The Skeleton
We’ve also been learning about the skeleton this morning with students from Leeds University.
We’ve learned about the joints and how muscles work in pairs to allow us to move our bones at the joints.
CSI Fingerprinting
It’s the science day of curriculum week today and we’ve been learning about fingerprinting. We’ve learned that all fingerprints are different and that fingerprints have arches, loops or whirls.
Maths all around us
Maths can be found all around us and Year 1 completed a maths trail as part of our themed week.
- Can you find an array?
- What shape is the bench?
- What is the height of the bin?
Maths Day
As well as working with the Happy Puzzle Company, we’ve been doing lots of different maths in the classroom too.
The day started with lots of resilience to try and make our way through the maze.
We then looked at problems across lots of different areas of maths.
The day finished by looking at how musicians need to use mathematical knowledge to be able to keep a beat and read musical notes. We practised clapping in time before clapping to different musical notes. Finally, we all had an instrument and played different beats at the same time. Unfortunately, I was so busy being a composer that we don’t have any pictures but you can take my word for it – it was great!
Puzzling puzzles
Reception class and Year 1 began our current themed week with some problem solving mathematical puzzles with The Happy Puzzle Company.
With lots of teamwork, thinking skills and resilience, we enjoyed the challenge of all the puzzles.
Themed week
Today, we have been mathematicians which involved team-work, reasoning skills, adopting a systematic approach and lots of patience in order to solve some logic puzzles.
Sharing homework.
This will be the first of many homework sharing posts that gives the children chance to share their good work beyond the classroom and will (hopefully) become a useful source of ideas if you’re stuck with a creative homework.
Last week’s homework was to show what you have learnt about a period in history. I had information from Celts, Vikings, Romans, Victorians and even the Industrial Revolution. Lots of interesting stuff and here’s but a few…
Ben’s model of a Celt house. 
which came with some information too.
Filip's picture of a Tudor house with some information. 
A quiz from Humairah. 
Some well-written information from Isaac. And there were many more. Keep posted when we have our next creative homework.
What’s going on this week?
Some parents have mentioned that it would be helpful to know what we’re learning each week to allow you to know how to help at home. In response to this, there’ll be a short post each Sunday/Monday about the main areas for learning in the following week.
Maths
This week, we’ve returned to division in Maths and have started by sharing objects into groups and recognising this as a division calculation. This then leads to understanding how we can use our tables to solve division (eg 15 divided by 3 can be solved by counting in 3s until you reach 15). Once we’re confident using this skill, we can start thinking about division in real life particularly when things don’t share equally.
How many egg boxes do I need to hold my 23 eggs? Each box holds 6 eggs.
English
We’re entering the weird and wonderful world of poetry in English. Lots of reading of poetry helps us to hear the patterns, rhythm and understand the poets choice for how to structure it. Through poems by Tony Mitton (Old Noah’s Dance Hall Ship, Elegant Elephant Delicatessen, Instructions for Growing Poetry and My Hat) we will also explore techniques like rhyming and alliteration before attempting to write a poem of our own about our favourite piece of clothing.
Topic
It’s the final week of Time Travel which means we’ll be reflecting on what we’ve learnt over the last eight weeks. Here are some things you could ask at home…
- What have you learnt?
- What did you enjoy most?
- What would you still like to find out?
- What did you fin the most challenging?
Sorting 3D shapes
We explored all things 3D this week and a great way of showing whether you are confident with you edges, faces and vertices is to try sorting shapes.
…or a Carroll diagram. It’s interesting to see how the shapes move around when you change the criteria you’re sorting with.
Can you spot any mistakes we made?
It was quite tricky sometimes, especially when you’re trying to think about four things at once!
Artists once more
After our Katie and… Big Topic, we had a bit of a break from art… but it’s back!
We started off using different types of pencils to sketch Tudor houses. We really tried to capture the dark strips of the buildings and their often wonky shapes.
Then we went very abstract! We looked at Jackson Pollock’s Number 8 which was a great contrast to the real-life sketches we’d created. Using all things bubbly, we created our own bubbly backgrounds for our serious Tudor houses. It was great fun and our finished pieces, when we combined the two, will follow.
