Fabulous Addition and Research Skills!

Date: 31st Jan 2024 @ 2:33pm

This week, year 3 have been working extremely hard in their maths, reading and writing lessons. 

We begun the week by completing our instructions on how to wash a woolly mammoth. Now we are confident on washing any large animal! We have then begun to complete some research for our next writing challenge - a non-chronological report on the Stone Age. We thought about all of the facts we have learnt this term, and then used different non-fiction books to find evidence to prove if our facts were true or not.

In maths, we have continued exploring addition. We begun the week by learning how to add 3-digit numbers through the method of redistribution. This was challenging at first, but we persevered until we felt confident. We have now moved on to learning about column addition. We have used our base 10 resources to help us, and have learnt the mathematical names for the different parts of addition number sentences (addend + addend = sum).

We are Artists part 2!!!

Date: 30th Jan 2024 @ 8:24pm

This week we had our second art lesson with Mrs McAffer on Tuesday. We built on the skills of drawing and mark making by creating some backgrounds for our toy pictures that we created last week. We worked in four small groups to create four backgrpound settings - space, forest, city and under the sea. 

We started by sharing ideas about what we can find in each setting on post it notes. Then we used our drawing skills to draw the different objects that would be found in each setting. We included some of the mark making skills such as hatching, cross-hatching and dots to fill in the shapes in the drawings. Finally we used oil pastels to colour in each setting. Each setting looked so affective and they will be used for a display in the KS1 shared area and in the classroom. 

Number Fact Families

Date: 28th Jan 2024 @ 3:26pm

This week we have been learning how to use the plus and equal sign and to record number fact families within 10! We used Numicon and our knowledge of part and wholes to build the expressions. We could explain the representations to our partners and were very confident to explore the number facts to generate the families.

Windy weather!

Date: 26th Jan 2024 @ 3:07pm

In Nursery this week we have been talking about different types of weather. We went outside to see if we could hear and feel the wind. We worked as a team and had lots of fun making objects to use on windy days. This is what Nursery said when we asked them about their learning: 

"We made a wind stick"

"Wind sock"

"Kite" 

"The wind snaps the branches"

"The leaves fall off"

We hope you enjoy looking at our photos!

River Study

Date: 26th Jan 2024 @ 2:07pm

On Tuesday, we went to the River Medlock to discover new things about the water cycle because in our geography lessons, we are learning about how the water cycle works and how rivers are formed. When we went to the river, we saw a meander,(which is where the river curves). We also saw that this river bank had been created by humans, and that although rivers are usually physical features, there can sometimes be human features too (like with the river Medlock). The water was flowing even faster than usual because of the precipitation (that means rain!)  

Spring- week 4 4AK

Date: 26th Jan 2024 @ 1:27pm

Hello, we have had another busy week in 4AK! 

We started off the week with trip to see the River Medlock to carry out our local river study. We then located the features of a river on a map and created a field sketch of the river. See the attached pictures!

In maths we continued to plot co-ordinates on a grid and create our own ploygons and oblong shapes on a grid. In English we have been looking at Kenning poems ready to write our own on Monday and continue to enjoy our class text ' The waterhorse'. In Science,we investigated how temperature affects evaporation and set up an experiment that we will observe for 14 days. We will then show our observations using a line graph. We continued with our sketchbooks practicing our new skill of 'see three shapes'. The children first drew an outline of their object, then added shadow and form for the final sketch. See attatched pictures. 

Homework has been sent out- please complete and return by the 2nd February. 

Have a lovely weekend! 

Sealife Visit!

Date: 25th Jan 2024 @ 4:02pm

This week we took a trip to the Sea Life Aquarium to explore under the sea!

We saw many animals including stingrays, starfish, sharks, turtles, and some very interesting fish species.

All complete with a short workshop where we got to draw our own aquariums. 

We are Artists!!!

Date: 24th Jan 2024 @ 8:46pm

This week we worked with Mrs McAffer to learn more art skills. We focussed on drawing skills using different mark making patterns to show texture. We learnt about hatching and cross-hatching marks and used these in our drawings of teddy bears and toys with fur on them. We used the medium of pencils and black felt tip pens to create our drawings. They looked amazing!!! 

Trip to Sea Life Aquarium

Date: 24th Jan 2024 @ 4:19pm

This week Reception took a trip to the Sea Life Aquarium to explore under the sea! We saw many animals including stingrays, starfish, sharks, turtles, and some very interesting fish species. All complete with a short workshop where we got to draw our own aquariums. 

