During this month we have focussed our learning on a mystery object, a lightbulb. The questions generated by the children have led the learning experiences planned and undertaken.

Electrifying Science and Technology

In this Area of Learning we have focussed on learning about electricity. The children had the opportunity at the start of the learning process to generate questions that they wanted to find out about electricity. There was a wide range of questions created and we prioritised what we wanted to discover as a class. As a result, we decided to start by learning how electricity works.

We started by thinking of as many things as we could that use electricity. The children were surprised by the volume of items that use electricity. We discovered that although all the items look different, the way electricity works in them is identical. There is a circuit that starts with a power source, such as a battery, that flows through wires to the device being powered and then back to the power source.

One of our favourite aspects of learning was using the resources to make our own circuits, using batteries, bulbs, wires, motors and buzzers. After having the opportunity to create our own circuits, the children were challenged to make predictions about given circuits. They had a picture of a circuit and had to decide whether the bulb or motor would work or not and to give a reason for their response. We then made the circuit with the resources to check our predictions.

Conductors and insulators were our next focus. The former is materials that conduct electricity and the latter are materials that don’t allow electricity to pass through it. We discussed why it was important, especially, that some materials were insulators. All children were able to reason that it was really important for safety reasons otherwise we would all get lots of electric shocks. We moved our learning on by planning our own science investigation. The children chose 10 different materials that they wanted to test to see whether they would be an electrical conductor or insulator. The children completed this task independently and it was great to watch the collaboration, exploration and enthusiasm for their learning. The materials tested carried from shoes to tables to sharpeners.

Now that the children have a secure understanding of how electricity works, we will be moving on the explore how electricity gets to our homes. Focussing on the children’s questions of where does electricity come from?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for being so welcoming to me as the new Reception teacher looking after your lovely children whilst Mrs Thomas is enjoying time with her new baby. The children have all continued to work with enthusiasm and with big smiles on their faces. We have had a busy few weeks so far!

We have loved reading ‘Kate and the Starry Night’ and learning more about Vincent Van Gogh and enjoyed painting our own mini canvases. We also read ‘How to Catch a Star’ and ‘Night Monkey Day Monkey’ continuing our work on the stars and night sky. We thoroughly enjoyed our week of Chinese New Year celebrations and tasting the Chinese food. We have learnt many new things and have had lots of fun trying out new activities, which I hope they have shared with you each day.

The children have revised Phase 2 of the Letters and Sounds programme and continue to practice using sound-talk to blend the letters together in order to read words, (for example c, a, t = cat). We are also learning to read and spell some of the tricky words, e.g. to, go, no, the and I. Words that cannot be sounded out. Please continue to use the sound boxes you have at home to reinforce their phonic knowledge and continue to work hard at recognising (and spelling if they are ready) the high frequency words that we have sent home, please ask if you require another copy of this list.

We have exciting plans for this half term, continuing our topic about Space following the ‘alien space ship crash’ that happened in the forest. The children have decided what they would like to find out about this topic so we will be busy finding out the answers to their questions and lots more.

Forest sessions will continue to take place on a Monday afternoon – waterproofs and warm layers are essential please, and PE will continue in the hall on a Thursday afternoon. Snack money for this half term, and any outstanding from last term, is also due. If you would like us to be able to provide your child with a healthy snack we can do this with a contribution of £1 a week. Ideally, we would like the payment to cover the half term if possible, (£6). Please send any money to school in a sealed envelope labelled with your child’s name. Thank you very much.

I have learnt how to use Twitter since becoming part of this team and hope you are enjoying seeing what we are doing!

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me in the morning or after school and I will do my best to help.

Thank you very much!

Mrs Bowen and the Reception team

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! Happy New Year!  

We have started the new year with a bang! We have enjoyed seeing the progress that we have made as a result of our hard work last term. We are pleased to see that we are becoming a strong team unit and are all benefiting socially, emotionally and in terms of our work. Although we have made lots of progress over the last term with this we will continue to develop these skills and further strengthen our relationship with each other.  

We have enjoyed our sport education sessions where we are really putting our collaboration and skills of working with others to the test. We have created our own mini league in which we work. We have bonded well with our new team mates, creating our own team names and logos prior to any games. We have also created a class success criteria which we gain point for throughout the sessions.  We have enjoyed developing ball skills through Netball and sportsmanship.  

January has seen us developing our multiplication skills. We have loved playing the ‘Follow Me’ cards and timing ourselves to see how quickly we can recall our tables. Even Miss Evans has got super excited when we have beaten our record! This has helped us when we have been solving multi step problems which have included multiplication calculations.  

We have enjoyed researching, reading and watching videos about Fair trade. We have created Clips on the iPads to explain whet we have found out. We have also edited our written explanations of where chocolate comes from, using the mark-up tool on the iPad camera. For this we had to look back at what we had written and use the check list to mark off the feature included in our writing. We then used the mark-up tool to change, add in, edit, take out and reword things to improve on our work.  

