Autumn 1: Week 8
Diwali
This week, we explored the story Binny’s Diwali. We talked about what a festival is and discussed the similarities between different religious festivals. The children had lots of fun learning how families prepare for and celebrate Diwali.
Help at home: Can your child remember something about Diwali? If they’re unsure, here’s some key words to help them: food, decorations, fireworks.
For our writing activity, the children designed their own invitations to a Diwali celebration. They included some fantastic drawings and used recognisable letters in their writing—well done, everyone!
What else have we been up to?
We’ve been getting creative by making our own magic potions! The children used their imaginations to come up with exciting ingredients and then wrote lists to describe what they added to their mixtures. Fantastic mark-making and early writing practice!
In the maths area, we practised 1:1 correspondence by counting pom poms to match numerals up to 10.
One-to-one correspondence focuses on the actual counting of objects, and assigning numbers to objects in the correct order, as they are counted. This also helps children to understand that the numbers they are saying hold value.
The playdough challenge has been very popular this week! The children have really enjoyed using their fine motor skills and creativity to make colourful Diya lamps.
Another popular chilli challenge involved drawing detailed Mehndi patterns, We observed some fantastic concentration and careful mark-making.
Yesterday, the children worked in pairs to design and create some beautiful Rangoli patterns.
Reminders
- Marvellous Maths Stay and Learn Session
Tuesday 18 November
Come and join us for a fun, hands-on maths learning experience! - WOW Moments
Have you noticed something special or a new interest at home?
Send photos or updates to: [email protected]
We love sharing these in class! - Daily Reading
It’s important that your child reads daily at home. Please continue to read eBooks to support phonics skills and their library book to support love of reading.
Have a happy and healthy week. See you on Monday 3rd November!
Writing: news reports
Today, Year 4 finished their twisted tales news reports. They were writing to report the story of the three little wolves and the big bad pig!
I was wowed by their brilliant writing and creative ideas. The reports were full of adverbs, fronted adverbials and fantastic descriptions of the awful crime.
This afternoon, Year 4 read out their writing as if they were news reporters. We spoke about our oracy skills (speaking and listening) to make sure the reports were clear and well projected. Everybody did a fantastic job – I think we might have some budding journalists in Year 4!
Help at home: watch Newsround and talk about the oracy skills the presenters are using when reporting.
Half term basketball camps
As a partner school of City of Leeds Basketball Club and one of our after-school club providers, we’re pleased to share details of their half term camps held locally at Allerton High School.
Living and Learning: Me and my money themed week
Geography walk
Last week, during Geography, we planned a walk in our locality so that we could investigate what the land is used for. This week, we walked the walked!
Here are the types of land-use we saw:
- residential – flats and houses
- commercial – shops and restaurants
- recreational – Moortown Park
- transport – roads
We really enjoyed getting our steps in while being geographers! We stayed safe by wearing high-visibility jackets, walking in pairs and taking care when crossing the roads.
Poetry Picnic
The fun, seasonal poem we’ve been learning this week is Five Little Pumpkins.
Hope you enjoy the (slightly raucous) performance!
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
On Tuesday, Year 5 and 6 went on a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to support our Art learning for next half term. We loved seeing all the amazing sculptures.
In the morning, we had a self-guided tour of the park and saw both abstract and figurative sculptures. We spent time discussing and sketching what we saw.
In the afternoon, we took part in a workshop with a real artist! We investigated patterns, textures and shape. The children did some artwork without looking at the page; they had to put their sketchbook on their heads. They also created artwork without taking their pencil off the page, which was a bit tricky! We spoke in depth about Barbara Hepworth’s Family of Man and had some brilliant ideas as to what each sculpture could represent. Finally, we made our own clay sculptures overlooking some of Henry Moore’s work. 
It was a brilliant day!
Help at home: Ask your child about the trip. What was their favourite part of the day? Which was their favourite sculpture and why? Or, take a look at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park website – can you find out more about the pieces of art we saw in real life?
Autumn 1: Week 7
Autumn
We’ve had a busy week doing lots of seasonal activities. After reading Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert, we looked closely at the beautiful leaf illustrations and used them as inspiration to talk about all the amazing changes we see in autumn.
We also began learning about hibernation and explored why some animals start to hibernate around October and November. We even made our own clay hedgehogs!
Help at home: Ask your child which animals hibernate and what they do to get ready for the colder months.
Maths
Our focus has been on using the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to compare groups of objects. Since we’re working with countable items, we use fewer rather than less.
Help at home: Gary and Barney are still arguing! Can your child help them out? Use this sentence to compare: “___ has more/fewer ___ than ___.”
(For example: Gary has more apples than Barney.)
Phonics
We’ve been busy recapping all the graphemes we’ve learned so far. There are no new graphemes or phonics sheets this week or next. Please continue to use the phonics home learning book.
Here’s a snapshot of some of this week’s seasonal chilli challenges…
Living and Learning: democracy
This week, our Living and Learning has been around one of the British Values, Democracy.
We use voting within the classroom. For example, what class reward the children would like or which book to read at the end of the day but this week it is our Junior Leadership Team elections so all the children had a difficult decision to make when giving their vote at the polling station.
Year 2 did a fantastic job delivering their speeches to be elected for the Junior Leadership Team (JLT). The children thought about what would make them a good leader and what ideas they would bring to the JLT.
Every child had their democratic vote by deciding who they’d like to see represent our class in the JLT.
Well done to Lydia May and Zara Mae for being voted as our new members of the JLT and thank you to Teddy and Rowan for doing such a good job representing the class as our junior leaders for the past year.
Help at home: Think about voting and why it is a fair way to make a decision. Are there any times you vote at home?
Visitors – PCSOs
This morning we had some visitors in school. They were our PCSOs. They came in to talk to us about fire safety, how to stay safe at Halloween and how to stay safe during Bonfire night. They taught us some really important and valuable things. Our favourite was the carrot trick. Where the year 1s were taught to stick the handle of the sparkler in the carrot and then use the carrot as a handle to help keep our hands safe and to increase the distance of the flame from our hands.
