Summer 1
In our Citizenship lesson we discussed different scenarios and the importance of rules in our school and what steps they would take if they’ve witnessed something breaking rules. We then made a video about all our school rules and helpful ways to make our school a happier place!
After finding a brilliant second-hand Lego shop, I managed to buy a new set of wheels, axles and bushings. The children made amazing cars and we tested them in the long corridor outside the classroom. Our winners were record breakers. We have never managed to get our cars that far before. Well done Lego club!
In art this week, we of course went to the forest school! We found a hill to sit on and looked at the landscape in front of us. The children have been learning about the background and the foreground. Their activity was to draw the landscape taking account of the foreground and background. They then needed to use different greens to shade their pictures.
Today, the children were encouraged to plan routes around a mat before they started to write programs for those routes. They were also introduced to the concept of there being more than one way to solve a problem. This concept is valid for a lot of programming activities: the same outcome can be achieved through a number of different approaches, and there is not necessarily a ‘right’ approach. This lesson also introduced the idea of program design, where the children needed to plan what they want their program to achieve before they start programming.
Today in Geography, we discussed the major differences and similarities between cities, towns and villages. The children were sorting through a variety of different images that could belong to either a city, town or village. When discussing how to sort the images, they used their oracy skills to justify their choices.
This term’s computing has been a programming module where children are learning how to move a robot. The children have been introduced to early programming concepts. They have explored using individual commands, both with other children and as part of a computer program. They have identified what each command for the floor robot does, and used that knowledge to start predicting the outcome of programs. Today we have been learning about algorithms and how to plan one and then test it. When they realise they have made a mistake and rectified it, they learned that they have ‘debugged’ their algorithm.
In English we are looking at the traditional tale of 'Cinderella'. This is a story maybe over 1000 years old and is believed to go back to a Chinese story called 'Ye Xian'. We have read several different versions and the class spent today's lesson in a discussion about their favourite version. In these pictures you can see us using the Oracy technique known as a traverse. Each child tells their partner and listens. Then they all move down one and tell a new partner. It is a wonderful way to express yourself and hear new ideas.
In this term’s art, we are looking at the street art of the local artist Nicole White. We had a look at various the various artworks that we can see in our local area of Walkley and Hillsborough. A lot of the children remembered seeing them on their way to school. In today’s lesson, the children explored painting with different brush sizes on different surfaces all over the school. The fact that we were painting all over the school on the day that the government minister Ed Miliband was visiting, meant that we only used ‘magic’ paint that disappeared after a while..
In our second Net and Wall lesson, the children are learning to play against an opponent and keep the score. To help them, they needed to say the score out loud every time someone scored a point. They were also encouraged to shake hands with their opponents at the end of each game. You can see them demonstrating the ready position needed to play all of the activities. They had to move sensibly to keep everyone safe, persevere in the games and to understand how to make it more difficult for their opponent to catch the ball.
The children have been using the local environment throughout the year to explore and answer questions about plants growing in their habitat. This term we will be observing the growth of mystery seeds they have planted. They are becoming more familiar with common names of flowers, examples of deciduous and evergreen trees, and plant structures (including leaves, flowers (blossom), petals, fruit, roots, bulb, seed, trunk, branches, stem). The children are starting to work scientifically by: observing closely, sometimes using magnifying glasses, and comparing and contrasting familiar plants; describing how they were able to identify and group them, and drawing diagrams showing the parts of different plants including trees. Once the mystery seeds begin to grow they will keep records of how the plants have changed over time, for example the leaves falling off trees and buds.
This term in PE, we are learning about Net and Wall sports such as Tennis, Squash, badminton etc. Today’s lesson was learning to defend space using the ready position. The children know to have feet hip width apart and knees bent. They were encouraged to return to the ready position after each roll or throw.
Following on from yesterday’s lesson, the children compared the capacities of different containers, still using non-standard units of measurement. The Children were able to recognise that if container A has a capacity of 3 cups of water and container B can hold more than 3 cups of water, then container B has a greater capacity than container A. We also looked at some reasoning questions to help them understand that the units of measure need to be the same for both containers in order to compare capacities.
In this lesson, the children measured the capacity of different containers using non-standard units of measure. (a small plastic cup). This helps them formalise their understanding that the capacity of a container is how much of something it can hold. This can be cups of water or sand, cubes or marbles and so on. Children not around the water tray were doing the same task with cubes.
