Author visit: Emma Carroll
Year 5/6 across Sphere Federation enjoyed a Zoom call from author Emma Carroll this week. We chose two of her books for our class novels this year: Secrets of a Sun King and Letters from a Lighthouse.
We were treated to a tour of her writing room learned about her daily schedule. We asked questions about her process and found out about some of the earlier drafts of her books.
Living and Learning – 60 minutes of daily exercise
This week’s Living and Learning statement is, ‘I know the importance of 60 active minutes’.
In KS1 we have been discussing the importance of exercise and how we need to keep active to keep our bodies healthy. The NHS guidance states that children and young people should ‘aim for an average of at least 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous intensity physical activity a day across the week’. We know that the exercise we need to do to achieve this, should increase our heart rate.
At school we provide opportunities for at least 30 minutes of exercise per day. Some of these include:
- Daily WUSU
- 2 weekly PE sessions (including swimming)
- Play times x2
- Lunch time play
- Go Noodle, Just Dance and Supermovers in class
- After school clubs
Help at home – GoNoodle and Supermovers are both educational, active resources that are available for free online. Walking to school (where possible) will also help towards achieving active minutes.
Carnival Music Workshop
Today, children across Year 3,4 enjoyed a music workshop on ‘Tamboo Bamboo’ with Leeds for Learning (ArtForms Music) in conjunction with our Topic learning about Carnival. Tamboo Bamboo originates from the carnival traditions of The West Indies (specifically, Trinidad & Tobago) and is a percussion instrument. Here are some photos of 3,4A enjoying the session.
Tadpoles
Have you seen the tadpoles in Nursery? Children are fascinated watching them wriggle and swim around the tank. We’ve been learning about the life cycle of a frog and know that the next stage in the cycle is for the tadpoles to grow back legs. We keep looking at them closely to check for signs of legs.
In maths, we’ve been singing ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs‘ and have been carefully counting how many frogs are left on the log after each verse.
How many frogs jumped into the pond?
How many are on the log?
If there are 3 frogs on the log, how many are there in the pond?
In the sensory area, children loved playing in the ‘frogspawn’ (or tapioca)! It was very gloopy and had lots of tiny little jelly balls that were very tricky to hold between your fingers.
We looked at pictures of frogspawn and had a go at printing using bubble wrap. It looked just like the balls of jelly in frogspawn! In the fiddly fingers area, we used used our pincer grip to pick up the marbles and balance them on the suction pads.
Outside, children have enjoyed playing with some bats and balls. We used the bats to knock the balls of the cones and had great fun running to pick them all up again. We also practised our throwing skills; we aimed the balls at the 5 speckled frogs on the log and tried to knock them off. When we’d had our turn, we collected the frogs that we had knocked off and put them into a five frame to see how many there were.
Farmyard Hullabaloo!
Our ‘Life on Earth’ explorations have taken us to the farm this week!
Farmyard Hullabaloo
We’ve been reading Farmyard Hullabaloo– our second collection of animal poems by Giles Andreae.
We’ve continued to identify rhyme by predicting missing words and continuing rhyming strings.
In our writing, we’ve been writing facts about farm animals.
Herd is our ‘word of the week’- we learnt that ‘herd’ is used to describe a group of hooved animals.
Help at home- Ask your child if they can remember some of the rhyming words to finish these word strings or they could even create their own rhyming word string.
Maths; comparsion, number order and identifying missing numbers
In Maths, we’ve been using the staircase pattern and number tracks to compare numbers and describe how we know where to place each number in a sequence:
I know that 7 goes next, because 7 is one more than 6.
I’ve already got 10 on the track, so I know that 9 is missing. There is a space next to 10 and 9 is one less than 10.
In provision, we’ve continued to tell and create our own number stories.
PE; Foot-Tech Academy
On Monday’s training day, the early years and KS1 teaching staff had a fantastic training session with Foot-Tech Academy, where we learnt some new approaches and games that we can apply to our current PE teaching.
The children continue to thrive in their Foot-Tech sessions, through games that allow them to explore a range of movement skills and encourage them to be active and enjoy exercise. Most of all, they have so much fun and can’t wait to share what they’ve been doing.
A mini bug ball!
We’ve had some creepy crawling crazy fun, at our mini bug ball today! We enjoyed singing and dancing along to minibeast themed songs in the hall and played ‘collect the pollen’ during our outdoor PE session.
The children loved dressing up and talking about their costumes. Thank you for your support at home, getting the children ready for our bug-tastic day!
Phonics
Summer 1 week 5 has focused on root words ending in:
–ing, –ed /t/, –ed /id/ /ed/ –est. We’ve learnt the tricky words; out, today
We’ve now learnt all of the phase 4 tricky words and completed the tricky words we will learn in Reception! For the rest of the Summer term, we will review all of the tricky words we have learnt.
In provision, we’ve been reading ‘facts’ and sorting them into ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on whether the statements were true or false.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called The Fox
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Click below to watch Rainbow Class recite this week’s poem!
More pictures of our learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
SWIMMING DATES- Summer 1 and Summer 2
Rainbow Class- 24 May, 14 June, 28 June, 12 July
Sunshine Class- 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July
Living and Learning – physical and mental health
This week’s Living and Learning statement is ‘I know that being physically active is mentally and physically healthy’.
In KS1 we have been discussing the importance of having 60 minutes of exercise per day.
We keep active in school every day through WUSU, PE and play during break and lunch times.
One child in 2C said ‘I walk to school every morning. This is part of my exercise.’
We also talked about the importance of rest and that we need both exercise and rest to keep our bodies and minds healthy.
We calculated how long we spend being physically active each day and how we can make small changes to stay active for longer.
History – suffragettes
We have been learning all about Leonora Cohen in our history topic. She was a suffragette from Leeds and a very inspirational woman! We talked about how she fought for the right for women to vote and have equal rights. She designed and wore this dress, which is displayed at Abbey House Museum. We then designed an outfit she might’ve worn.
Writing: expanded noun phrases
This week, we’ve been thinking about how to make our writing more interesting for the reader – really thinking about the audience for our writing. The children will be writing a recount from the perspective of a child evacuee from World War II. They had pictures of evacuees, their journey and their new lives and they had to work in teams to generate expanded noun phrases. These are made up of a determiner, adjective and noun. They had to include some adventurous vocabulary to try and impress me.
Help at home: Ask your child what an expanded noun phrase is. Can they create some for you to read?
Science – germinating peas
We have been growing all sorts of things in our lessons lessons this half term. We recently wanted to find out about the best conditions to germinate peas. We put some in a dark, cold place (the fridge), some in a warm dark place (the cupboard) and some in a warm, light place (the windowsill). They all germinated – but at different rates. The root and shoot also grew at different rates, depending on the conditions.
We have planted them out now to continue to grow in soil.
Help at home by re-creating a growing experiment or planting, growing and looking after plants at home.
Art – group artwork
In our history topic we have been learning about Nelson Mandela and how he fought for equality. Each class created a modern art inspired group piece of him.
Help at home by talking about why he was a hero and how equal rights are so important.
