World Book Day

Thursday 2nd March 2017 saw another World Book Day at St Marys School. Year 1 was filled with a variety of different characters, from Elsa’s to Ironmen, Mary Poppins to Woody.

The children enjoyed a number of book related activities. Year 2 joined us in our classrooms in the morning to share stories with one another.

Then in the afternoon, the children enjoyed drawing pictures of the character they were dressed as and also going on a story scavenger hunt. The children had a checklist of different things and had to search through books to find them.

Forest Schools

The rain certainly didn’t stop us from having a great time in the first forest schools session this week. The children played lots of games and enjoyed getting muddy (very muddy in some cases!)

The children made some potions out of everything and anything they could find; mud, water, leaves, sticks, pine cones. The children then used their imaginations to think about what magic powers their potion might give them. This tied in perfectly with our Superhero topic. The children also enjoyed ending the session playing a ‘different’ game of hide and seek.

We can’t wait for next week!

This week in year 1 …

Well, its been a very busy week in year 1 this week with Bikeability being on. The children who took part had a great time and progressed really quickly with a lot of the children being able to ride independently by the end of the week. A big well done to everyone in year 1 who took part!

In maths this week the children finished their topic on multiplication. The children made some fantastic progress throughout the 2 weeks with many of the children going on to solve problems involving missing numbers. The children are going to use their knowledge of multiplication to move onto division this week.

The children started drawing some self-portraits this week in art. They used mirrors to carefully look at their faces, noting their eye and hair colour. The children then used pencil to draw an outline of their face, thinking about the position of their facial features.

The children concluded their work on poetry this week, producing both shape and acrostic poems all about pirates. The children used adjectives to make their poems more interesting. This week the children will be using adjectives to write a story based on a pirate.

This week in year 1 …

What another busy week of fantastic learning it has been in year 1 this week. The children have been working super hard and having a great time while doing it.

In maths this week, the children have been tackling multiplication. Using visual maths, the children have been using the concrete mode to solve different multiplication problems. The children have been using the concrete materials to create groups in order to solve the problems. For instance, for 2 x 5, the children would draw 2 groups and put 5 units into each and then count how many there are altogether. The children have picked this up super quickly and by the end of the week were tackling questions involve 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 times tables as well as solving missing number problems. Now that this is embedded, the children will be moving onto solving multiplication problems using the drawing mode next week.

In literacy, the children have been learning about adjectives. The children have been using these to write descriptive sentences about the class pirate, Pirate Pete. the children have also continued to look at poetry this week. They have, as a class, been looking at another pirate poem and have been able to identify the rhyming words and adjectives. They have worked together to come up with their own verses that include both adjectives and rhyming words.

In art this week the children were able to experiment with the primary colours. The children were given red, yellow, blue, black and white and were able to mix the colours together to see what they could create. The children very much enjoyed having the opportunity to play around with the colours and see what they could make.

In Science the children continued to look at materials, but this week we were looking at their properties. The children used adjectives to describe the properties based on what they felt like. We then asked the children to think about what would be a good material to make a pirate ship out of. We decided that a pirate ship should be strong, waterproof and be able to float. The children experimented with different materials and decided which would be the best material to build a pirate ship out of and give reasons for this.

We cant wait to see what you get up to next week year 1!!

 

 

This week in year 1 …

Aaaarrrrrr!!! What a great week its been aboard Pirate Ship 1 this week!! The children have been very busy learning more about Pirates. The children have continued their learning around poetry and have this week learned a pirate poem and came up with actions to go with it. The children have developed a great understanding of words that rhyme and have all had a go this week at writing their own rhyming verses for our pirate poem.

The children have also been learning pirate songs in music. We have been using BBC music to do this and the children love it. There are 7 songs in total, all based around a pirate story. Mrs Sloan and I will try to film the children performing and see if we can upload it onto the blog in the coming weeks.

This term the children are learning about computing. We are looking at algorithms and how they are just like instructions for a computer. This week the children pretended they were Pirate robots and their friends had to give them instructions to find the treasure. They found this quite tricky at first but when they realised that they can only do exactly what their friends were telling them, they got the hang of it.

