Friday 18th March 2022
Friday 11th March 2022
Friday 4th March 2022
Wow! What a fantastic first week back after half term! Golden Class have not stopped.
Fairtrade Fortnight excitement spread across the whole of the school, it gave us the opportunity to discuss where our food came from and to understand the importance of Fairtrade. We created our own cocoa beans and found out that chocolates comes from South America! On Pancake Day, we even applied our knowledge of Fairtrade to make our own delicious, Fairtrade pancakes, chocolate was definitely a popular choice! On Wednesday, we were given the opportunity to walk up to the Meeting House to look at a variety of art by children from all around the area. We even saw some of our own work, it was really amazing to see such a variety, not to mention inspiring!
At the end of the week we were all extremely excited as it was World Book Day, it gave us an amazing opportunity to dress up as our favourite characters and share our much-loved books. We channelled our inner illustrators to design our own, Superworm inspired, front cover.
We all really enjoyed being back at school, we are looking forward to having a lovely half term together.
Friday 18th February 2022
Hook Class have been busy writing play scripts for our story ‘How to find gold.’ They learnt how to use stage directions correctly and then retold the story through speech over three scenes! They have also been combining their musical skills with their computing… by thinking about different rhythms, pulses and patterns. Then they had a go at composing their own songs using the iPads on: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com
Friday 11th February 2022
This week, we have had two really important dates this week in school. On Tuesday, the whole school participated in Safer Internet Day. We spent time talking about how to remain safe online and about what we can do to make online communities kinder and more respectful. As part of this we: used our online safety rules; drew pictures of trusted adults; made a ‘kinder internet’ spell and listened to the story of Digiduck in the assembly.
On Friday, as part of Children’s Mental Health week, we spent a morning engaging in activities which will support children to deal with their emotions and anxieties. We practised belly breathing, guided meditations and thinking about our happy places. Dominique shared lots of resources from ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support) like ‘Three good things’ and ‘Making a worry tree’. There are more ELSA resources which you can use at home here: https://www.elsa-support.co.uk/category/free-resources/
We have also been learning about teamwork as part of the Young Leaders Award – we had to work in teams to complete several challenges and games.
Friday 28th January 2022
Friday 21st January 2022
Friday 14th January 2022
Friday 7th January 2022
Friday 26th November 2021
Friday 19th November 2021
Friday 12th November 2021
Friday 5th November 2021
Friday 22nd October 2021
Friday 15th October 2021
Hook Class have been busy this week preparing for the Harvest Festival. They told some Harvest prayers, sung some songs and did a fantastic job retelling the story of ‘The Lost Son’ that they have been learning about in RE. They have been working very hard in maths adding and subtracting two-digit numbers using dienes.
In English, we have been focusing on describing scenes from One Day on Our Blue Planet and writing dictated sentences.
Friday 8th October 2021
This week in Year 1, we have been continuing our learning about animals, but focusing on animals from the savannah. In science we have been learning about and labelling different parts of animals and thinking about what each part is used for. In the discovery area, we have been investigating animal footprints, looking at similarities and differences.
Following an interest in animal shadows, children have been making their own shadow puppets, using mixed media and have been performing shadow-puppet shows to each other. Another challenge this week was to design, build and label a safari park, thinking about what kinds of enclosures each animal needed.
Our focus in maths has been comparing numbers using the symbols <, > and =. The children worked hard to make their own Blockzilla mouth to help them compare towers of blocks. We then extended this to think about comparing numerals.
In English, we have been focusing on describing scenes from One Day on Our Blue Planet and writing dictated sentences.
Friday 1st October 2021
This week in Golden Class have been working hard and becoming African savannah experts. We’ve written some interesting Lion Fact Files and researched the sounds of Africa. In Maths, we’ve been exploring more than and less and we were all able to confidently compare groups of objects and numbers.
The learning has not stopped there, in History, we’ve been looking at Florence Nightingale. We embodied Florence Nightingale by making lamps and practiced our nursing skills at Golden Hospital. In our construction area we have been experimenting with different materials to make boats and dinosaur hides.
In English, we have been focusing on describing scenes from One Day on Our Blue Planet and writing dictated sentences.
This week we have been busy with a new book in English – One Day on our Blue Planet – in the Savannah. We will be reading this over the next few weeks and doing lots of writing from it. So far, we have identified animals from one of the lovely illustrations and had a discussion about lions. We worked out what we know already, what we would like to know and how we will find out. Some children suggested that we find a zookeeper and others suggested that we take a trip to Africa to see the animals.
In Y1 Maths, we have been practising counting objects up to 10. We have also been representing them in different ways such as with physical objects, drawings and by writing the numbers themselves in numerals and in words. We love counting as much as possible and next week we will be counting forwards and backwards. In Y2, we have been looking at larger numbers up to 100. In one of our lessons we completed a hundred square and looked for odd and even numbers.