We thoroughly enjoyed finding out about wearable technology and designing our own wearable tech that would improve lives in the future. We were fascinated to find out that the tech we use everyday didn’t always exist. We enjoyed watching videos explaining how quickly technology changes and develops , especially the Microsoft video which shows some of the technology of the future.  

Reading has been a big focus this month. We have started establishing a good routine for reading for pleasure. Lots of us have found some great novels, fact books and newspapers in class whilst others have chosen to bring reading materials in from home. We have started to create our own class book-review book. This book is hopefully going to help us to ‘sell’ our favourite reads to our friends.   

During our outdoor sessions we have talked lots about gratitude. We have discussed what it means to be grateful and how we show our gratitude, and how it feels to show it and to be included in the gratitude. We have also briefly discussed the difference between needs and wants and how can effect our gratitude. As a result of this we have created our own class Gratitude Tree in the forest area, where we have written down the things we are most grateful for on big leaf printouts and hung them on one of the lovely trees.

This month we have continued with our theme work on Me, Myself and I.

‘Aneurin Bevan & the NHS’

We have focussed our learning on finding out about an important person in Welsh history, Aneurin Bevan.  We were given a range of word clues which we used to find out who our mystery person was.  From our research we were asked to answer a range of questions such as ‘Why is this person important to Welsh & British history?’ ‘Why is the work of this person important today?’

We worked in groups to conduct our research and from this we were asked to plan and film a news report on Aneurin Bevan.  We watched a range of news reports on Newsround to see how they were created.  We wrote our scripts, learnt them, filmed using greenscreen, edited our films to create a final version and then we watched each-others films, suggesting improvements and identifying good features.

 

Growing up – Puberty

In addition to our work on Aneurin Bevan and the NHS, we have also been learning about the changes that we will be going through during puberty.  We worked in groups to discuss changes that will happen to our bodies and emotions.  We demonstrated a mature attitude to our discussions.

Body Image

We have conducted a survey to determine our thoughts on posting photos online.  In the survey we looked at pressure to edit or take the ‘perfect photo’ before posting; permissions to post photos and how these photos could be used in the wrong way by other people.  We worked in groups to analyse the findings of our survey and discussed ways that we could ensure we are safer and happier on line in the future.

P4C – Love

We have been focusing on the concept of Love – which is one of our values for the month of January.  We have looked at what love means, love and hate and how these make us feel.  We have carried out a range of philosophy-based activities to explore the concept fully.

 

Welsh

We have been working hard to change our written 1^st person descriptions about ourselves into oracy conversations.  We have worked in pairs to write a conversation, using our descriptions to answer questions. We found this extremely difficult and needed lots of time and perseverance in order to learn these.

Literacy

Our focus this month has been on developing our understanding of apostrophes and when to use ‘a’ and ‘an.’  We have played a range of games to develop our understanding of the rules when to use apostrophes for omission and possession, and when you should use a and an.

These were both areas that we were making mistakes on in our own writing.

 

Numeracy

During our math’s lessons we have been developing our understanding of number and data handling:

• Calculating probabilities
• Practising the long multiplication formal method
• Practising the long division formal method
• Exploring coordinates in the first and fourth quadrants

 

We have used our learning in maths, and applied this to numeracy activities within our theme work, to explore the probabilities of heart disease and the risk factors.

 

Music – performing using tuned instruments

We have continued to practise playing the recorder.  We have built on previous knowledge of the notes and used this to practise and perform the song ‘Three blind mice.’ We are planning to use our understanding of tuned instruments to next practise playing the glockenspiel.

 

Visitors

We have had a number of visitors to our class this month.  To begin, Mrs John from Morriston Comprehensive came to deliver a transition lesson on Religious Education.  We played a memory game to help us learn about the Hindu Gods and we discussed what we know about different religions.

 

Next, we had a visit from PC Underhill who talked to us about drugs. We discussed what a drug is and the difference between legal and illegal drugs.  We talked about the reasons why people take drugs and ways to avoid peer pressure.

Finally, we had a visit from Mr Jenkins from Morriston Comprehensive who carried out a fun pe session. As transition manager, he wanted to come and get to know us. He is hoping to carry out more visits to help us with our transition to year 7 in the near future.

 

Financial Education – bank accounts and jobs

Continuing with our work on learning about money and how to manage it, we have been learning about the advantages and disadvantages of bank accounts and bank cards.  We read the story ‘On the money,’ and used this to help us determine positive and negative reasons for using bank accounts.

 

In addition, we have been learning about jobs that people do in our community.  For homework we conducted interviews with friends and family members to find out about the jobs they do, the positive and negatives and skills they need.  We then presented our findings back to the rest of the class who found it very interesting.

