This week Year 1/2 have been helping Nursery to capture a rather cheeky dragon.

Miss Bingham wrote us a letter asking us to help her by writing the instructions for a trap. She told us that she had a spade, a ground sheet, some twigs, some leaves and a pieceof meat but wasn't sure how to make the trap.

These pictures were sent to us to show just some of the mischief the small, green dragon had been getting up to!

We discussed the important features of instructions and how we needed to make them really clear.

As a class we decided that the instructions needed :

• A title
• An introduction
• A list of what we needed
• The method (which needed 'bossy verbs')
• An ending statement.

Here are some of the pieces of writing we produced. Before we can give them to Nursery we need to up-level our writing to make sure that they are the best instructions they can be and will definately make sure that the dragon is caught.

This week in Year 1/2 the children have been continuing to build upon their knowledge and understanding of different sounds in phonics. The children have been using their knowledge of the phonemes learned so far and their blending skills to decode real and pseudo words (non-sense words).

We have enjoyed playing the Buried Treasure game below to help us!

In Literacy this week we have been focusing on our use of VCOP (vocabulary, connectives, openers and punctuation) to improve our writing. We used a traditional tale to help us to write about a chosen character. Listen to the story below and then choose a character from the story to talk about using the prompts.

• What does your character look like?
• How do they behave? Are they good or bad?
• What kind of personality do they have?
• How do you know this?
• What do you think about the character?

In Maths we have been using mental strategies to add and subtract. While Year 1 have been using their knowledge of place value to add and subtract multiples of 10; Year 2 have focused on bridging through 10. Here are some games to play that will help consolidate your learning in class.

E-Safety

On Wednesday we had an assembly with a guest speaker who spoke to us about electrical devices such as laptops, computers, play stations, I pads, etc.

The guest speaker asked us what games we enjoyed playing on our computers before talking to us about how we can stay safe on these.

For example when playing on Moshi Monsters to not talk to ‘monsters’ we don’t know.

REMINDERS

• Indian Art Day Thursday 28^th March. Children to come dresses in the colours of the Indian flag. (orange, white, green)

• Last day of term is Thursday 28^th March. School finishes at 2.00pm this day!

• Please can we have any swimming consent and medical forms that have not been handed in yet before Thursday please.

Many thanks 

This week in Literacy we have begun learning about nocturnal animals; these are animals which come out at night. Over the next few weeks we will be collecting information to compile a class information book.

In I.C.T this week we used  an online programme called 'All About Animals' to find interesting facts about owls. We then completed a fact file using the information and remembered to use sub-headings to help organise our page.

Did you know .... owls are not found in the polar regions or where it is very hot and dry (e.g. the desert)?

We learned a song to help us understand the WOW word 'echolocation.' This is how bats sensing surrounding objects, helping them to avoid flying into trees and buildings. It also enables them to detect their prey!

If you would like to listen to the song again click on the picture below.

We also began to learn about hedgehogs. Whilst watching a short video about hedgehogs we collected notes. We also used a powerpoint to gather more interesting facts about hedgehogs. In pairs we then used all the information we had collected to present a short report to the rest of the class. Our focus was to ensure we spoke clearly, kept the interest of the audience and used WOW words.  

Click below to hear some of our reports and learn more about hedgehogs from the online book!