In Science this week we have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. The children were so good at remembering lots of facts about this including how long an egg takes to hatch and how long a caterpillar typically stays in its cocoon. We have also been reading for pleasure about animals and learnt lots of facts about blue whales!
Each class has also been busy making a carnival float which will be displayed in Ilminster for all to enjoy. We hope you like them!
Key Stage One have had a great first ‘full’ week back at school and we have been busy getting to know each other in our new classes. Across the school, we have been reading The Secret Sky Garden and much of our learning has stemmed from this amazing text. We have also enjoyed our first swimming lesson of this year and for some of our children, this has been their first experience of swimming at Greenfylde. It has been so lovely to see lots of smiling faces after successful swimming sessions. Some of our classes have also enjoyed their first Forest School day with Vernon and others are looking forward to their first session in the coming weeks.
Key Stage 1 have had a very exciting week this week with a fantastic visit from Axe Valley Farm! We learnt about lots of animals and we even got to stroke centipedes, lizards, tortoises and even snakes! In RE, we have been learning about Judaism and the special weekly ceremony called the Shabbat so, we decided to have our own! We ate delicious Challah bread, drank grape juice and celebrated together.
We have been using the book ‘Traction Man Is Here’ for more inspiration in our English lessons this week! We started off by working in pairs to make story boxes. Each story box focuses on a scene from the book and children had to use mixed media to represent different scenes. See the photos for some examples.
Once the boxes were decorated, we used them as focal points for our own stories about Traction Man which the children wrote down and then orally recorded. We were thinking about how we read a comic book with lots of expression to support this. Some children even brought the characters in their own stories to the classroom, while other set their stories at a park.
In geography we have continued our learning about continents and applied this to the question ‘Why are maps useful?’ This week we have been exploring atlases to locate the continents on maps.
In art, we have been responding to artwork by Andy Goldsworthy and talking about his style and technique. We will apply this learning to our own clay sculptures next week.
We have had another busy week in KS1! In Maths, we have been counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s. We have been making concrete number lines to help us count in different ways from any given number up to 100. We have also been writing number tracks in sand, paint, pens and chalk. We are all such good mathematicians we even spotted some patterns in the number tracks and concrete number lines.
“We can’t use glass it won’t bend to the right shape.”
“Metal is strong and can get really hot without melting so it’s best.”
“Plastic will fly because it’s light.”
After a morning of testing for strength, flexibility, absorbency, heat conductivity (using ice) and other characteristics, the children drew and labelled their rockets.
Spring Term 2 2021
This term has been a term of three parts – we started off with many children learning at home before we were all back together again. We really enjoyed having time to reconnect as a school community and have been doing lots of PSHE lessons to help us get settled back in. Finally, the last part of our term saw us go back to ‘normal lessons’ as well as celebrating Easter at the end of term. Some of our highlights included:
Friday 26th March 2021
KS1 have had a very interesting week. After a mysterious man delivered some ‘magical looking’ beans we decided to plant them (just in case!) Then, on Monday our forest school area had grown a huge beanstalk with a scary looking giant at the top! We decided to try and catch the giant, so we made wanted posters to put up around the school and we wrote letters to people who could come up with a plan to catch him.
Spring Term 1 2021
This term has been an unusual one with many of the children learning from home due to the national lockdown. We have been so impressed by how hard everyone has worked and have loved seeing updates on Class Dojo and Google Classroom. Some highlights from this half term have included:
Autumn term 2020
We have had a very busy and different Autumn term as we have all had to adjust to being back at school after the initial lockdown. We are extremely proud of all of the children in Key Stage One who seem to have taken it in their stride.
Some of our Autumn term highlights include:
PE kit:
Our PE days this term are Mondays and Fridays. Children should wear their PE kit to school on the days that they have PE. PE kits should be plain, dark colours.
PE will take place outside whenever possible. Please see Class Dojo for your child’s swimming day for this half term.
Reading Books:
It is really important that children re-read books. When they first read a book, they will be focusing on working out what each word says. When they re-read books, they develop confidence, fluency, expression and understanding which are all key skills in reading. For this reason, reading books will be changed on Mondays and Thursdays. Please still bring your reading book and reading record into school every day as this will help us when we are reading with your child in school.
Knowledge Organisers
Knowledge organisers are a tool which summarise key facts and essential knowledge that we teach in school, linked to the National Curriculum. Every time your child starts a new a new unit of work they will be given a knowledge organiser. This is essentially a “fact sheet” for the topic. Knowledge organisers will also be available online via Google Classroom. We will start “low-stakes quizzing;” to review and retrieve knowledge. We do these quizzes as it strengthens children’s memory and enables them to access more complex tasks. Increasing memory also helps students to think more creatively, critically and analytically. You can support your child by discussing the information on the knowledge organisers with your son or daughter and quizzing them on what they know. If you require a paper copy, please message your child’s class teacher on Class Dojo to arrange this.
Fine motor information from training session in May 2021
Please take a look at this video of Miss Green explaining how you can support your child to develop their fine motor skills. Please speak to your child’s class teacher if you have any questions.
