Class Blog

Week 17 - W/C 11th January 2021

Well done to all Kingfishers for your amazing hard work again this week - I am very proud of each and every one of you! We have a had another busy week, with lots of brilliant learning!

In English, we continued with our work on 'Owl Babies'. This week, we have been working on a retell of the story. We began by sequencing the story by thinking carefully about the order of events, and we also identified the key elements, such as the characters and setting of the story. Over the days that followed, we focused on the key skills needed to create a super retell - these were correct punctuation, conjunctions (and, or, but), and -er and -est suffixes (e.g. taller, tallest). We published our work on Friday and the writing we produced was outstanding!

In Maths, we have been continuing our work on Place Value. We began by learning about tens and ones, before partitioning 2-digit numbers into tens and ones using a part-part-whole model. We then explored ordering numbers and comparing numbers using the language greater than, less than and equal to. We finished the week by learning about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.) and practised writing these as both numbers and words. 

Week 16 - W/C 4th January 2021

I'll begin by saying how proud I am of Kingfishers this week - whether you have been busy completing your learning at home, or in school with us - you have all worked exceptionally hard and adapted so well to our new way of learning. Well done to you all! Thank you to parents for your continued support - we really do appreciate it!

In English this week, we started our new text 'Owl Babies'. We began the week by reading the story and we completed some VIPERS questions to challenge our understanding of the story. Following this, we created a story map using 'Talk for Writing' and thought of some super actions to retell each part of the story. We then moved on to the skills of adjectives and verbs, and put our knowledge to the test by writing sentences to describe Mother Owl - we wrote about her appearance and actions. Some of us also challenged ourselves to include adverbs in our writing! To end the week, we created a Missing Poster for Mother Owl - the published pieces were fabulous!

In Science and Encompass, we completed our prior knowledge quizzes for our new topics 'Everyday Materials' and 'Our Queen's Country'. We also discussed all of the things that we already know about these topics, as well as the things we would like to find out!

We did it Kingfishers! This week saw us complete our home learning ready to return back to school on Monday for our fun filled last week of term. You have all been amazing over the last 2 weeks and I cannot explain how proud I am of you all. The work that I have received has been of such a high standard and you have shown pride and determination in all you have done.

During our English lessons this week we have been looking at the story ‘Lost and found’ which is all about a boy and a penguin and their adventure together. We started the week by looking at some reading VIPERS questions to help us to understand the story better. One of the Vipers we used was ‘Prediction’. We were able to use the clues from the front cover of the story to make a prediction about the characters and what the story may be about. Our main task for the week was to retell the story of ‘Lost and found’ however in order to do that we had to be able to sequence the story and know the order of events.  To help with our ‘retell’ we looked at the use of adjectives to describe the characters and setting and learnt all about 2A sentences.

At the beginning of the week in Maths we were learning about different types of shape. We started our learning by looking at different 2D shapes such as triangles, squares and circles. Then, we moved onto learning about 3D shapes such as cubes, spheres and cylinders. By the end of the week we were able to identify the different shapes as well as sort them into different categories. We were even able to sort the shapes into different colours and shape groups.

It was our final week of our Encompass topic ‘Street detectives’ this week and in order to showcase our amazing learning we created a poster. We had to make sure that we included lots of different information on our poster to show how Stoke – on – Trent has changed over the years. We answered questions such as –

How have housed changed in Stoke – on – Trent?

How has industry changed in Stoke – on – Trent?

Why is Stoke – on – Trent known as ‘The Potteries’?

Who is Josiah Wedgewood?

Food chains were the focus in our Science lesson this week. We learnt all about how a food chain tells you what food an animal eats as well as how animals depend on plants and other animals for their survival and food. During our lesson, we found our that the ‘producer’ is at the start of the food chain and is usually a plant or flower. The producer is then eaten by the consumer who is eaten by the prey. Animals that eat other animals are called the predator.

During our Art lesson this week, we had a chance to explore some winter art using various materials in the home or using Purple Mash.

Thank you for all your hard work this week Kingfishers!

Have a well deserved weekend and I will see you on Monday ready for our fun, filled week of learning.

Stay safe, keep shining and smiling 

Mrs Twigg

Week 13 - W/C 30th November 2020

Hello Kingfishers, I want to start by saying a huge well done to all of you for such an amazing but different week. You have all blown me away with your positive and resilient attitude towards your home learning. You have all produced some fantastic work whilst at home that I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at over the week. I was able to give out lots of certificates on Friday to children who completed their home learning daily and sent their work to me. 

