Well, what an exciting first few weeks! In Seahorse class we are settling in nicely and getting stuck into this terms topics and units, as we step up our skills to the Key Stage 2 Curriculum. We have also enjoyed playing in the playground with our brand new playground apparatus.
English
There are strange happenings in the Seahorse classroom already with the arrival of a mysterious tiny doorway...We have been thinking who or what could live in such a tiny living space. The mystery deepened as trails of half eaten strawberries and cornflakes appeared all over the classroom leading up to the door. One morning, we came in to see the paint cupboard in a mess, with tiny footprints all over the floors and walls! We used our imaginations and considered that possibly a classroom fairy or goblin could be the culprit!
We decide to write a set of instructions about how to trap the pesky critter just in case! We played barrier games to identify the useful language needed when giving instructions and have done lots of work on imperative verbs, prepositions, adjectives and conjunctions to help explain.
We looked at lots of examples of different types of instructions to identify the language features and the layout. We then wrote a full set of instructions; complete with an engaging introduction, equipment list and carefully worded numbered steps to follow. We even included a top tip or warning.
Check the bog soon to see some finished examples of our fantastic work or pop in to see our display.
Geography
As part of our theme 'Fantasy and Adventure' we have been helping Uncle Travelling Matt plan a trip around the U.K. We have been learning how to use an Atlas to locate some of the main cities in our country and learn about the countries that make up the U.K. We have also been looking into the origin of local place names with the help of Google Maps on the computers.
Maths
In our maths lessons, we have been looking at place value. we have increased our knowledge of the number system to 4 and sometimes even 5 digit numbers as we identified the value of each digit, represented numbers in different ways, partitioned them, added and subtracted 10 or 100 and compared and ordered.We now feel confident with our skills to move onto new unit of addition and subtraction.
Science
Our topic this term in science is forces and magnets. We have been observing three of the main forces in action: push, pull and twist. We learnt that the direction of a force can be shown by and arrow and that forces can be increased or decreased. We made paper planes and observed the forces at work. We then super-charged them with elastic bands to increase the force released at once and in our diagrams we learnt how to show a greater force with a larger arrow. It was really fun shooting the planes!
Art
We have been thinking about forces again with our artwork as we use the materials of Brusho (a water stain) and oil pastels. We saw how the paper absorbs the inks and is repelled by the oil based pastels. We used these to work in the style of the artist Patrick Caulfield to produce bright bold pictures observing simple linear aspects. Again, pictures to follow!
In other news...
We have been thinking about Harvest and what it means to us. We tried to see how many words you can make from the word harvest and used them to adapt a poem about the season. We look forward to seeing as many family members in the church, in a couple of weeks time, to perform our group reading to you all.
Finally, it was a very exiting day today as we held our whole school elections. We look forward to seeing democracy in action with our new Year 6 heads of the School Council and the Eco-council leading the way. A massive congratulations to the winners of the representatives for the Seahorse class.