In maths the children have continued their learning around time. We have been looking at half past times this week and the children have really grasped the concept. The children are able to read digital times for both the hour and half past the hour and transfer these onto analogue clocks.

 

Welcome Back to Year 1!

Welcome back and a very happy new year to all our families. It has been a very busy couple of days back in school.

This term our topic is … Pirates!!! The children were sent on a treasure hunt on Wednesday, to find things that had fallen out of a pirates treasure chest!! The children were very excited and are looking forward to learning all about our new topic, which starting next week will be pirate poems.

In maths, the children have been learning about time. This week the children have been looking at o’clock times and have been taking part in a range of activities to help them with their learning. The children have all been very good at learning how to read o’clock times on a clock as well as making o’clock times on their own clocks. We have also been looking at times of the day, and deciding on what times we do things. This is actually quite a tricky thing to learn, but once again year 1 have been working super hard and have been able to identify what time we might have breakfast, go to school, have lunch and go to bed. Next week we will be looking at half past times. Any work you can do at home with your child around time is beneficial as it is a very important life skill.

In science the children are looking at materials again. This will continue this term and the children will be investigating appropriate materials for a pirate ship to be made out of. This week the children were looking at metal and magnets. The children were given the task of getting a paper clip out of a cup of water without getting themselves wet. At first this proved quite difficult, but with a bit of discussion with their friends (and perhaps a little clue from their teachers) the children were able to use their magnets to guide the paper clip out of the cup. This was a great ‘back to school’ activity as it encouraged the children to discuss and problem solve in small groups.

In art the children are looking at self portraits this term. This week the children were looking at different mediums and experimenting with them. They used crayons, oil pastels, water colours, charcoal and drawing pencils to create different lines, strokes and textures.

Below are some pictures of all the things we have got up to this week! (Mrs Sloan apologises for the quality of her pictures, she has had an issue with her camera but says it will be back to normal by next week).

 

Christmas festivities!

Happy New Year! A very big welcome back, we hope you enjoyed the Christmas break. Thank you so much for all of our cards, presents and warm wishes that we received, it is much appreciated.

We were very busy in the last two weeks and had lots of fun leading up to Christmas. The penultimate week before the holiday was our assessment week, which is why no photos have been added.

In our final week before breaking up for the holidays, the children took part in some Christmas craft. Firstly, they made Christmas cards and we hope you liked them. The children also made a salt dough decoration to sell at our Christmas fair and a snowflake decoration to take home. They also made party hats and enjoyed wearing them at our Christmas dinner. On the last day of term, the children had a party and played lots of games and had some party food. They could hear bells ringing and some children even heard footsteps on the roof!! We had a very exciting visitor and the children received a present of a book and bookmark to share with the adults at home. Your child may even have mentioned a visit from a cheeky elf!! (called Jingles in Badger Class and Buddy in Fox Class).

We finished our learning with Michaela (our Plymouth Argyle football coach) this term who was teaching the children about fundamental movement skills. The children learnt lots of new games (even some Christmas ones) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Michaela will be returning again to do some work on a different area of P.E. We also participated in learning to do with breaking a tower of 10 in visual maths and exchanging it for 10 units so that certain number sentences were easy to work out e.g. 14-8. The children are just getting the hang of this. In English, the children had several activities to choose from such as writing letters to Father Christmas and making snow to play with (speaking activity).

Our topic for this term is ‘Beware! Pirates’ and a curriculum map will be with you shortly so that you can see what different areas we will be learning about linked to our new topic. Miss Anderson is going to take over from Mrs Sloan in writing the blog for this term and photos from this week will be added soon.

Have a lovely weekend, Mrs S and Miss A.

Our trip to Living Coasts

We had yet another exciting week last week with our trip to ‘Living Coasts’. The children absolutely loved it and wrote a recount of what they experienced there. The day started by visiting the otters to watch them being fed and participating in a question and answer session. We then had free time to look at the various types of birds and sea life on site. After this, we went to see the seals being being fed and they also did some tricks for us to see! Both classes participated in a penguin workshop where the children got to feel the weight of a penguin and learn about the types of penguins that live in hot and cold climates. They also felt some feathers and had to keep an ‘egg’ warm by holding it between their legs, just above their feet like a penguin would do. Finally, they used different materials and cut outs to create a habitat for a penguin in a hot climate (macaroni penguin) and one from a cold climate (Emperor penguin). The children thought about what materials penguins might make their nest from too (stones or sticks).

