Week Ending 28th March 2014

Here are a few photos of what the Robins have been up to over the past week…

 

In Maths we have been measuring and weighing. As it was such nice weather we took our lessons outside. The children used sand to measure the capacity of various containers.

 

On Wednesday we had a whole day of science over at Ilam Park. First of all we made parachutes out of paper and attached them to little people and animals. We tested them by letting them go from a height. We discovered that the bigger the parachute the slower it fell.

We had great fun during our pond dipping session. We found loads of different creatures including tadpoles, leaches, bloodworms and beatles.

 

In the afternoon we created some natural environmentally friendly art using cut grass, twigs, stones etc. The children created some lovely works of art and we even had a compliment from a tourist on how wonderful the finished pieces looked and what a good idea it was to use natural resources!

 

We were also busy making truffles, sweets and card for Mother’s Day. We do hope that all the mums had a wonderful day and enjoyed their treats.

Week Ending 14th March 2014

Last week we celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite book characters. Photos of our World Book Day celebrations are now on the school website. During last Friday’s Forest Schools afternoon the children did fire lighting and toasted marshmallows. This Friday the children did some art work using all natural materials. Some children chose to create Bunster using twigs, moss, stones and grass, others went for a more creative piece. Have a look at their works of art below…

 

 

In Maths, Robins have been learning about measuring, and have been doing lots of practical activities to practice their measuring skills. They have measured each others (and teachers) hands and feet, as well as lots of other objects. Next week we will be moving on to capacity and data handling.

 

In Literacy the children have been learning about the difference between fiction and non-fiction books. They have learnt all the features of non-fiction books and have used their new skills to look for facts about penguins. This coming week we will be using those skills further to research about polar bears, and developing new skills to help find out as much information as we can using other sources.

In Science we have continued our learning about changing materials. In our last lesson we learned about reversible and irreversible changes by using our five senses to explore bread and popcorn before and after they were heated. We talked about which types of food could be changed back to their original state, and which could not. We found that both popcorn and toast could not be changed back so they had both experienced an irreversible change. Next lesson we will be exploring more reversible and irreversible changes.

In our topic lesson we watched a short video about the Titanic and read some factual websites and books. We talked about how tragic the story of the Titanic disaster is, and related it to more recent disasters. The children drew and labelled pictures and wrote sentences about how they would have felt if they were a passenger. As the children showed such a deep interest in  the Titanic I will do another lesson about it this coming week.

Please do have a look at the World Book Day photos on the school website, and if you haven’t already we would love to receive more ‘Extreme Reading’ photos of your children to put on our display – these can be emailed to the school office. Thank you.

Robins Out and About

Yesterday we went for a walk across to Ilam Park to do a very special job for the National Trust. We have been asked to produce some posters to encourage dog walkers to keep their dogs on a lead, especially during the lambing season. We thought the best place to get some inspiration for our posters was Ilam Park, and so we set off in search of some sheep to draw. We eventually found some up on the hill and took the opportunity for a class photo.

The children really enjoyed sketching in the great outdoors and asked if we could do it every day!

Using our sketches of sheep we can now create some fantastic posters for the National Trust.

Week Ending 13th February 2014

The Robins have been incredibly busy over the past two weeks. We have lots of photos to share with you!

In Forest Schools the children have been lighting their own fires and learning all about how to keep safe around fire. All the children successfully started their own fire safely using the correct kneeling position as you can see in the photos below.

In the final Gymnastics session of the half term the children practised and perfected their headstands with the support of a partner and then went on to use the equipment. The children put together all the techniques they have learned over the past few weeks whilst using the equipment. They demonstrated their different balances and travelling techniques. The Robin’s have thoroughly enjoyed their gymnastics sessions with the Stoke City leaders and are looking forward to learning other PE skills with them in the near future.

In Literacy the children have written their own Fairy Tale books! They have really used their imaginations and have come up with some wonderful stories. In order to make their stories the best they could be the children used story mountains, word banks and planning sheets to help them come up with lots of ideas and prepare them to write their story. When their stories were complete the children designed their own front and back covers to make them look like real books.

Our fantastic trainee teacher Miss Martin has been delivering some outstanding lessons in Robins Class. Miss Martin has taught lots of exciting maths lessons with practical, interactive, hands-on activities so the children are learning through doing. The children have been learning about weights and measures, and as you can see from the photos below they have been having lots of fun too!

Miss Martin has also been delivering Science lessons, which have also been full of lots of engaging activities to keep the children motivated and excited about their learning. In Science the children have learned about magnets and forces, as well as different materials.

 

Here is a photo of our new classroom display. The children created some excellent artwork using cotton wool and pipecleaners to make skiing figures. They also did some writing about what Winter Olympic sports they would like to do and why. Enthused from our recent skiing trip you won’t be surprised to hear that a lot of the children chose skiing!

Week Ending 7th February 2014

This week the Robins have written a sentence each about their favourite thing they have done this week…

I love swimming because I love going under water.

I like maths because it is fun and art because we make stuff like penguins, igloos and Northern Lights.

 My favourite thing was swimming. It is fun when I went in the water with no armbands. It was my first time.

 My favourite thing was gymnastics because we learned headstands.

 On Monday me and my class went to gymnastics and we did headstands. On Tuesday the children did pencil jumps.

I liked making the penguins out of tissue paper. I liked swimming because I am good at swimming. I liked gymnastics because I am good at it.

I like going on the laptops because we went up to the highest number on the phonics games.

Yesterday we made penguins out of tissue paper. We got some black paper, scrunched it up and then stuck it on the piece of paper. We did the same with the different colours.

