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Class 3 (Year 1)

The Class Three team has 31 members; 29 explorers, 1 teaching assistant, Mrs Shepard, and 1 class teacher, myself, Mrs Southall. We also work closely with the rest of the Year One team; Mrs Broad, Mrs George and Mrs Knapcyzk

Hello, and welcome to our class page.

This is where we will be keeping you updated with all the fun things we get up to at school.

In Class Three we love to be explorers and learn new things. This term our learning is based around the themes: New Beginnings and All About Me.

We would love to share our learning with you and so we’ll be uploading photos of our learning journey here as we go along.

We started our learning journey with a story titled ‘Who’s the New Teacher’. We LOVE this story! We really like the adjectives used to describe what the new teacher might be like. We had fun thinking of our own adjectives and making predictions for the new teacher. The new teacher turned out to be a dragon!!! A friendly, happy dragon. We used our art skills to make collages of dragons and 3D dragon faces out of egg boxes.

We thought about what the new teacher might be like. Then we wondered why the dragon might have eaten the old teacher!

We read the story Argh Spider! by Lydia Monks.

We thought about what Spider wanted and realised that she just wanted to belong to a family. We then thought about our own families and how we belong.

Some aliens from the drama company SPROUTS came to see us. We helped the aliens to learn about the human body.

We went for a walk around our local environment to look at the features of Gedling.

We designed and labelled our own streets.

Culture Week!! We have loved learning about Japan! We looked at a world map to find out where Japan is. We found out that Japan is 9577 miles away from the UK. We investigated how long it would take us to get there if we travelled by different modes of transport.

We learned that the Japanese flag is called Hinomaru which means 'circle of sun'. We listened to the Japanese language and looked at the Japanese alphabet. We also wrote our initials in Japanese.

We made observational artwork of traditional Japanese women using pastels.

We learned that people sometimes wear kimonos in Japan.

We learned about Samurais. We made our own Samurai armour and did a Samurai dance.

We learned about the legend of the Japanese sun goddess. Then we wrote our own stories about her.

The drama company SPROUTS came to visit us. They took us on an aeroplane to Japan!! We had lots of fun!

Autumn Term Newsletter

autumntermnewsletter 2016.doc

We have enjoyed learning about Diwali

We LOVED going to meet Mrs Christmas! She helped us to bake Christmas biscuits to hang on our Christmas trees.

Mrs Christmas showed us Santa's bedroom.

Mrs Christmas showed us some toys that children would have been given at Christmas time in the past.

Spring Term Newsletter

curriculum newsletter Spring Term.doc

Our topic this term has been Toys. We have been learning about and comparing toys from the past with toys that we play with now. A company called Partake came into school and we had a chance to play with old toys. We later discussed what materials toys are made from and which toys we prefer to play with.

In Literacy we have been learning about the book Traction Man. Traction Man is a toy action figure who goes on missions with his sidekick Scrubbing Brush. We have been using exciting describing words to retell some of Traction Man's missions and have also written our own versions of his missions.

We have also been reading the book Toys in Space. Before starting the book we discussed what we might find in space. We thought that we might find aliens! We made our own aliens before describing them using some fantastic adjectives and adverbs. In the book, the alien lost his toy called Cuddles. We wrote lost posters for Cuddles, again using adjectives. Class Three has some great imaginations and this has helped us with our descriptive writing.

Chinese New Year was on the 28th of January. We learnt and wrote about how Chinese people celebrate New Year by parading in the streets, decorating with the colour red and cleaning houses. We made Chinese paper lanterns, Chinese drums and drew Chinese kanji writing. We decided that our alphabet was slightly easier to learn than theirs! We read the Chinese Zodiac story and found out that according to our birth year we are either similar in personality to the rabbit or dragon in the story.

In Art and Design Technology we have been weaving and sewing! A few children were complete naturals and I think we might have a couple of budding tailors amongst us! Those of us who found it a little trickier persisted and everyone did very well. After half term we are going to be learning about bears and we will be designing and making our very own stuffed teddy bears!

Summer term Brilliant beginnings letter

brillian beginnings sumer term.docx

Summer 2017 Year 1 Newsletter

summer 2017 newsletter.doc

In Literacy we have been reading Jack and the Beanstalk. We have drawn and described the setting, wrote questions we would like to ask the characters, wrote a letter to the giant as if we were Jack, rewrote the beginning of the story and retold parts of the story with actions.

We have now finished making our teddy bears! The children loved designing, sewing and stuffing these and cannot wait to bring them home!

We have had chicks in school! Most of us either stroked or picked them up.

In Science we have been learning about plants and growing. We planted a bean seed in a clear bag with water and pegged it to some string near a window to ensure it had sunlight to grow. Over time we watched the bean seeds grow roots, a stem and finally leaves. Once the seeds had turned into plants we planted them into pots with soil. We gave them a cloud and castle just like in the story Jack and the Beanstalk!

We know that flowers have roots, stems, leaves and petals and we know each part of the flowers function. We investigated how water travels up through a flower to the petals via the stem. We put white flowers in food colouring and watched the petals change to the colour of the food colouring. We also discovered that leaves breathe! We submerged leaves in water and noticed that after a couple of hours there were air bubbles on the leaves.

We have tadpoles in class! We have learnt about how they turn into frogs and are watching them each day waiting for them to grow legs.

In Art we have been looking closely at Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. We found that he used thick paints to give the paintings texture and that he liked to paint flowers and landscapes. We recreated one of his paintings called 'Sunflowers.' We were given another of Van Gogh's paintings called 'Starry Night.' It had the right section missing and after looking closely at the painting we imagined and painted what we thought might be in the missing section.

In R.E. we have been thinking about beauty in our world. We watched videos showing different landscapes and parts of the world including, deserts, waterfalls, mountains, oceans and forests. We talked and wrote about what we find beautiful in the world and then asked 'wondering' questions about the beauty in the world.

We have learnt about the Christian and Jewish Creation Stories where God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. We learnt that Shabbat is a joyful day of rest in the Jewish religion and that on this day Jewish people eat Challah bread which is a type of sweet bread. As a class we made and tasted Challah bread.

It was Earth Day on the 22nd of April. We discussed what we liked about the Earth and what we could do to protect it. We used balloons and tissue paper to make our own Earths and hung our ideas for protecting the Erath from them. We agreed as a class that at school we would recycle paper in the paper bin, remember to turn off the taps so not to waste water and not litter.

In Design and Technology we have been making moving pictures using either a lever or a slider. We enjoyed designing and making these!

All Hallows church visit

Year 1 Visit to All Hallows Church.doc

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