In English last week, the children innovated their stories by using post-it notes to change the character, the animal and where the animal needs to get back to in their story e.g. a giraffe would be finding his way back home to Africa. The children changed the parts in their story for the beginning, build up, problem, resolution and ending. This week, the children will use this information to write their own story about a lost animal.

In maths we continued our learning on subtraction and did lots of work on subtracting units  from units, both practically and in the drawing mode. We then went on to subtracting units from tens and units (within 10) e.g. 26-4 for those that were ready. Some children continued to subtract units from units to deepen their understanding.

In phonics last week, we looked at the sounds ir/ur and or/aw. We continue to practise spelling the common exception words/tricky words in our spellings list each week.

In science, the children learnt about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. We looked at the diet of several animals and what features they have that helps them to find, catch/collect and eat their food. The children then had to sort different animals into the correct groups.

In class based worship, we are continuing to look at the value ‘kindness’ and how we can show this in our everyday lives. In R.E we listened to different types of music and talked about how it made us feel. We then thought about when music may be played in a church and the different types of music for different occasions and celebrations. We also continued to practise singing the Nativity songs during music. We had a whole school assembly on ‘road safety’ as it was road safety week last week. Two PCSOs came in to talk about how to cross the road safely, looked at road signs with the children and talked about how to keep safe around traffic.

Enjoy the rest of the week, Mrs S and Miss A. 🙂

 

Talk4writing and shape hunting

This week in English, the children have practised retelling the story ‘Lost and Found’ by acting it out, using story maps to help. They then used a writing frame called ‘box it up’ to help them write the key points in the story. Later in the week, they used this information, along with story maps and success ladders to re-write the story in their own words. The children did a great job and the improvement from their ‘cold write’ is really evident to see.

In maths, the children participated in a carousel of activities revolved around 3.D shape. They played bingo, played games on Education City, had to sort everyday objects into the correct shape category, made 3.D shapes from Polydrons and went on a shape hunt to see what shapes they could find around the school. They have remembered lots of 3.D shape names including a; sphere, cylinder, cone, square based pyramid, triangular based pyramid/tetrahedron, cube, cuboid and different types of prisms. They have also learn about the properties of shapes including how many edges, vertices and faces, and thinking about what 2.D shapes make up their faces.

In P.E, the children have continued their work on fundamental movement skills and in music, they have been practising singing the songs for The Nativity (yes it’s nearly that time of year already!!).

In R.E, the children continued their learning around the theme of ‘Why am I special?’ and thought about a favourite book and a book that is  special to Christians, the Bible. They listened to the story of The Good Samaritan and then retold it in groups. In science, the children looked at humans and what is similar and different about one another. They drew a picture of themselves and a friend, and wrote a little about their similarities and differences.

We are all very excited about our trip to Living Coasts next week and hope that the children are too! Please remember to make a packed lunch for your child and send them in with a warm, waterproof coat. Gloves, hats and scarves may also be a good idea with our recent chilly weather! Due to Mrs Sloan being unwell at the beginning of the week, there are not as many photos of her class this week. Mrs Sprague has her own camera that she uses for group work so photos of shape hunting will be attached next week. Have a nice week, Mrs S and Miss A.

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Pengie and Coco!

Firstly, thank you to all of the parents, grandparents, relatives and friends that came to see our mini London museums and our Great Fire of Plympton at the end of term. The children loved sharing their learning with you and did some fabulous writing linked to their senses on returning to their classrooms. They used this information to write a recount of the day’s events. We have included some photos of the event but there are lots on our website, which can be found here:

http://www.plymptonstmaryinfants.com/news/detail/the-great-fire-of-plympton/

We hope that you had an enjoyable and restful half term holiday. Thank you also for helping the children to complete their manifestos that we received from prospective school councilors, the children did fantastically. Fox Class did a ballot box and Badger Class did a secret vote to determine our new school councilors. It was very close so well done to all of the children for their brilliant ideas.