Race Around the World!

Date: 24th Jan 2024 @ 2:27pm

This week we looked at some geopgraphy and explored our Race Around the World project in our CC lessons. 

The children reminded themselves of the 4 cardinal compass points (N,S,E and W) and learned about the 4 intercardinal points (NE, SE, SW, NW)

We used this knowledge to locate our project checkpoints in an atlas, plot the direction of travel and decide which countries we would pass through on the way to our destinations. 

The children really enjoyed using the atlases and finding out more about the World's geography

Spring 1 Week 3

Date: 21st Jan 2024 @ 4:24pm

Well, another busy week has flown by in the blink of an eye! On Wednesday, we had the joy of being allowed ten minutes play in the snow before it all turned to mush and ice. We even built a little snowman.

The class also enjoyed the science lesson which often becomes a popular memory of year 5 - we were trying to identify the children from their baby photos. We talked about what features change as we get older (size, colour of hair, teeth) and things that don't (shape of body parts like face, hands, eyes). There were a couple that stumped everyone and others who were immediately recognizable.

Next week, we are going to be writing our Greek myths and learning about scaling in maths. 

Toy Museum Workshop!

Date: 21st Jan 2024 @ 8:38am

On Wednesday he had a visitor named Alison. She was a Toy Museum Curator and she needed our help! She showed us around her Toy Museum and we saw lots of different toys from the past to the present such as teddy bears, dolls and moveable toys. We also role played being different toys and joined in with the doll disco. In the final room, Alison explained why she needed our help and she asked us to invent toys for her imagination room in her toy museum. We were able to use our imaginations to create some exciting toys and she was very glad for our help.

Next week we will be writing a recount of our experience to share with our parents. We will be using time connectives to sequence the events of the experience and using superlatives to compare the toys and the conjunction but to extend our sentences.

Chinese New Year

Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 3:16pm

This week in Nursery we celebrated Chinese New Year early. We dressed up in traditional chinese clothes, we read a non-fiction book all about CNY. We also cooked chinese food in the home corner and practised using chopsticks. This is what some of the children said when we asked them what they had learnt:

"The lion was dancing"

"We dress up in chinese new year clothes"

"We painted chinese numbers" 

"We looked at chinese new year book"

"We eat noodles in the home corner"

"We used chopsticks to eat"

"Chinese people like red"

Spring 1 W3

Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 2:08pm

Another busy week in 4RJ. We began this icy week with lots of snow on Tuesday, we even went out to the playground and threw lots of snowballs at Mr Jones! In our maths, we have been learning how to translate points and polygons on grids! We have also finished writing our persuasive letters to Mrs Hughes who will be collecting them on Monday, we hope she makes the right decision when it comes to keeping or getting rid of the egg. On Thursday, we checked our rain gauges which were icy! In science with Mrs Ratcliffe, we experimented to find out why things melt. We found out that the hotter the water was, the quicker the chocolate would melt! 

Homework is already on the website as Spring 1 W3 Spelling Maths.  

Numberblocks!

Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 2:04pm

This week in our maths lessons we have been using the Numberblocks to help us put the number 1-5 in the right order. Have a look at some of our amazing work! 

Once we had the numbers in the right order, we made it EVEN TRICKIER by hiding one of our Numberblocks and seeing if we could work out who had gone missing... 

Snow Day in Reception

Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 1:57pm

We spent Tuesday morning playing in the freshly fallen snow outside! Lots of snowballs, snow angels, and snowmen to be had. 

Spring- Week 3 4AK

Date: 19th Jan 2024 @ 8:28am

Hello, we have had a busy snowy week this week!

In Geography,  we continued to observe and measure rainful using our rain gauges. The highest measurement was 9.5cm of rain so far! we will contine to observe next week. Some children also shared their brilliant school council manifestos to the class before we went to the polling station in school and voted for our new class/school councillor. Have a look at the attached pictures! 

Homework is being sent out today, please complete and return by Friday 26th January. 

Please make sure your child is practicing their times tables and reading every day. 

Have a great weekend! 

PE with the city coach

Date: 18th Jan 2024 @ 12:41pm

In PE this week, we have been working with the city coach. We practiced dribbling the ball on the spot, before dribbling around the hall. Our partners gave us directions to ensure we dribbled the ball into a space.

