Abbey House Museum trip
Year 1 had a tremendous day at Abbey House Museum which took us back in time to Victorian Leeds. We explored the street and all the shops, including the grocers, the chemists and an ironmongers. After that, we had a wonderful time eating our excellent lunches! In the afternoon, we explored the toy museum upstairs and even Mr McGriffiths found a toy he used to play with! The final part of the day was a workshop with a member of museum staff where we learnt about life in Victorian times. We were able to handle and use the artefacts and we learnt lots and lots.
Science – fossils!
Hello!
Our new science topic is Fossils!
Last week, we learnt about what a fossil is and what different fossils there are in the world.
A fossil is the remains or trace of a living thing that lived a very long time ago. They can be fossils of animals, plants or even animal poo!
We decided that fossils are important because they tell us a lot about the past. For example, we know a lot about dinosaurs, what they looked like and even what they ate because of fossils that we have found.
Mary Anning is our key scientist as she is known as one of the greatest fossil hunters to have ever lived. She found fossils in Lyme-Regis and she made amazing discoveries just from observing and studying them! We’ve been reading about her during our reading fluency sessions.
If you have a fossil at home that you are happy to bring into school, please do! We would love to have a look at different fossils in real life.
Help at home when you are travelling somewhere, quiz each other on whether an object is living or not living and whether it could be made into a fossil! Is this pen living? No! Is this rock living? No! Is this apple living?
Children’s Heart Surgery Fund
This week, Lauren from Children’s Heart Surgery Fund came to visit.
Children’s Heart Surgery Fund is our new school charity, voted for by the Junior Leadership Team, and we learnt all about their work and how our donations will support the charity over the next year.
Here are some of our Junior Leaders with Lauren.
Living and Learning: I know what a drug is.
In Living and Learning, Year 5 have been learning what a drug is, why people use medicine and how vaccines can protect the population.
We defined a drug as ‘a substance that changes the way the body or mind works.’ Then, we moved on to focus how medicines can help:
- prevent someone from becoming ill or stop a disease from spreading
- help someone manage an ongoing health condition, such as asthma or diabetes
- help someone feel better and relieve pain, such as from a headache
- help the body recover from illness
To finish off, we played ‘the vaccination game’. This helped us to look at how different percentages of vaccinated people can affect the spread of diseases. We learnt that the more vaccinated people in a population, the less likely it is for someone to get the disease.
We are Historians
History is the focus of our topic learning this half term. During this topic, we will be ordering significant events in our lives and we’ll be discussing them using historical vocabulary.
As the half term progresses, the children will discuss how significant things have changed over time: the food that we eat, the shops that we visit and how trade has changed.
This week, we will be ordering key events in our lives on a timeline, ordering events within living memory (the last 100 years) and discussing the key vocabulary past and present.
Help at home by talking about what shopping was like when you were younger. Have shops changed? How about the way you pay for things?
We are looking for someone (maybe a grandparent) to come into school to answer the children’s questions about how shopping and life in the 1950s is different to today. Please talk to Mr McGriffiths if you have someone in your family who would like to come into school in the next few weeks. Thank you!
Non-fiction reading!
This week in our Reading lessons, we have focused on a non-fiction book called ‘A Street Through Time’. This book shows us how life has changed throughout history. We used the page about Romans because that’s our new topic!
We first spent a lesson reading through the text and picking apart the language and features. Non-fiction texts have headings, sub-headings, labels and pictures to help the reader.
We then summarised each part of the text by matching it up to its correct sub-heading. Summarising means finding the main parts and describing it in a clear and concise way.
Here’s how we got on:
Summarising a text and deciding what the main, important parts are can be tricky! Help at home by practising summarising. Can you summarise your day in 20 words? 10 words? 5? 1?
Spring 1: Week 1
Happy New Year! We hope you all had a fantastic break. Thank you so much for sending in some past Christmas photos. We’ve really enjoyed listening to the children’s memories.
This half-term’s topic is called Fire and Ice. January’s typical frosty weather is a stimulus for our learning. As scientists we’ll investigate ice: making and melting it. We’ll use our senses to describe how the weather has changed and the effects on our environment. Linking to geography, we’ll find out interesting facts about Antarctica and learn about animals which live there and its climate.