Our new topic has been very well received by the children and we have had lots of fun so far. The children started by completing a ‘cold write’ about an arctic animal. This is when the children have no input at the beginning of a block of work and then do a ‘hot write’ at the end so we can see how their skills and ideas have been improved upon. The week before last, each class received a mystery package that was dropped up by Mrs Ottewell from the office. The children passed the package around and we talked about what might be inside. There were holes in the box and it had the school’s address written on it, but no sender address! We excitedly opened the package and found a fluffy penguin. It was strange because no note had been left! The children got into groups and talked about why the penguin was sent to us, where it had come from and who had sent it. The children had lots of imaginative ideas! Badger Class named their penguin Pengie by secret vote and Fox Class named their penguin Coco. The next day something very strange happened, Pengie/ Coco had disappeared! The children made some lovely ‘lost’ posters to inform the school about the penguin’s disappearance! After that, we received an email from Pengie/Coco. He had gone to explore and hadn’t realised that a whole day had passed! He sent pictures of his adventures around the school to let the classes know that he was OK. These included pictures of him helping the cleaners, having a cup of tea with our caretaker John, diving into the biscuit tin in the staff room and lying in the nest that the children had built for him in the playground. Pengie/Coco said that he would be delivering a book to help us figure out where he had come from. Luckily, he returned and brought the book ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers with him. We read the story and found out that our penguin had come from The South Pole. He appeared to be lost like the penguin in the story. We learnt a song about the 7 continents, and also learnt about the 5 oceans. The children had a go at labeling these on a world map.

All of last week, the children looked at story maps for the beginning, build up, problem, resolution and ending within the story. We also learnt actions for each part of the story, which the children now know very well. They have also picked up the words within the story to go with the actions from memory. We did several activities last week such as sequencing the story, using the tuff spot, arctic animals and puppets to retell the story, word searches with key things from the story in them, writing book reviews and reading comprehensions linked to the story. Next week, the children will start to innovate the story and change the ideas within it to make it their own.

We finished our learning on addition for this term in the first week and participated in lots of ‘visual maths’ such as units add units (within 10) and units add units (crossing 10), both practically and in the drawing mode. We also did a little more on place value (focusing on numbers 10-20 this time) and practised writing the numbers as numerals and as words. Next time we revisit addition after Christmas, we will continue to work our way through the visual maths pathway (wherever your child might be on it). Last week we did some learning on positional language within our starters (full, quarter, half and 3 quarter turns) and looked at left and right by making an L shape with our index fingers and thumbs. During the main lesson, we looked at 2.D shape. We revisited the names of common 2.D shapes and looked at the properties (amount of sides and corners/vertices). We also looked at shapes that were similar to each other. We completed lots of activities such as making arctic shape pictures, sorting the pictures of shapes in our environment into groups, making shape pictures using the tessellating shapes and peg boards, shape bingo, completing 2.D shape games on Education City and sorting shapes due to their properties with the teacher. Next week, we will move on to 3.D shape.

In P.E, we let the children experiment with balls (throwing, bouncing, rolling, kicking etc.) to help inform their dance in our next session together. We also have Michaella from the Plymouth Argyle coaching team who will be taking the P.E sessions on a Tuesday afternoon. This term she will be teaching the children fundamental movement skills. We also had a visit last week from trampolining talent spotters!

In science, we concluded our learning on materials (for now) and moved on to learning about animals, including humans. We played ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ and helped the children to label a picture of the human body. We also learnt about senses and how animals may have better or weaker senses than us to help them in the wild.

Thank you to all the parents that have said they can help with our trip to Living Coasts on Tuesday 22nd November. We will send out letters next week to helpers to let them know more about what will be happening on the day.

Mrs Sloan’s class met their new PPA teacher the week before last (Mrs Andra MacDougall). She will now be taking over from Mrs Fitzmaurice on a Thursday morning as Mrs F will be going on maternity leave shortly.

Enjoy your week, Mrs S and Miss A.