Toy Museum Drama Workshop

Date: 17th Jan 2024 @ 5:28pm

On Wednesday a visitor called Alison came into school. She was a Toy Museum curator. We used our imagination and drama skills to be transported into a museum where Alison looked after all the toys. We learnt facts about toys from the past such as teddy bears, dolls and moveable toys. We also used our imagination to invent a new toy and acted out this toy for everyone to see. 

Next week we will be using this experience to write a recount using time connectives and extend our sentences using 'and.' In our Connected Curriculum work linked to our history skills we will use the facts we have learnt to find out which toys from the past we would like to play with and compare them with toys from the present. We will also magpie the snap game we played with Alison to match old and new toys that are the similar. 

It's been snowing!

Date: 17th Jan 2024 @ 5:19pm

On Tuesday we came to school in the snow. After register the first thing that we had to do was go and play with ourfriends in the snow! Mrs Hughes and Mrs Thewlis joined us as well. It was lots of Fun!!! 

Snow Day Science

Date: 16th Jan 2024 @ 2:13pm

We have been learning about Winter in Nursery. We've been finding frozen blocks of ice all over our provision. Yesterday we received a letter from some penguins, asking us to help them get free from the ice that they were trapped in. We planned experiments in our key worker groups to work out how to free them.This morning there was snow all over the outdoor area but no trapped penguins. This afternoon we found the penguins frozen in ice outside, next to our water tray, so we sprung into action!

Mrs Ganners group poured warm water on the penguins and it melted the ice.

Mrs Blakeley's group banged the ice with a hammer to break the penguins free.

Mrs Wyment's group got a bucket and put in some warm and cold water. After that, they put the penguins inside the bucket and waited.

Ms Marley's group put the penguins in a tray and put it outside and waited for the sun to come out.

We hope you enjoy looking at the photos of our learning as much as we enjoyed setting the penguins free!

Fun in the Snow

Date: 16th Jan 2024 @ 12:00pm

This morning Mys Hughes allowed all the children to experince a fun-filled five minutes outside before they started their lessons. The children had so much fun and it was lovely to see them all playing so nicely together. 

Week in 1AI!

Date: 14th Jan 2024 @ 3:16pm

This week we tried our full spring term timetable. We now do PE on Monday afternoons and started the week with some games linked to the work we did with Chiaria our City coach. On Tuesday we started our new topic in Computing all about Bee Bots. We discovered how we could program the Bee Bots using some algorithms. We realsied that some bugs appeared so we changed the algorithms and tried again to make the Bee Bots move in certain directions. We really enjoyed this session and next week we will be showing you all how to use a Bee Bot by creating some videos. Check out blog post next week for those videos!

In writing we finihsed our Found poster where we describing Threadbear and started to sequence the story 'Threadbear' using pictures and sentences from the story. We worked together with a partner to get the pictures in the correct order. Then we used our Talk for Writing phrases and actions to retell the story to our partners. 

Next week there will be lots more learning happening with a very special visitor coming into school on Wednesday. Check out next week's blog post!!! 

Drawing Penguins

Date: 14th Jan 2024 @ 10:02am

This week, we worked with our art teacher, Mrs McAffer. First, we used our observational skills to create a continuous line drawing of penguins. Next, we continued to use our observational skills and focused on the tone, lines and shapes in pictures of penguins. Finally, we explored using a different media to draw penguins.

Spring 1 Week 2

Date: 12th Jan 2024 @ 4:56pm

The week feels like its disappeared in a whirl of writing, maths and Ancient Greeks! 

In writing, we have created some very scary monsters in preparation for writing a story inspired by a greek myth. We wrote two descriptive sentences and then inputted them into bing image creator. They are going to be excellent inspiration, I'm sure.

In reading, we have started to get stuck into the ancient Greek myth of Heracles. The class were aware of Hercules - the Roman equivalent but they weren't aware of the ten tasks he had to complete so they are very enthusiastic about the exciting stories of him killing beasts.

In maths, we are working our way through learning about area and perimeter. I was so impressed with the class' ability to move from counting squares within a rectangle to find its area, to multiplying two sides to calculate it instead. Next week, we will be thinking about how to calculate the length of missing sides in composite rectilinear shapes so that we can calculate the area accurately.

And finally, today we went on a school trip to Manchester Art Gallery to take part in a drama workshop about Pandora's box. The staff were blown away by the exceptional levels of behaviour. It was the first time we've used public transport for a trip which caused a few concerns but I'm very pleased to say that we will be able to do more of this in the future. The children listened to adults, followed instructions in busy areas and were so sensible. It was by far, the proudest day I've had with this class since September. Well done 5HC!