Class One

We all had to try to be very good and quiet this week – not that we’re not always good and quiet (well, mostly!), as Year 6 have been very busy with their SATs tests. The tests were as demanding as ever but the “big children” all tried very hard and we wish them all the best. One day that will be us!
In Literacy we have been studying the story of King Midas, recalling events in the right order and retelling the story with interesting detail; also describing the character of King Midas and what motivated him. As you know, King Midas wished that everything he touched turned to gold – a wish that didn’t go too well for him – so we also discussed what we would wish for. Wishes ranged from having lots of Moshies to becoming a fireman, ballerina or a footballer!
In Science we planted our sunflower seeds for our investigations; depriving some of water, some of light and others in different conditions such as outside or even the fridge! Stirling was very keen to discover whether a seed needs some darkness (e.g. night-time) so with Mrs Stoppani’s permission the seed has been put in Mrs Frenchman’s stock cupboard with the light left on all the time. This was a matter of some concern to certain environmentally conscious children which is very commendable. Hopefully the seeds will germinate soon – or will they?
In Art we have started making our papier mache Greek bowls with Miss Lever. Our dance is coming on very well too – we have some great movers! And we are continuing to learn the whole- school action songs too.
Mrs Stoppani was very impressed this week with the thoughtful comments and ideas of the children when considering the story of The Creation in RE.
Adding and subtracting 10 has been the main focus of Maths. Some of us are able to add and subtract 10 from hundreds and thousands numbers – even crossing the “tens boundary”. Well done to Jack A who can subtract 10 from any two digit number and he’s only YR R!
Finally, a belated Happy Birthday to our newest classmate Chelsie-Lily who was six the week before last , and Happy Birthday to Tom and Ella – both seven this week.

“Ya sou” everyone! That’s Greek for hello. Yes, this week we have been learning a few Greek words as part of our continuing topic and looking at the Greek alphabet. Quite tricky but everyone was really interested to try and pronounce the words and letters – and made a good job of it too. Thanks to the BBC Learn Greek website.

Our Taverna role play is up and running now and the youngest children in particular have had great fun serving up pittas and houmous or maybe a kebab or two. However, the older children have been very keen to join in when they get the chance!
In Literacy we studied the story of Pandora ’s Box. We made puppets of the characters and used these to explore dialogue in stories, some children went on to write speech bubbles for the characters and the older ones learned how to use speech marks correctly with great results. They even began to think of more interesting words to use instead of “said”. I particularly liked Joshua’s “boomed” to describe how Zeus spoke.
We’ve had some excellent homework in this week too, on an aspect of Greek life, including James’s information about Athens, Tom’s holiday brochure of Crete and Stirling’s annotated picture of Greek national dress.
Singing practice with Mrs Radd was fun this week as we all had to get into a huge circle (the whole school – how many schools can do that?!) and perform some action songs ready for our Jubilee dance festival. I was impressed how well Class One was able to keep up.
Multiplying and dividing in Maths – many can now use the x and ÷ signs with confidence.
In Science we began an investigation to find out what sunflower seeds need to germinate – we will plant them next week – there were some very thoughtful ideas.
Well that’s about it for this week so “Ya sou” everyone (it can also mean good-bye! Literally “good health I think). Only 3 weeks until we break up again and loads to pack in!

The week began with Literacy, getting to know some Greek gods and writing descriptions of them. Some of the names are hard to get our tongues around but we did our best! We then went on to hear a couple of Greek myths and explored the story of Prometheus and the Gift of Fire with some more drama. Some of us have excellent loud and scary “Zeus” voices!
In Maths many children were looking at using the signs and rounding numbers to the nearest 10, while others were ordering numbers in different ways. Even some YR 1 children have the hang of rounding numbers now – very impressive!
We have also begun to practise our dance for the Jubilee dance festival in PE.
Mrs Frenchman swapped her Friday off for Wednesday this week which meant Miss Lever taught Art on Wednesday, continuing to explore different ways of decorating Greek pots.
Science was all about seeds. We looked at many different kinds of seeds and tried to identify them before matching pictures of them to their parent plant. Next week we will be planting seeds and investigating what they need to grow.
The highlight of the week for many was making and tasting Greek food in Topic time! We made tzatziki – with a little help from Mrs Smith - and then had a Greek feast of tzatziki, houmous, pitta bread, feta cheese and Greek olives followed by Greek yoghurt and honey! Everyone liked the pitta bread and more than half the class liked everything else apart from the olives – however 4 children loved those too! We’re an adventurous lot in Class 1! This has prepared us for our taverna role play which we are busy setting up.
It’s been another wet week although we did manage some playtimes outside. Let’s hope for some better weather next week.