 

 

Dates for the diary

Last day of this half term – Friday 14^th February

Return to school on Monday 24^th February

 

 

Welcome to the first Year 2 Newsletter Blog on Hwb! 

 

We have had such a busy month already and the children have worked very hard.  Ardderchog pawb!  We all celebrated Dydd Santes Dwynwen by listening to the story, which we then retold orally, and in small groups created the story in drama.  We then wrote up the story and made a card to give to our loved ones using the Welsh we had learnt.  Caru ti! 

 

We used the book ‘I want my hat back!’ by Jon Klassen in Philosophy for Children (P4C) sessions.  We thought of questions we wanted to ask before having a discussion and showing our opinion on an opinion line. Lots of lovely ideas were shared and some children changed their opinion after the discussion.      

 

In Science we explored static electricity in our ‘Messy Hair Experiment’ using a balloon, some tissue and our hair!  What would happen to the tissue when a small charge of static electricity was generated?  Children made lots of connections to prior learning and their own experiences to make a prediction.  We also explored our different reaction times to catching a falling object and were able to measure it using a ruler.  Again, lots of super predictions and connections were shared and recorded in our Science booklets. 

 

Our daily Letters and Sounds sessions have continued with spelling games, dictation, independent writing and challenges.  We also assessed high frequency words and a copy of those to work on at home will be sent home in the coming week.  Gwaith da! 

 

We looked at relationships and how we treat people with an excellent book called ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’ by author Carol McCloud and colourfully illustrated by David Messing.  This simple book encourages positive behaviour by using the concept of an invisible bucket to show children how easy and rewarding it is to express kindness, appreciation, and love by “filling buckets.  Children were keen to discuss their own experiences and we used these ideas to make a display of our own buckets describing ourselves.  Children illustrated ‘fillers’ and ‘dippers’ which we have displayed in the classroom.  Please feel free to come and see our work in class after school with your child.  

 

Our school monthly value is appreciation and we played the  ‘Gratitude Game’ to enable us to think and share aspects of our lives we are thankful for.  We watched a lovely video called  ‘Colour your world with kindness’ which is available on YouTube should you wish to view. 

 

In Welsh sessions we have learnt letters and sounds with the brilliant ‘Tric a Chlic’ programme as well as daily guided reading sessions after lunch using the story of ‘Tedi Twt a Doli Glwt yn yr Ysgol’.  We have focussed on food vocabulary this term and our Café Cymreig should be up and running in our outside area very soon.   

 

In Maths sessions we have been measuring in the forest, measuring in centimetres, comparing 2 digit numbers, exploring odd and even, place value, the 2, 5 and 10 times tables, developing strategies for addition and subtraction, as well as reasoning tasks in forest sessions.  

We used the story of ‘Mamgu’s Campervan’ by Wendy White to produce a tally of our favourite foods in Welsh and created a block graph and pie chart on Just2easy on HWB.  We looked at a map of Wales and used atlases to plot their journey around Wales taking in many ice cream and Welsh castle stops along the way!  

 

In PE we have been doing gymnastics, concentrating on making shapes and working with a partner to produce a sequence to perform to the class.  We have continued to develop skills of stretching and meditation using visualisations to cool down afterwards.   

 

In Literacy we used a section of the brilliant Roald Dahl ‘Revolting Rhymes’ film which was shown on television over Christmas and used this idea of merging stories and characters to write a completely new fairy tale of our own using characters and storylines from two different fairy tales.  The children really enjoyed this and had some brilliant results!  We are making a class book for our library area so that everyone can enjoy our creativity. 

We look forward to the month of February with some more fabulous learning and thank you for your continuing support.   

The children enjoyed watching ‘The Lighthouse’, an animated short movie from The Literacy Shed – https://www.literacyshed.com/the-lighthouse.html

This was used as our stimulus for the new theme this half term.  Everyone contributed lots of lovely suggestions for what they would like to know and do.

Here are some of the lovely things we’ve been getting up to:

Making Circuits

Everyone had a great time making circuits and lighting their bulbs!  They particularly enjoyed changing them and adding items like switches, extra batteries and extra bulbs.  It generated lots of discussions and everyone demonstrated great perseverance and problem-solving skills.

Electricity Research

Lots of independent research has been going on, using books and the internet, to find out more about electricity; how it is made; what do we use it for; what is a light bulb; what are insulators and conductors; etc.  Following the research, we are looking forward to everyone’s presentations during the last week of term.

Welsh history – Small’s Lighthouse

What a fascinating true story we learnt about this Welsh lighthouse!  Situated approximately 20 miles west of Ramsey Island, this lighthouse brought about a change in lighthouse policy in 1801 after a gruesome episode!

We have recently been learning about the features of newspaper writing, so will be using the story of Small’s Lighthouse to write our own newspaper reports.

