Class 1

Autumn Term 2021 Week 1

  

  

  

Now we have come to the end of our first full week of this school year, it’s time for an update! We have welcomed our new starters into Reception and they have really hit the ground running. Thank you to all the families who have made this possible. It is such a pleasure to be able to see and chat with everyone in the playground after what feels like the longest time.

All the children in Class 1 have already formed into a fantastic team! This year we are Butterfly Class – we are starting off as caterpillars, growing bigger and bigger as we take in all the new learning opportunities we can, before we make our chrysalides and begin our transformation into the beautiful, confident, imaginative butterflies we will become! We will work together to develop each child’s knowledge and skills across all areas of learning.

Since the start of the new term, we have already learnt some fascinating facts about caterpillars and butterflies – did you know caterpillars have 16 legs, but butterflies have 6? We have a huge number of caterpillars living on the flowers growing in our outdoor learning area, which we observe closely every day. So far we have seen them hatch from eggs and grow to become about two inches long. They are eating the leaves of the nasturtiums and will soon be making their chrysalides. We also have the opportunity to observe caterpillars inside the classroom, in case the ones outside choose to transform elsewhere. We are all very excited to see the full life cycle for ourselves, and link it to our journey this year.

We have been getting to know each other as we play and learn. We have played games, read stories, made up our own stories, and made lots of friendships not only in Class 1 but with the other children in school too, who have been very welcoming and caring. I am so impressed with the way the children have settled into Class 1. Keep watching for updates on our adventures!

 

Autumn Term 2020

Week 7

                     

 

                 

 

             

This week in Elephant Class we have been even more excited about Christmas! We all enjoyed our Christmas performance while we did our Little Donkey dance and our Twinkle Twinkle dance. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! We had our Christmas Fair, where we saw Santa! There was a chocolate raffle and a cookie stand. These alongside the snowman balloons were our favourites! We also made calendars to take home. Yesterday afternoon we had our party! We played lots of games including Pin the Nose on Rudolph, Musical Chairs, Musical Statues and Sleeping Lions. Today is Christmas Jumper Day and we have enjoyed showing off our fab jumpers! We wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. See you in January!

Week 6

    

  

This has again been a very busy week in Elephant Class! We had a letter from a worried reindeer, asking if we could take care of her baby reindeer because she has to go to work with Santa and the other reindeer. Of course we were very excited about this and wrote an email back. This led onto writing letters and cards with a Christmas theme, alongside reading “The Jolly Christmas Postman” as we learn about writing all sorts of messages to each other. We have been wrapping presents of all different shapes and sizes to go underneath our Christmas tree. Year 1 have worked very hard in their Maths assessments to show how much they have learned over the last term – a huge well done to you all! We have dressed up and acted out the Nativity story as well as practising our dances for the school’s Christmas performance. All the children enjoyed making their Christingle oranges and learned about the significance of the Christingle. A massive thank you to Pat and Tom who came to do these sessions with us. We took part in the BBC live lesson at Chester Zoo, learning about animals’ camouflage and habitats. We made dens using branches and a groundsheet with Mrs S! Possibly the most exciting news for Class 1 though was the arrival of our new class pet – a baby garden snail. We learned what a snail needs to live a healthy happy life with us and have made a suitable home for our tiny friend. Of course the snail needed a name! We had so many ideas – the more notable were Christmas Dave, Blackstop and Tiger! However after a fair process of being drawn out of a hat, our snail is now called Cleo Lulu Rio Snailo. 

Here is our celebration elephant for this week, who has been their Birdsedge Best!

Week 5

  

 

 

This week in Class 1 we have been bitten by the Christmas bug! On Monday morning we walked into our classroom to see Christmas decorations, a Christmas tree, and twinkly lights – we were amazed! We sang along to traditional and modern Christmas songs. We read the story of the Nativity, from different perspectives, and thought about how there is usually more than one side to every story. We talked about the reasons Christmas is celebrated by people around the world. We have been practising our dances for the Christmas performance too – we are getting very good! In Maths we compared groups of objects and numbers, ordering them from most to least. Outside we continued our physical development as we built obstacle courses and used chalk to write words we learnt in our Phonics lessons. Year 1 earned so many housepoints each for their hard work this week in Phonics lessons – ask your child how many they earned! We continued our learning in our Space topic, using the books we found in the library to gather interesting facts about the solar system to add to our display.

