Living and Learning: drugs, alcohol and tobacco
The last couple of weeks have been focused on talking about drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Year 3 took part in some great learning about these substances so that once they are old enough, they can make safe and informed decisions on what they choose to do.
Our circle time was focused on this, too! We spoke about how we can stay healthy and included time to discuss how these substances can impact our health, either positively or negatively.
Help at home by asking your child how they can keep themselves safe regarding alcohol, drugs and tobacco.
Skipping school
Today, we welcomed Katie from skipping school into school for the morning. Year 2 have had a fantastic morning learnings lots of different skills in preparation for the skipping festival in the summer. Over the next few months, we will be practising all the different skips we have been taught in PE lesson and at playtimes. We really encourage children to practise at home too. Skipping ropes are available to purchase from school.
Well done, Year 2!
A HUGE well done to all the children this afternoon for performing so well in their second class assembly of the year. Thank you for coming to share this with them.
We are very proud of their confidence to speak in front of such a big audience and for taking responsibility to learn their lines and the songs and poems.
There’s a class reward for them tomorrow!
Living and Learning: Drugs, alcohol and tobacco
Over the last two weeks, we’ve been learning all about drugs, alcohol and tobacco in our L&L sessions.
We talked about what drugs, alcohol and tobacco are and the effects and impacts they can have.
We learnt that drugs can have both positive and negative impacts and discussed the difference between illegal drugs and legal drugs prescribed by doctors.
How can you help at home?
Talk to your child and recap/consolidate their learning by having conversations about drugs, alcohol and tobacco!
Reading: Performing Poems
The children have been performing the poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ by William Wordsworth to their peers. In this homework review, the children practised their oracy skills of:
- eye contact,
- voice projection,
- fluency and pace,
- and tonal variation.
The outcome was fantastic!
Science: Our Solar System
In Science this week, we learnt about our solar system. We sorted fact cards into four different categories (planets, sun, moon or Earth). Then, we carried out research using secondary sources (a form of scientific enquiry).
This learning linked to our Computing and Living and Learning curriculum as we discussed the reliability and accuracy of information from the fact cards and the websites which we were looking at.
In addition, we created solar system posters; have a look at our fabulous work:
Finally, we made mnemonics to remember the order in which the planets orbit the sun.
Help at home: Come up with a new mnemonic to remember the order of our solar system. Here is an example:
Mercury My
Venus Very
Earth Epic
Mars Marvellous
Jupiter Jumper
Saturn Suits
Uranus Unqiue
Neptune Neil
Or why not watch the ‘we are planets’ song.
Week 2: The Secrets of Winter
Literacy
Our focus story was The Secrets of Winter by Carron Brown and Georgina Tee. We had a lots of fun shining a torch onto the pages to find the hidden winter surprises.
On Wednesday, we talked about the difference between non-fiction and fiction books and why they are both important. We then sorted a selection of non-fiction and fiction books into two groups.
We’ve also learnt lots of interesting facts about penguins! We watched various videos, talked about the life cycle and had a go at writing our favourite facts. Ask your child if they can remember one fact about penguins.
Maths
This week, we continued to engage with counting activities. A key focus this week has been the stable order principle – understanding that the position each number holds in our number sequence does not change. To help us understand the stable order principle, we used cubes, blocks and other resources to make staircase patterns.
When making our staircase patterns, we discovered that each number has a value of 1 more than the previous number.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem is a short poem called I can build a snowman. We used our imaginations and pretended to build snowmen.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the challenges this week…
Reminders
- Please make sure you write in your child’s reading record when you’ve read at home. It is important we see how your child is doing with their reading at home.
- Don’t forget our Phase 3 Funky Phonics Stay & Learn session! Thank you to everyone who has returned their slip. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday and Tuesday.
- E-books are assigned every Thursday. Please make sure your child reads this daily at home.
Home-Link Challenge
Class assembly reminder Wednesday 18th January
We look forward to welcoming you to our second class assembly next Wednesday.
The children are looking forward to sharing their learning.
The assembly starts at 2:40pm. We hope to see you there!
Living and Learning – drugs, alcohol and tobacco
The last couple of weeks have been focused on talking about drugs, alcohol and tobacco. This topic is really important. The children have become familiar and educated on these substances so that once they are old enough, they can make safe and informed decisions on what they choose to do.
The year 4 children identified how certain drugs and household items (i.e. paracetamol or surface cleaner) should be used safely. They were really sensible and knew exactly what to do:
- Do not touch these items without permission from a trusted adult.
- The instructions on the products must be followed.
- Keep them out of reach of small children.
Our circle time was focused on this too! We spoke about how these substances can affect our health. The children responded to statements such as, I drank some water today, I think talking about my feelings makes me healthy and being thin automatically makes someone healthy. We decided that as long as we have things in moderation such as, chocolate and sweets and we balance them with fruit, vegetables and exercise then that will make us feel healthy.
We are readers!
On Thursday afternoon Year 1 decided to change around their book corner. Mr McGriffiths spread out lots of new and interesting books on our tables and we were able to explore all the books. Everyone was very excited to look through and read these different books, which ranged from superhero potatoes to snow dragons via mischievous cats! In the end, we had to choose just one book to go into the book corner. It was very difficult to choose but we can’t wait to share our choice with our friends!
I was very proud of how enthusiastic all the children were when exploring and reading the books and I am very excited to get reading these books to the whole class!
Help at home: make sure you are reading your library books with your children every week as well as enjoying reading books to and with them. Don’t forget to write in your child’s reading record ever week when you have read their e-book.