Through our focus on fire, we’ll learn about the emergency services. We’ll develop our drama skills by taking on the roles of doctors, paramedics and police officers. Finally, we’ll learn about the Chinese New Year and learn about Chinese traditions.
Literacy
Our focus story for the first two weeks is Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. Before reading the story, we made some predictions.
Arthur – I think they’re going to get lost.
Edie – I think they’re going on holiday.
Jasmine – The umbrella might sink.
Gurjeevan – I think they’re going to get found.
Zara – I think they’re going to fall into the water.
We’ve also been learning about Antarctica! We located England and Antarctica on a map, we watched a clip from Frozen Plant and we also used pictures to identify the differences between the climate in England and Antarctica.
Sam – Leopard seals look a bit like mermaids.
Niam – Penguins swim like dolphins.
Edie – Penguins are really good swimmers.
Harry – It’s looking for food.
Our word of the week was iceberg. We looked at some pictures of icebergs and talked about an iceberg is.
Help at home: Ask your child if they can remember what an iceberg is.
For our writing activity, we looked at a picture from the book and wrote an ‘I can see…’ sentence. We used our phoneme fingers when segmenting the words. We also made sure we checked our writing before showing it to Mrs Wood!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called Let’s put on our mittens. We hope you enjoy watching it.
Maths
This week, we’ve been using our ‘fast eyes’ to subitise (seeing the quantity without counting) more complex arrangements of dots. We took a picture of the arrangements with our eyes, closed our eyes and then explained what we saw. We used spatial language to describe the arrangements. For example, ‘There are 3 dots on the top and 2 dots on the bottom.’
Help at home: Draw some linear and paired arrangements of 3, 4, 5 and 6. Ask your child to take a picture with their eyes and close them. Can they explain the arrangement with their eyes closed? They could draw it in the air.
Take a look at some of this week’s winter learning…
Reminders
- PE is every Tuesday.
- Funky Phonics Phase 3 Stay & Learn – Tuesday 16 January
9am-9.30am – phase 3 phonics lesson.
9.30am-10am – phase 3 phonics presentation
Due to limited space, only one adult per child can attend this session.
Home-Link Challenge
New year, new topic!
Happy New Year! We hope you had a great break from school and are feeling refreshed.
With a new year, comes a new term and a new topic. This half term, we are being historians and learning about the Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
Before we spend time learning about how the Romans came to invade Britain and how the Anglo-Saxons lived after the Romans had left, we needed to know what the timeline of British history looks like.
A timeline shows us the chronological order of events.
Here is what we came up with:
From the longest ago to the most recent, we had Stone Age Britain to the Coronavirus. Before the Romans, was the Iron Age Britain so this is where we begun our learning.
The Celts:
- lived in tribes
- were farmers
- lived in wooden, thatched huts
- had no rulers but did have chiefs
- made tools and weapons out of bronze and iron
Help at home by comparing the Celts lives to our lives. What do you think the children did in the Iron Age? Is there anything that we have in common with them?
History Topic – Shopping in the past
History is the focus of our topic learning this half term. During this topic, we will be ordering significant events in our lives and we’ll be discussing them using historical vocabulary.
As the half term progresses, the children will discuss how significant things have changed over time: the food that we eat, the shops that we visit and how trade has changed.
This week, we will be ordering key events in our lives on a timeline, ordering events within living memory (the last 100 years) and discussing the key vocabulary past and present.
Help at home by talking about what shopping was like when you were younger. Have shops changed? How about the way you pay for things?
We are looking for someone (maybe a grandparent) to come into school to answer the children’s questions about how shopping and life in the 1950s is different to today. Please talk to Mrs Taylor or Mrs Lake if you have someone in your family who would like to come into school in the next few weeks. Thank you!
Reading and Music: Sounds Like A Story
Today, we welcomed back Liz from the British Library to do another workshop with us.
This time, we linked together reading and music. It started with us listening to The Phoenix of Persia by Sally Pomme Clayton. As Liz was reading, we had a soundtrack playing in the background; each page had a different song.
Afterwards, we were then able to practise with instruments and then in small groups, create our own soundtrack for the rest of the book. 