Here is our celebration elephant for this week, who has been their Birdsedge Best!

Week 4

  

 

This week we have continued learning about Space and our solar system. We learnt facts about Helen Sharman and we imagined what it would be like to actually go into Space. We wrote about what we could see and discover. Alice made a fabulous diagram of the solar system and other children drew and painted aliens, space vehicles and planets. We used kinetic sand to create the surface of the moon and completed our Space jigsaw, by working as a team! Outside we made waterways, gathered and investigated leaves that have fallen on our playground and brushed them away to help our physical development. On the computers we made pictures using Dazzle.

Here is our celebration elephant for this week, who has been their Birdsedge Best!

 

Week 3 

  

                 

It has been a very busy week in Elephant Class this week! We began our new topic and are very much enjoying learning about our solar system, using information from books and from the internet. We learned a very catchy song about the planets – maybe the children will sing it at home for you! We now know that the Sun is a star, we live on Earth, and that all the planets orbit around the Sun. We named aliens using our phonic knowledge! We have trained as astronauts and have made our own space rocket to blast off on our adventures. We used our knowledge of 2D shapes to make windows for our rocket and if you look closely, you can see us all ready to go! In Maths we have explored properties of 2D and 3D shapes, been on shape hunts and used mathematical language correctly to describe properties of the shapes. Our key text has been Beegu by Alexis Deacon, and we really enjoyed the story of the little creature who crash-landed on a strange planet. We made missing posters so that if anyone saw Beegu, they could get in touch to help her be reunited with her family. We pretended to be Beegu and wrote letters to her parents asking for help, including all the things she saw and experienced.  We thought about how Beegu must have felt, being all alone in a strange place where she couldn’t understand anybody and nobody could understand her. We talked about the importance of being kind, as part of Anti-Bullying Week, and made sure we say kind words and do kind things always. In PE we continued to improve our gymnastic shapes, pointing our toes and positioning our bodies correctly. We also learned how to jump and land safely.

Here is our celebration elephant for this week, who has been an inspirational role model! 

Spring Term 2021

 

Week 5

    

    

    

  

    

Wow – what a week! When I asked the children in Elephant Class how they would describe the last week, they used these words: amazing, the best, brilliant, fabulous, fantastical! We have enjoyed learning about Easter and writing our own Easter stories, following the sequence of events in the Christian Easter Story.

Class 1 have really enjoyed our new Wake Up Shake Up activities. Every morning we join in with some aerobic exercise in the playground. It is our chance to be part of the whole school and start our days off in the best way!

The children have spent lots of time in our outdoor area, creating and constructing with the generous donation of crates we recently received. They have been transformed into a prison, a workshop and a house! Not all at the same time though. We have explored capacity and volume in our water tray, using different-sized containers, with opportunities for children to work collaboratively to fill up the water tray after selecting the appropriate containers. Sometimes a bit of trial and error was needed, but we all joined in and played our part as part of our team.

We have been practising our handwriting and Phonics and are getting more confident about writing for long periods of time. Our fantastic writing is on display for everyone to see. Well done Elephants!

One of our Elephants had a birthday this week, and we were very lucky to be able to have a celebratory ice cream thanks to the generosity of the child’s parents. There was a cone or lolly for everyone in school and as you can see we all enjoyed them very much. We played party games as usual in Class 1, before the ice creams. Happy birthday!

And last but not least – Friday was the last day of term. It was also our Easter Day at school. Class 1 were very lucky to have received some fabulous Easter baskets made by Miss Hutton’s mum, which they filled with a nest, a little chick, and some glittery eggs. Then, to tempt the Easter Bunny, we left carrots in each basket. After our Egg Hunt we found that the Easter Bunny had swapped the carrots for chocolate eggs and other Easter treats! Amazing!