Sorry this blog is a little later than usual!
Another week exploring our theme of Greece which has captured everyone’s imagination.
Following some more drama, we imagined that we were on holiday in Greece and wrote postcards detailing our activities. If only we could go on a field trip! We then combined ICT, topic and Literacy by creating fact sheets about Greece – quite a challenge and a good way of developing our IT skills.
Luckily the weather was fine on Tuesday for our Science lesson as we spent most of it searching for plants and animals on the field and in the nature trail. Lots of children had a very good knowledge of what we might find down there but I think we were all surprised by the variety of life in a relatively small area. We had fun using the pooters too!
In Maths we revised and developed our subtraction skills and applied our knowledge to “real life” word problems.
Art has swapped temporarily from Monday to Friday so Mrs Frenchman can do PE, in order to put together a dance for the forthcoming Jubilee Festival. We haven’t really started properly yet – just warming up and going over a few moves. More ideas based on Greek pots were explored with Miss Lever in Art.
Clubs are in full swing again with many children attending our new film club run by Mrs Radd, who reported that everyone enjoyed themselves and were very well behaved.
Finally, may we take this opportunity to congratulate Miss Hudson who has got a job! (Starting in September of course). We all know her new school will be very lucky to have her.

Due to the training day, a short week this week, but we have still packed lots in as usual. A bit of a shock for Mrs Frenchman as she has to do all the teaching again but it’s quite nice to have the class back really, although we do all miss Miss Hudson!
The weather has been pretty awful with the challenge of several wet playtimes – but we do need the rain I suppose.
We started the week by writing about our Easter holiday experiences – a good way to remind ourselves of all those Literacy skills we may have forgotten over the last two weeks, like full stops and capital letters and remembering to use powerful adjectives to make our writing more interesting! Literacy continued with some non-fiction work on Greece to kick start our Olympics topic, researching facts on the internet and in topic time finding Greece on the map etc.
In Maths we have been brushing up on our addition skills – using mental and written methods – and we now have lots of strategies to draw on when adding numbers. Some of the older children can easily add two 2 digit numbers now and YR R have shown some pretty impressive addition skills too!
On Wednesday there was a chance to relive our University of Spratton experiences with a presentation assembly and in singing we have started to learn some songs for our summer production.
In Science we have begun our unit on Plants and Animals in the Local Environment. We have been identifying different plants and animals and thinking about what they have in common. Stirling said they’re both alive, Joshua said they both die when they get old, Hannah said they both grow and Tilly said they both need food, proving that we have some very scientific thinkers in Class 1! We hope the weather clears up for next week as we are hunting for plants and animals in the school grounds.
The week finished with a visit from the Life Education Centre Mobile Classroom, always an informative and interesting change from normal school lessons.

Well it’s the last week already and we found ourselves with lots to pack in before the Easter holidays.
The week has been dominated by the arrival of our long awaited chicks! Mrs Smith has taken on the role of “mother hen” so took the incubator home at the weekend. On Sunday the first two chicks hatched! On Monday Mrs Clements (who provided the incubator and eggs) set them up at school in their cosy box under the heat lamp to await their brothers and sisters. They did not have long to wait as sure enough we all noticed cracks appearing in two more eggs, heard excited cheeping and even saw little beaks poking through! It was SO exciting! Typically the chicks waited until all the children had gone home before they decided to hatch but by the end of the week we had a total of 9 chicks to admire, together with 4 chicks from Mrs Clements’ other incubator to keep them company! We have been going chick crazy! It has been impossible to pass the chick box without peering in to say hello. Many thanks to Mrs Clements for making it all possible.
As is usual for the last week normal lessons have been a little disrupted this week. However, in Literacy the children studied the poem “The Magic Box” by Kit Wright and considered what they would put in their own magic box. Needless to say chicks featured quite heavily!
On Tuesday Class 1 were invited to Spratton Hall School for their annual puppet show. It is usually at Christmas but had been postponed until their impressive new hall was built. Everyone had a lovely time – thanks to the school for including us as usual.
The Electricity topic has finished now so Science was a “one-off” lesson on habitats. Year R made the most of the fantastic weather by going on a minibeast hunt on the field and the older children created their own habitat in a shoe box. They thought carefully about everything a frog or minibeast would need.
Everyone created beautiful Easter cards, breaking from tradition under Miss Hudson’s guidance as different year groups made different styled cards, including a very impressive and complicated pop up design.
On Thursday morning it was off to church for our Easter service – rare to be able to walk there without coats!
Finally – and sadly – we said good-bye to Miss Hudson. Her placement has come to an end and she will soon be applying for real jobs! We have loved having her, she will make an excellent teacher and we wish her all the best.

