We had a fantastic time at Bookbugs and Dragon Tales bookshop this week, where some of our children in Reception and Year 2 got the opportunity to meet the author and illustrator of ‘Out of the Blue’ and do some fun activities. They also got to take part in a question and answer session and asked some brilliant questions. We all had a great time visiting this amazing bookshop!
Les Herissons (and all of Year 3) have loved learning about the Ancient Egyptians.
Look at these amazing non-chronological reports they have produced in writing!
They have so much knowledge and we are all so proud of them.
Year 4 have started the new term to an incredible beginning. We began the week by exploring our focus for this half term, The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. In Writing, we have discovered figurative language such as alliteration, similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia. We have found examples of this in The Iron Man and created our own examples to write short poems about the Iron Man.
In Art, we explored sketching techniques and practiced hatching, contour hatching, cross hatching and smudging. Our final piece, is a chalk drawing of The Iron Man. See some examples of our work below!
Each term in Reception the children do a piece of ‘drawing into writing’. They draw a picture of something they have done in the holidays and then write about with the help of an adults. We have been really impressed at the children’s communication skills and also their use of their sounds to write.
This week we started to read the book Meerkat Mail. We met Sunny the Meerkat who lives in the Kalahari desert. The children found out about meerkats, where they live, what they eat and how they survive in the desert. We also received a post card from Sunny. Sunny told them about his habitat and the children wrote down some of the things they learnt from the postcard. We also found out about the Jewish Creation Story and about the importance of Shabbat, which is the Jewish day of rest.
All of this half term we have focused our learning around the storybook of ‘Lost and found’ by Oliver Jeffers. We have been creating story maps, fact files and even our own books based on what we can remember from the story. The children have worked really hard to memorize and recreate the story in their writing with a focus on the three parts of the story (beginning, middle and end).
This week year 1 have performed Christmas song for their grown ups, used a paint program to draw snowmen and learnt the story of Lost and Found. The children are learning the story and planning it out ready to write it independently next week.
Year 3 were privileged to take part in one of Scholastic Schools Live ‘Festive Doodling’ lesson with Liz Pichon, author of the Tom Gates books.
They enjoyed hearing about Liz’s new book ‘Tom Gates: Happy to Help’ and learnt how to doodle in her signature style!
This half term Year 2 have been using the book ‘I Want My Hat Back’ to inspire their English work. They have used drama to act in the role of the bear with the missing hat and understand how the bear would have felt. They have also used their descriptive writing to try to help the bear find his hat.
After reading the book, the children were inspired to make their own hats but unfortunately a terrible crime occurred and one of the hats went missing! Year 2 conducted their own investigation, using their inference, prediction and questioning skills to identify the culprit. Luckily the children solved the crime and were able to get the missing hat back.
Finally, the children wrote crime scene reports for Mr Cross to inform him of what had happened.
This afternoon Year 2 took part in a live lesson with the authors and illustrators Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett. They learnt about being an author and listened to Mac Barnett read their new book ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. The children were also shown by Jon Klassen how to draw the characters from the story.