We made our own chocolate Easter eggs by melting chocolate, tempering it and pouring it into moulds. After a few minutes in the fridge the eggs were set. The Easter Bunny added them to the children’s baskets before hometime.

 

Here is our Class 1 Celebration Pupil who has been given a special mention for their amazing behaviours and attitudes this week. 

Week 4

Wow! What a fantastic start back for us in Elephant Class over the last couple of weeks. We spent time settling back into our school routines, getting to know each other again and talking about our experiences and feelings during the time we spent away from school, remote learning and in school as children of key workers.

The children have been fabulous at returning to our normal. They happily come into school and are expert hand washers! Our first week back was also Science Week. We learnt about problems facing our Earth – climate change, plastic pollution and recycling, including sorting materials for our own upcycling projects! We took a plastic object and upcycled them into new and improved inventions. We gave each other feedback and improved our inventions further. We then talked about the process and the materials we used.

Class 1 have been very inventive outside – they used lots of resources to make medicine for poorly fish before they had surgery to remove the microplastics they had swallowed in the oceans…

   

 

    

      

 

Here is our Class 1 Celebration Pupil who has been given a special mention for their amazing behaviours and attitudes this week. 

 

Summer Term 2021

 

Summer Term 2 Week 5

  

  

  

  

We have had another fantastic week here in Class 1! We danced ourselves silly at our disco last Friday – what a treat! A massive thank you to Mr Sigsworth and his disco team. Our first disco for such a long time was a brilliant occasion – we really loved it.

This week we have continued our learning about dinosaurs and compared them to animals that are alive today. We learnt about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores and used our knowledge to classify and group animals. We learnt about what differentiates mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians.

As usual a lot of our learning has been outside. We have been experimenting with homes for creatures we find and the model animals, building shelters for them and creating suitable habitats. Then of course, the animals need feeding…

In Maths we have been learning about the coins and notes we may use and see at home or while out shopping. We counted and identified coins and compared amounts. We will be on the look-out for pennies at home now!

In our Geography lessons, we finished off our projects on our chosen countries. We presented the facts we had found out through research and made salt dough models of the countries, showing rivers and mountain ranges. Fantastic work!

Summer Term 2 Week 4

  

  

 

What an exciting week! Do you want to know why? We been learning about different types of sentences in Class 1, and finding out why they end with different punctuation. This has resulted in lots of children saying lots of exclamation sentences such as: What a lovely day! How sunny it is! How long that diplodocus is! What a lot of teeth! (We’ve also been learning about dinosaurs, can you tell?)

We have been reading some really cool books about dinosaurs to find out facts and talk about our ideas and what we already know. We added to our initial knowledge and are fast becoming dinosaur experts. We looked online at the Manchester Museum dinosaur exhibits and would love to go there as soon as we can. We found out the difference between herbivores, carnivores and omnivores and grouped dinosaurs and other animals by type and by characteristics.

Outside, our sunflower seedlings are doing nicely. The seeds have sprouted and the seedlings are turning into taller plants! They have a stem and leaves, which we noticed grow in pairs. We saw the seed shell fall off the leaves as they grew.

Summer Term 2 Week 3

Although we have seen plenty of rain this week, it hasn’t stopped us from enjoying and learning in Elephant Class! We have been very busy Number Ninjas, Phonics Superstars and Handwriting Heroes! The children have enjoyed pushing themselves to be their very best this week across all our lessons. We have also continued with our transition sessions for Year 1 which are going very well – they are enjoying working in Class 2, taking part in Geography, PE and Art projects and practising for Sports Day in a few weeks.

We cleared the tyres in our outdoor area and planted some nasturtium seeds as we learnt about what plants need to grow, and the life cycle of a flowering plant. The children then planted their own sunflower seeds in clear pots so that they can observe the roots growing. Don’t forget to keep them somewhere warm and keep the soil moist! We are looking forward to seeing our seeds germinate and grow into plants.