Happy Easter!

Another fantastic blog written by Miss Hudson!
This week we have been solving different problems within Maths. We have been working out what ingredients the witch needs in her cauldron and knocking down and scoring Skittles. The final investigation on Thursday included Smarties! We estimated how many Smarties were in a tube, counted them and sorted them into colours. We were not impressed to find out that some tubes contined 33 Smarties whilst others only 31!
In Literacy we were looking at different shape poems and explaining why these poems are written in the shape they are. We then had a go at writing our own shape poems about clothes.
It was another University of Spratton afternoon on Wednesday. The birdwatchers made their own nests, the cooks made pizzas and the animators started filming. Meanwhile, the Reception chidlren went exploring on the field with Mrs Smith.
We have also nearly finished making the clothes for George the Giant! We have made our own prints and stencils to create designs on fabric and have had a go at sewing the trousers together. We think George will love his new colourful clothes!
On Friday it was Science morning and we made some super lighthouses using electrical circuits including switches to make our lighthouses flash.
Finally, we were successful in completing our Sport Relief challenge! Well done everyone! The money is still being collected. Thank you to those who helped raise money for Sport Relief.

This week in Class 1 we have been using adjectives to describe the setting in Room on the Broom and the children have written some exciting and descriptive story beginnings for their own story about the witch. In Maths we are looking at 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4 fractions and finding 1/2 and 1/4 of a set of objects. Today, we were outside for Maths using water and measuring jugs to find out the capacity of different containers.
We continued practicing our rocking and rolling movements and were sliding in different ways across the mats in PE. The children were then creating their own sequence of movements with their partner and performed them to the rest of the class.
There was another busy Wednesday afternoon for the University of Spratton. Some children went to the cemetery for a spot of bird watching whilst others cooked fairy cakes. The children who are creating animations are now ready to start filming next week!
On Thursday, we received a letter from George the Giant from The Smartest Giant in Town. He is in desperate need for a new outfit and Class 1 have taken on the challenge! We have so far taken measurements for George’s clothes, designed some t-shirts and trousers and created a paper template for the clothes.
Our eggs are doing well under the care of their “mother” Mrs Smith and we are eagerly looking forward to their hatching date in about 10 days time!
Making circuits is easy now in Science so we have progressed to creating switches which was great fun.
Finally, we have created some beautiful flower pot cards for all those Mums. Happy Mother’s Day!

The week began with a sport themed literacy day in which children from Reception to Year 6 worked in mixed groups to design their own healthy eating food or new sports equipment. This saw some very imaginative designs such as the Super Sports Scrimper and the Mad Magnet Ball. Each group produced a poster about their new product and performed a sketch to the rest of the groups in their class of their TV advert advertising their product. Some groups even made a prototype of their product!
Also this week we looked at ways to help us decide whether to read a book and so wrote our own book review and book blurb for a couple of Julia Donaldson books that we have been looking at in detail (The Smartest Giant in Town and The Gruffalo). During Maths we have been practising our 2,5 and 10 times tables and writing multiplication and division number sentences.
On Friday in Maths we were measuring objects around the classroom using the balancing and weighing scales and saying which objects were heavier and lighter.
Within Science we have been developing our knowledge of electrical circuits and are now using bulbs and motors (sometimes in the same circuit!).
This week saw the beginning of the University of Spratton which we were all very excited about! Everyone seemed to enjoy the afternoon and we now have a couple of keen bird watchers in the class.
We did not have PE on Wednesday as normal because of University of Spratton and so will be having it on Monday afternoon instead.
Finally, for Topic and ICT we were researching on the Internet some of the different countries where cotton is made and finding these countries in an Atlas and on the globes.
(this week’s blog was written by Miss Hudson!)