Where in Wales?

Lots of enthusiasm for the task of locating lighthouses around the coast of Wales.  They practised using the Index in an Atlas to find places and developed their understanding of grid referencing.  We are planning on more grid referencing work during our outdoor sessions.

Light and Sight

After watching a video about ‘Light’, the children were keen to find out more about it and were keen to experiment how it would feel if they were not able to see.  Blindfolded in the forest and putting their trust in a friend, they followed instructions to move around.  It was also a great opportunity to develop instructional language e.g. quarter/full/half turns; 90 degrees/180 degrees/360 degrees; clockwise/anticlockwise;

The Shadow Puppet activity was also lots of fun!  After making their own puppets, they used them to retell stories for their friends.  We learnt that light travels from a light source until it meets an object.

Building Lighthouse Towers

Great teamwork and perseverance shown during this session in the forest.  It was also a great opportunity to use measuring skills!  The children measured their towers and then used the information to create their own bar graphs and interpret the data.

World Religion Day

As part of ‘World Religion Day’, the children used books and watched short videos to develop their understanding of six different religions: Christianity; Judaism, Sikhism; Buddhism; Islam; Hinduism.  They considered the similarities that the religions share and focused on ‘Love’ being a constant throughout all the religions.

Through their research and discussions, they were able to understand the importance of this day, where people around the World, take part in activities to promote inter-faith understanding and harmony.  As part of the four purposes we also understand the importance of becoming ethical, informed citizens who respect the needs and rights of others as members of a diverse society.

Dydd Santes Dwynwen

The children enjoyed listening to the story of St. Dwynwen, the Welsh Patron Saint of lovers.  As one of our Values this term is ‘Love’, we had a class discussion about the importance of how our actions show that we love someone.  They also enjoyed learning about Welsh love spoons and their symbols.  They designed their own ‘Dydd Santes Dwynwen’ cards too.

They really challenged themselves with new Welsh vocabulary too!  We read the story of Santes Dwynwen in Welsh as part of one of our Guided Reading sessions.

And, we learnt a new song!

Fe gwrddais i a merch fach bert,

Lawr ar lan y mor (3)

Fe gwrddais i a merch fach bert,

Lawr ar lan y mor. (2)

 

O, rwy’n dy garu di (2)

Yr eneth ar lan y mor,

O, rwy’n dy garu di (2)

Yr eneth ar lan y mor.

 

Other things!

We’ve had fun learning how to play hockey!  We’ve written a story inspired by a Pobble image of our choice, peer and self-assessed our work, made improvements and typed up new drafts.  We’ve also explored the 11 and 12 times tables through partitioning and created arrays as a way of exploring factor pairs.  We look forward to Mondays when we attend Inter-generational Group and PC Dan came to visit us and helped us to be more aware of ‘stranger danger’.  What a busy and fun January.

 

Year 1 Newsletter January 2020

We have had a lovely start to 2020 in Year 1. We began the first week back looking at New Year and resolutions. We each created a time capsule. We measured each other with string, wrote what we would like to be when we are older and came up with something that we want to work hard at during the rest of Year 1. We will open these at the end of the year to see if anything has changed. We also created New Year wishing wands in our craft area.

 

We then moved onto the Old Wales New Year traditions. We created a Perllan in the forest out of apples, sticks and cloves. We enjoyed painting Welsh flags and lots of these are now displayed on our Welsh board.

 

At the moment, we are enjoying learning about Chinese New Year. We have loved learning about the story and playing in our role play area which is a Chinese restaurant. We have thought carefully about the story and the different characters. We have used adjectives in our writing to describe the characters from the story. We have thought about some P4C questions like “Does winning always make you happy?” We have begun an investigation into how to create the best raft for the animals in the story. We have looked at different materials and have observed whether they sink or float in preparation for designing our own rafts.

 

Our values for this month have been Love and Appreciation. We read the story of Saint Dwynwen (the Welsh Saint of Love) and thought about what it teaches us. We considered what things we are thankful for or appreciate during our forest session.

 

We have been consolidating our number bonds to 10 and 20. We have transferred these skills to help us understand addition and subtraction. We have used different strategies to solve number problems like estimating and checking, counting back on a number line and using Numicon.

 

We are continuing to work hard at Letters and Sounds and our high frequency words to develop our reading and writing further. We love playing ‘Word Bingo’ on ictgames.com. Lots of us have been learning Welsh sounds too and practising reading stories in Welsh.

 

We have started Kerbcraft this half-term and have learnt lots of rules about how to keep safe outdoors and when crossing roads. We have learnt a fun new song to help us remember what is important.

 

During our PE sessions, we have been creating our own Chinese New Year dances. We have thought of moves to represent the celebration. We are looking forward to performing and evaluating these dances on the last week of this half term.