During English home learning this week, we have looked at the book 'Zog'. We started the week by looking at adjectives to describe Zog and you all managed to come up with some fabulous adjectives. Adjectives are so important when you are writing because it gives the reader a picture in their mind of what you are describing. Towards the end of the week, we looked at designing our own dragons to give Zog a friend. You created some masterpieces using various materials such as lego, paint and recycled materials. 

We finished the week off, by writing a character description of your new dragon and I was blown away with your amazing writing. I have included some of your work below. Can you spot any of your work? 

In Maths this week we continued our learning on addition and subtraction. Throughout the week, we looked at various ways in which we can add and subtract. At the beginning of the week, we looked at known number facts to help us to add mentally. We used part whole models to show that the parts add together to give you the whole number and used number lines to count on from any given number. Towards the end of the week, we looked at fact families and were able to show that the same 3 numbers can be used in 4 different number sentences. We discussed that in an addition question the biggest number always comes at the end but in a subtraction question the biggest number comes at the beginning. 

In Encompass this week, we continued looking at our local community which led us to look at a famous potter from Stoke - on - Trent. Josiah Wedgewood founded the Wedgewood company, which is still very popular today. We looked at his life and some of the famous pottery and designs that he created. Our challenge was to recreate a famous piece of his pottery and you put in a lot of time and effort to create such amazing recreations. Well done!

In Science this week, we continued our learning about animals. Our key words for the lesson were omnivore, herbivore and carnivore. We learnt that an herbivore eats only plants like a giraffe, a carnivore eats only meat like a lion and an omnivore eats both plants and meat like a brown bear. We were able to sort the different animals into the correct columns. 

Once again, well done on such a fabulous week Kingfishers. I cannot wait to see what next week brings.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Stay safe, keep shining and smiling.

Mrs Twigg

Wow what a fantastic but busy week we have had. It has been lovely getting to know you all a little better this week and we have had lots of fun with our learning. Keep up the amazing learning Kingfishers! I am so proud of how you have adapted to the changes over the last couple of weeks.

This week in English we have started a new genre of writing -  Non Chronological Reports. We discussed that we were going to be writing an information report all about Brown bears. Firstly, we looked at the many features of a non chronological report and found out that it was a piece of non fiction writing about a certain topic. Whilst looking at a number of examples we found that all reports had to include titles, an introduction, sub titles, paragraphs, pictures, technical vocabulary and a fact box. We started the week by writing our introduction making sure that our research was factual and real. Throughout the week, we researched and wrote about the Brown bear's appearance, diet and habitat and produced some fantastic work with lots of Year 1 standards included. 

In Maths this week, we started looking at 'Money'. At the beginning of the week, we recapped everything we already knew about money before we moved our learning on. We started by identifying the different coins and putting them in order starting with the smallest amount. Throughout the week, we looked at making amounts using different coins as well as counting out money. Towards the end of the week we moved our learning on by looking at and identifying notes. We worked very practically this week, making sure we were confident when identifying the coins we had on our tables.  

During Encompass this week we looked at how the industry had changed in Stoke - on Trent. Firstly, we recognised that transport had changed drastically. Many years ago industries, especially the pottery industry, used the canal to transport goods whereas today people use trucks and cars. We also found out that many years ago children were expected to work in factories where as today children are able to go to school. We looked at two pictures set in very different times and wrote sentences to explain what has changed. 

In science this week we started to look at the structures and features of animals. Firstly, we looked at birds - we found that birds have wings to fly, beaks, claws and feathers to keep them warm. Secondly, we looked at mammals  - we found that mammals have fur, ears, eyes and tails to help them to balance. We were able to match the correct feature to the correct part of the animal. Some of us were able to take our learner deeper and explain why certain animals have certain features. 

Well done again on a fantastic week of learning. 

Stay safe, keep shining and smiling 

Mrs Twigg 

It has been a very busy week in Kingfishers and MrsTwigg's first week in class. She has loved spending this week with you all and cannot wait to see some of the amazing work that you all produce. 