Also this week, we are delighted to share the first person in Class 1 to achieve the Handwriting Hero award! Well done, you put so much effort into your handwriting and have listened really well to the feedback to make it even better.

Summer Term 2 Week 2

   

  

Wow, I can hardly believe it’s time to write another class blog – the time seems to be flying by. This week I am so proud of all the Year 1 children who absolutely worked their socks off to complete their Phonics Challenge with flying colours. Well done to you all! All the children in Class 1 are doing so well with their reading. We love reading in Class 1, and when children discover they can read our books for themselves it is such a lovely feeling, for them and for us as teachers who see them making such fantastic progress!

We have been carefully observing our snail, which we named Awesome Snail Harmony Buttercup Spiral.

We also discovered a new friend for the snail – a smaller snail! It had a different pattern on its shell. We will release them back into the wild at the end of this week but we have enjoyed being able to see what the snails get up to. We have learnt lots of facts through our observations and by reading books about snails. We compared them to slugs and other creatures we might find outside.

Some of the children have experimented with creating the best bubble mixture! We used washing up liquid and experimented with the amount and ratio of the liquid to water to create the best bubbles! The children made bubbles with their hands and with a hula hoop which made giant bubbles!

Summer Term 2 Week 1

    

   

We have had a lovely first week back in Class 1! The children have returned to school raring to go, which is a good thing, as we have lots to do! We have been exploring our woodland area which is fantastically blooming with wild flowers and plants. We have discovered treasures including catkins and pinecones which we are using as ingredients in our outdoor kitchen as well as forming part of our artistic creations outside. The children have also been sharing them out equally into halves and quarters depending on how many people need to share. We learned about thirds and fifths too by doing this!

Year 1 had their first transition lessons this week, in Class 2. The children really enjoyed their time in Class 2 and talked about the best bits and anything that was a bit new or different. As the weeks go on, these sessions will really help Year 1 to transition seamlessly into Class 2 in September.

We have compared toys now to toys that were common a long time ago, looking at different materials and types of toy. The children have also been sharing their findings from their holiday research into how their grandparents’ lives were compared to the children’s lives now – we noticed some similarities and differences already which got the children really thinking about the things in our lives we take for granted… we will continue this theme next week. Thank you for your support with this homework.

Summer Term 1 Week 7 

  

This week in Elephant Class we have continued our traditional tales theme. This week we have moved on to writing our new stories. We have created illustrations and written fantastic sentences to tell our stories. Some of us have made them into books! We will share our stories with everyone – we love story times in Class 1, and reading books we have written ourselves is an amazing achievement.

We have had a very wet week too, because it’s hardly stopped raining! We have continued to practise our Maypole dances and are really looking forward to performing them on Friday. We have worked with Year 2 to be able to do this. Everyone has worked really hard to learn the songs and to learn how to sing and skip in time!

In Maths we have been learning about position and direction. We have made and described turns and used mathematical vocabulary to talk about the position of different objects around the classroom and in pictures.

We are really looking forward to the half term break next week – everyone deserves a good rest and some lovely weather (fingers crossed!) and to come back ready and refreshed for the last 7 weeks of this academic year. Year 1 will begin their transition to Class 2 by spending some time every week having lessons in their new classroom, with Miss Hutton and Miss Haigh. How exciting!

Summer Term 1 Week 6

  

  

This week in Class 1 we have continued with our traditional tale theme, rereading our favourite versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. We then contrasted these versions with some twisted tales, starting with the story of “The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig”! We really enjoyed hearing how the pig used power tools and dynamite to destroy the little wolves’ houses. We wrote some questions to ask our special visitor – The Big Bad Pig (aka Miss Hutton) – who turned up at school to answer them. 

We read “The Wolf’s Story” – an alternative twist on LRRH. We had a debate about the different perspectives in the stories and whether hearing The Wolf’s Story had altered our opinions of the Wolf. Some of us definitely believed the Wolf’s version of events, saying LRRH was over-reacting, especially as the Wolf told us he was a vegetarian. Some still did not trust the Wolf and said he was smirking far too much for us to trust him… 

We also read “Jack and the Jelly Bean Stalk”, and “The Ninjabread Man” – can you guess which well-known stories they are based on? 

