Happy half term
The end of another half term has whizzed around and I just wanted to wish everyone an enjoyable and relaxing half term. There will be no homework or spellings over the holidays but keep up with reading each day, Mathletics and Lexia.
After half term, we’ll be sending times table practice home and there will be a test each Friday alongside spellings.
As our plants are now thriving, each child will be bringing their herb home to keep and take responsibility for watering it every few days. It’d be great to see how you get on with this – particularly if you end up being able to use it in your cooking!
Enjoy the break and we’ll see you in a week.
The Tin Forest update
Our Tin Forest will be heading home to you on Friday to see who can keep their herbs growing over half term and beyond. Here’s how they’ve grown since we planted them.
Friday 16th January 2015
Friday 30th January 2015
Thursday 12th February 2015
They’ll need plenty of water, warmth and light!
The Great Fire of London
Today, we took on the role of archaeologists and delved deep underground (our tables) to find clues about the past. We found pictures of Tudor buildings on fire; images of people with buckets of water; the date 1666; and a street sign for Pudding Lane. After a few more clues, we guessed what event might have happened in the past and suggested our ideas using the clues we’d found.
We had, of course, uncovered clues to The Great Fire of London, 1666. After watching a short video (another way of understanding what happened in the past) we moved on to maths for more information. We can use data recorded from the past to learn more about what happened.
Look how much you can find out from these…
School council elections
Our current school councillors held their final meeting recently as we prepare to elect our new school council.
Children from every class, including Reception, are encouraged to prepare a speech to present to their class as part of the election process. Our whole school homework before the election date will give children the chance to plan their speech.
Thank you to our existing school council who have been involved with many decisions and discussions throughout the year. Most recently they have selected books for our library and pupil prizes as rewards in class.
Time Travel – A stroll around the houses
Our new Big Topic is Time Travel. Year 1 and 2 are focussing on houses through time. To kick off, we’ve all gone for a walk to see what the houses around us look like today. There are lots of different houses all around the small area near school so just imagine how many different styles we’ll see across thousands of years.
We had to be careful as the streets have been very slippery this week.
We saw detached houses, semi-detached house, bungalows and flats all in our mile long walk! I wonder what different houses we’ll see as we travel through time?
Creative homework
What can you make out of the rubbish (recycling) in your house?
What a great response to this week’s homework! I’ve seen lots of amazing work in books as well as models we brought into school. Here are some things we created…
The Tin Forest
For the first two weeks of Spring Term, we’ve enjoyed a book called The Tin Forest by Helen Ward. This tells the tale of an old man who lives on the edge of nowhere, near forgotten, whose house is surrounded by other people’s rubbish.
We started our mini topic by looking at the pictures and developing our prediction and inference skills for reading.
We wondered about who might live in the abandoned house and whether we’d like to go there ourselves. It was a unanimous NO!
Then we thought about who might live in this house and what sort of questions we might want to ask that person. Here are some of our ideas…
After writing a diary entry as the old man; a letter to a real person who lives on a dump; a description of the final forest; and a poem… we made our very own Tin Forest!
Keep visiting our news feed for weekly updates on the forest and how it is growing and thank you to those of you who contributed to our tin tree trunks.
New SEAL theme – Good to be me
Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:
•Self-awareness – feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
•Managing Feelings – understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself –assertiveness skills, standing up for your views.
•Empathy
This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.
The key ideas and concepts behind this theme are:
Building emotional resilience
Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.
Coping with anxiety and worrying
Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.
Calming down
Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.
Assertiveness
The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour
The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened /under stress.
‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for the theme of Good to be me.
Party Time
The party season has now officially started! Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 danced and jigged their way through the afternoon with a few games thrown in. It was a great way to finish off the term – looking forward to non-uniform day tomorrow with lots of fun things planned. Here are a few photos of the fun and games this afternoon.
Happy Christmas everyone.
Happy Christmas!
Hello all! Autumn Term is at an end and we’re off to enjoy our festive holidays. Just a quick note to say well done to the children for this term. They’ve had an excellent attitude to learning meaning that we’ve been able to do all sorts of fun learning. We’ve travelled the globe in our ‘Where in the World’ mini-topic; taken a journey through art in ‘Katie and…’ big topic; and become enquiring scientists through ‘What’s the Matter?’. Rounding off our term was the fabulous production of Baubles which we all hope you enjoyed.
One last round of applause for all of the Year 2s…
THE SHEEP
THE TEACHERS
THE NARRATORS
THE TOWNSPEOPLE, INNKEEPERS, MARY AND JOSEPH
THE ANGEL
THE CHILDREN
and, of course… MR POTTS
Thank you for your support this term, have a lovely holiday and, from all of us…