During English this week, we continued our learning about Goldilocks and The Three Bears. At the start of the week, we received a letter from Goldilocks asking us to help her to write a letter to The Three Bears to say sorry breaking into their home. We started by looking at the different features of a letter and continued by writing the introduction. Throughout the week, we focused on the use of capital letters for names and the pronoun I as well as looking at various conjunctions and questions we could use in our writing. By the end of the week we had written a letter to The Three Bears apologising about everything that Golidilocks had done. We even managed to include some of the suffixes 'er' and 'est' into our writing.

During Maths this week, we started the week by looking at the days of the week, followed by the months of the year. We looked at the vocabulary before, after, yesterday and tomorrow and some of us even looked at word problems in our learning. Towards the end of the week, we begun our learning on time. We looked at a clock and were able to identify the minute hand which was longer, and the hour hand which was shorter. On Wednesday we looked at the time 'O Clock'. We discussed that for the hour to be O Clock that the minute hand had to be at 12 and that the hour hand would be directly pointing to the hour. However we also discovered that when the time is half past the hour that the minute hand would pointing towards 30 and the hour hand would sit in the middle of the two numbers on the clock. This was quite a tricky concept to understand so well done Kingfishers. 

As part of our street detectives topic, this week we started to look at housing in Stoke - on - Trent. We looked at how housing had changed over the years and how different they look now. We identified the features of both the new houses and old houses in the local area.

In science this week, we started to learn about the 6 different types of animals. We were able to group various animals together based upon their features. We learnt mammals always have hair or fur but reptiles have scaly skin. 

Once again, well done for such a fantastic week Kingfishers. I cannot to see you all next week to continue our learning together. 

Mrs Twigg 

It has been another busy week of learning in Kingfisher Class.

In English, we received a letter from the Three Bears asking us to help them create a Wanted Poster, to help them find Goldilocks. Not many of us had come across Wanted Posters before, so we began the week by looking at some examples and identifying the features. We discovered that Wanted Posters need to describe the wanted person really well, so on Tuesday, we focused on using adjectives to describe Goldilocks' appearance. After this, we discussed what Goldilocks did wrong and why she is 'Wanted'. We focused on including verbs (e.g. sneaked, ate, broke, slept) in this part of the Wanted Poster. We then discussed Goldilocks personality and behaviour, and learned all about the prefix 'un'. We found that out the prefix 'un can be added to a word to change its meaning to become the opposite (e.g. 'helpful' becomes 'unhelpful'). We thought of lots of 'un' words to describe Goldilocks, including unkind, unfair and untidy.

It was lovely to have Kingfishers back in school after a well-earned rest over half term.

In English, we have been learning about a new Traditional Tale - Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We spent the week getting to know the story inside out through lots of book talk. When we entered the classroom on Monday, we discovered somebody had been in and left a bit of a mess! We used our inference skills to conclude who it could have been. Based on the clues we saw, we decided it must have been Goldilocks! On Tuesday, we used Talk for Writing to retell the story, making sure to use the pictures and actions we created to help us remember the key events. We then role played the story using props, and developed our knowledge of the key vocabulary in the story. On Friday, we sequenced the story, thinking carefully about the order of events. 

Week 8 - W/C 19th October 2020

I cannot believe it is Week 8 already! Our final week of Autumn 1 has been very busy!

In English, we have been learning about poetry. Our learning this week was linked to Science as we have been focusing on using our senses to create our own senses poems all about Autumn. To begin with, we looked at an example of a senses poem and identified the features. We then discussed all of the different things we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste during the season of Autumn, and enjoyed sharing our different experiences. Following this, we wrote our own poetry, focusing on including adjectives and verbs.

It's been another fun week of learning!

In English, we have continued our work on writing a letter from Jack to the giant! On Monday, we wrote the introduction to our letter, including the heading, greeting and introductory sentences to explain why we were writing. We focused on ensuring we were writing in the first person, using a capital letter for the pronoun 'I'. Following this, we wrote the main body of our letter to say sorry to the giant for stealing his belongings. We focused on the use adjectives (e.g. gigantic, silver) to describe nouns, and also the use of verbs (e.g. climbed, chased) to add further information. Towards the end of the week, we produced published writes of our letters, independently applying the skills we learned during the week! On Friday, we had a fabulous lesson focusing on our speaking and listening skills! We worked in pairs to role play the conversation that Jack and the giant would have when they finally meet again - we came up with some lovely ideas and thoroughly enjoyed getting into character!