After all the reading and discussion, we acted out our favourite stories, adding in our own twists and turns. We changed characters, settings and events to create our own versions and even invent our own new stories. So much collaboration and planning went into our work! 

Which traditional tale is your favourite?  

Summer Term 1 Week 5

  

   

 

Our learning this week was centred on the story of The 3 Little Pigs – a favourite in Elephant Class! We read the story and acted it out, taking on different roles to become different characters. We changed our voices depending on which character we became and used props to support our storytelling. We described the characters using new vocabulary and thought about how we read longer words by building up the sounds. We wrote super sentences and then sequenced them to retell the story.  

Some of the children also created their own versions of The Gingerbread Man, changing some of the events in the story, or inventing new characters! This resulted in some funny tales which were shared with the class.  

This led on to some discussion about our favourite stories and the language used in them. We talked about and looked for examples of speech in books and practised using different voices for different characters. We really had to try to think about how to make our characters come to life for people watching or reading our stories – our knowledge of adjectives from last week really helped. 

This week we have also been practising our Maypole dancing, ready for the celebration day at the end of May. All the children worked really hard to learn the songs and dances. Please practise singing at home if you can – “Bobby Shaftoe” and “The Bear Went Over The Mountain” are the songs we will dance to! 

Summer Term 1 Week 4

We have had yet another busy week in Elephant Class! The children have been working hard in all lessons. Year 1 have been getting to grips with adjectives, nouns and suffixes in their writing about the Gingerbread Man. Reception have been thinking of adjectives and using these to write sentences to describe characters. In Maths we have made equal groups by sharing and grouping, linked to our learning about multiplication and division. Reception have explored numbers between 11 – 20 as “10 and some more” and have been building and ordering these numbers using different resources to show their understanding. Of course we have been having extended time outdoors, which this week has seen children develop their collaborative learning and problem-solving skills through den building and using a trolley to push, pull, give each other rides and transport resources! In Science we have observed similarities and differences between wild and garden plants. We then used our careful observation skills to draw and paint some of the plants we discussed, looking at shape and colour in particular as we did so. We also thought about ways we can use kind words by catching each other being good, giving our friends compliments and listening to each other. It made us really happy and proud when people noticed the kind and thoughtful things we do! Despite this week being a four day week, I think we got a lot in! We are so excited for next week, when we will write our own innovative version of the Gingerbread Man story. 

Summer Term 1 Week 3

  

 

 

Over the last couple of weeks we have been very busy in Class 1. Year 1 have been completing assessments in Maths, Reading and Phonics and I am so proud of the way the children have done this. They have taken these assessments in their stride, as the fabulous resilient tough Elephants they are. We have all worked very hard in English lessons to learn the story of The Enormous Turnip, using a Talk for Writing approach. We developed actions to help us retell and recall the story. We acted it out and became the characters before using our story map to write our own versions. There was a huge increase in story language used as the children were so confident in their understanding.  

On St George’s Day we learnt about the story of St George and the dragon – he was very brave! We also learnt about the real St George, the Roman soldier who may not have fought dragons but did protect people from harm. We decided we were a bit like St George when we were brave and stood up for what we think is right. 

We have considered what it means to be a good friend… the children had lots of ideas and we all try to put these into practice every day in Elephant Class. It’s really important to include everyone, be kind, use kind words, listen to each other and share fairly.  

This week we have begun learning another story – The Gingerbread Man. We have tried some hot seating and role play as well as using the small world resources to act out and retell the story. We made our own gingerbread men, weighing and measuring the ingredients and following instructions carefully. Luckily none of our gingerbread men ran away! 

Finally, Year 1 all became official Number Ninjas! The children achieved their very first Number Ninja bronze award for quick recall of number bonds to 5. We all felt very proud of our mathematical skills and knowledge, and are looking forward to our next challenge, achieving our silver awards! 

 

Our Amazing Celebration Assembly Children from Summer Term 1