifza, for a fantastic contribution to this week’s Living and Learning theme and her understanding of how we are the same and different, and Henka, for an unbelievably good piece of descriptive writing and your handwriting has come on leaps and bounds, too! Keep it up!
Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. The children will learn about their rights and responsibilities, what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community.
Our lesson last week focused on how we are all the same and how we are all different.
We began with a discussion using the sentence stems
- “I am different to… because…”
- “We share some similarities in that…”
This then lead us to our activity. Using a Venn diagram, the children worked with a partner to compare similarities and differences. This sparked off some very interesting discussions.
“My partner and I are the same because we both have a religion. However, we are different because those religions aren’t the same.”
We always start our Living and Learning lessons by reading the rules that the children set out for every session.
Watch out!
We’ve been busy making magic potions in Reception and most children liked the idea of turning people into animals.
You have been warned!