It has been a very busy week in Kingfisher Class.

In English, we have been learning how to write a letter. To begin the week, we learned about the main features of a letter. We were introduced to Letter Larry who helped us to remember the order of features, from the heading at the beginning, through to the signature at the very end. We then looked at different examples of letters and identified these key features. Afterwards, we focused on the skill of using a capital letter for the pronoun I, and also for names, as we discovered that letters are written in the first person. Towards the end of the week, we discussed the use of different sentence types, including statements and questions. We found out that statements tell you information about something, and end with a full stop, but questions ask for information about something, and end with a question mark. 

What another fabulous week we have had!

In English, we have been learning all about instructions. We began the week finding out about verbs - we discovered that verbs are action words (e.g. hop, skip, cut, draw). We then examined a set of instructions and identified the key features, before following a set of instructions to grow our very own magic beanstalks! We had so much fun planting our beans and we are now waiting to see the first signs of life emerging from our pots! On Thursday, we discussed the importance of imperative (bossy) verbs within a set of instructions. We found out that imperative verbs tell the reader what they need to do! We then wrote short sentences about each step of the magic beanstalk-growing process, making sure to include an imperative verb in each instruction.

In Maths, we have been learning about comparing numbers. We started by comparing groups of objects using the language greater than, less than or equal to. Following this, we found out that special symbols can be used to help us compare numbers - the greater than >, less than < and equal to = symbols. We discussed that these look like crocodile mouths, and the crocodile always wants to eat the larger number! After using these symbols to practically compare numbers, we looked at comparing pictorial representations of number. Finally, we selected the missing symbols to complete given number sentences comparing numbers.

Week 4 - W/C 21st September 2020

It has been a productive week in Kingfisher Class!

In English, we have been learning all about adjectives. We found out that adjectives are words that describe a noun (a person, place or object). We received a letter from the giantess from Jack and the Beanstalk, who was asking us to help her find her missing husband - the giant! We came up with many adjectives to describe both the giant's appearance and personality. We used these in our published writes to produce a Missing Poster. 

In Maths, we have been finding one more and one less than a given number. We began by using practical objects to help us, before moving onto using a number line. We discussed that when finding one more, we jump forwards one on a number line, whereas when finding one less, we jump backwards one. 

Week 3 - W/C 14th September 2020

We have had another busy week in Kingfisher Class! Our hard work and determination has continued this week, and we are becoming evermore settled into our Year 1 routines.

In English, we have been working on writing a retell of Jack and the Beanstalk. We used our knowledge of the story developed last week, alongside some picture prompts to recall the main events in the story. Our focus was on producing the 'perfect sentence'. We discussed that to produce a perfect sentence, we need to include correct punctuation. This includes a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, a full stop at the end, and finger spaces between words. We also discussed that it is important to read our sentences back to ensure they make sense. After working on these key writing skills, we produced our very first published write! The children worked very hard on these and they did superbly well! For Fix-it Friday, we focused on our personal targets to develop our writing, which included letter formation, capital letters and full stops. 

In Encompass, we have been learning about the human features that can be found in our local area, as part of our 'Street Detectives' topic. We discussed that a human feature is a geographical characteristic that has been made by a human. We were detectives for the afternoon and identified different human features in Hanley using Google Earth, and started to explore the use of aerial maps.

In Science, we have been learning about the different parts of the human body. We identified, named and labelled the main body parts and started to discuss their function. 

Week 2 - W/C 7th September 2020

What a brilliant first week we have had in Kingfisher Class! The children have settled into their new class exceptionally well and are adapting superbly to our new routines. We are very proud of the hard work they have put into their learning this week - well done to you all!

In English, we are spending this half term learning about Traditional Tales. This week, we have been exploring the fairy tale 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. We have been learning about the key events that happen in the story, as well as its structure and key vocabulary. 

We began the week by making predictions about what Jack might find at the top of the beanstalk, based upon what we had read at the beginning of the story. We then read the whole story and used 'talk for writing' to retell the main events. We came up with pictures and actions to help us remember the order of events. We then used role play to act out the story and sequenced different parts of the story using pictures.

In maths, we have been learning about place value. We began by identifying and ordering numbers to 20, before moving on to representing numbers using practical objects and pictorial representations. On Fix-it Friday, we practised our number formation.