I played on the laptops. It was phonics. It was fun.

Yesterday afternoon we were learning about penguins. In art we coloured penguins and put tissue paper on our penguins. As well in art we did the Northern Lights with chalk. It was good fun doing the Northern Lights.

I learned facts about penguins. Daddy penguins look after the eggs. Penguins live in the North Pole. Emperor penguins are fat.

I liked helping to tidy the bookcase when it was wet play time. 

 

This week we completed our igloo made of sugar cubes. It took a long time, a lot of PVA glue and lots and lots of patience! We are very pleased with the results.

In Maths this week the learning has been centered around consolidating the children’s knowledge in addition and subtraction using lots of interactive games and activities.

In Science we have continued our learning about materials and connected our fairy tale topic by building houses for the three pigs using various materials. We all thoroughly enjoyed seeing which houses were strong enough to stay up whilst the big bad wolf (a hairdryer) tried to blow them down!

In our topic work we have been learning about different varieties of penguins – where they live, what they eat etc.

In Literacy we have been planning our own fairy tale stories ready to write them next week. The children have come up with some very creative ideas and have certainly been using their imaginations! Last week we practiced typing on the laptops, so hopefully when the children have written their stories they can type them up for everyone to read on the blog. The below photo is a display of the fantastic writing the children did about our trip to Stoke Ski Centre last week. The children have loved looking at their ‘in action’ photos that accompany their writing.

 

Here are some more photos of one of the activities we have done in class. Next week we will post photos of today’s Forest Schools session and hopefully some of the children’s fairy tale stories!

Week Ending 31st January 2014

This week we had a very, very exciting trip to Stoke Ski Centre! We had a skiing lesson and we also had some fun sledging. Below are all the photos from our fantastic trip. 

Week Ending 24th January 2014

Below are some photos of what the Robins have been up to over the past two weeks.

In Literacy we have been reading lots of different Fairy Tales to inspire our own Fairy Tale writing. We did some role play of one of our favourites – Little Red Riding Hood. The children thoroughly enjoyed getting into character!

During our topic lessons we have been learning about the Inuit people including where they live and how they hunt. We discovered that the Inuit like to carve images into soapstone, so we had a go using bars of soap! We were very pleased with the end result.

In Art we have been looking at photographs of the Northern Lights and recreating some of the photographs using chalks on black paper.

During a topic lesson about homes in the frozen parts of our planet we watched a video of Inuit people building an igloo as a form of temporary shelter. We had a go at making mini igloos using sugar cubes. We found it very tricky when it came to the roof!

 

In Science we have been learning about different materials and their properties. In last weeks Science lesson we foccussed on floating and sinking. We experimented with different materials and tested whether they would float or sink. We then worked in groups to make boats using 4 types of materials. All the groups boats floated apart from the clay boat which was far too heavy.

We have not let the weather put us off during our Forest Schools sessions on Friday afternoons. In the past two sessions we have made kites, built homes for fairies and goblins and played lots of team building games. In the coming weeks we hope to do some fire lighting and campfire cooking.

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Robins Class. We hope you had a lovely restful Christmas and a great New Year.

This term in Robins Class our topic is Frozen Planet. We will be learning about the North and South Poles and the people and animals that live there. In Literacy we will be focusing on Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories. We will be transforming stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella into magical wintry tales.

Below are some photographs of our frost-looking classroom and what we have been learning about this week.

Our Frozen Planet themed classroom complete with snowflakes, photographs of polar animals and adjectives to help inspire fantasy story writing on the windows.
 

Science – Investigating Materials

Literacy – Brainstorming the similarities of all the Fairy Tales

Maths – Practical activities to practice different types of Addition

Christmas!

Here are a few photos of what Robins got up to before the Christmas holidays.

A special visitor called Mr Cain came to read us some fantastic stories. He had lots of props to make his stories even more exciting. We really enjoyed all his tales, especially the one about a dragon.

 

We decided that Santa Claus would enjoy receiving some letters from us asking him how he was, where he was going on holiday and other questions. We all wrote a letter, addressed it to Santa Claus, North Pole and went to the post box to post them!

 

Here we are lining up to post our letters to Santa. A couple of days later all the Robins received a reply! It was very exciting indeed. Santa even included some special glitter in all his letters.

 

 

On the last day of school we had a beautiful church service. The Robins sang Away in a Manger with Ducks class, and then we sang ‘Mary’s Boy Child’. Mrs Greenwood was extremely proud of how well the Robins sang.

Week Ending 15th November 2013

As part of our ‘Fire’ topic, this week in Science we have been learning about the changes that happen to food when it is heated. We were all scientists for the afternoon and did an experiment. We tasted different raw fruits and vegetables, and then we cooked them to see what happened to the taste, texture, appearance, feel etc. We found that some fruits and vegetables were far nicer cooked as they changed the taste to a sweeter flavour. Other fruits like oranges weren’t very nice cooked. Below are some photos of us preparing the fruits and vegetables for the experiment.

Also this week celebrated Children in Need. In class the children were set a challenge to make Pudsey out of counters and wooden blocks.

We also had our first Great Ilam Bake Off in aid of Children in Need. It was a huge success with 48 entries in total! The panel of judges found it extremely hard to choose a winner from each class as all the entries were delicious. Here are some photos of the entries below.

Woodpeckers Class Entries

 

Ducks Class Entries

 

Robins Class Entries

 

Owls Class Entries

 

A photo of the Bake Off winners along with photos from last weeks ISA Firework Display are now on the school website.