Hope you all have a lovely half-term

Here's a little snippet of what we've been up to this week.

English
We've been reading poetry with the aim to learn them off by heart and perform them to each other. We used actions to help us remember key parts of the poem. This poem was all about teachers and where they keep their pets.

1. Mrs Cox
2. Mr Spratt
3. Miss Cahoots
4. Mrs Groat
5. Mrs Vickers

Maths
We finished off our topic on data Handling when a mini tornado struck the PE shed. Luckily Year 1 were on the case to see if any of the equipment that had been strewn all over the small playground was missing. We collected all the equipment in, then counted and recorded it using the skills we had learnt last week.

On Wednesday we did surveys of people favourite things, such as colour and animal. Then popped outside to recorded them as block charts, by making them with our bodies.

Then on Friday we made block charts, to represent data that we make every single day at school, our lunch options. We used different manipulatives to represent the data we had created by ordering our lunch.

 "Pizza is almost the most popular on a Friday, but this really shows it."

 "Look Miss Morris, Green is twice as popular than red." 

 "Green is the mostest."

 "We used 14 blocks to make the pizza one."

"Packed lunch is the least frequent."

Certificates

Merit

Emily & Edward(10.02.17)

Neat Presentation

Chloe (10.02.17)

Star Writer

Bella (10.02.17)

We got a reply!!!!

If you haven't seen the last couple of posts, go back and read those first, this is a three parter.

So there we were in the middle of an English lesson, just like it was a normal Thursday morning. When something rather exciting happened.  

Class One had some post!

And it said it was from Nestlé.

 Well here's what we thought of that.

 We received a reply for the letters we sent as a result of the injustice we unearthed. Smartie tubes contain different amounts in each tube. Well this better be good, we demanded answers, or at least for them to balance the scales so we all had the same amount.  

 No Smarties inside... gutted.

And here is what it said:

Letters posted

It would appear I didn't publish this post as soon as I made it... whoops.

As promised we posted our letters this morning.

We folded and stuffed them into the envelopes.

Put our coats on and made our way into the village to post them. 

One last push and it's on its way to Nestle 

The next day one of the children asked "Have we got a reply from Smarties yet?" 
No It's not like an email or a text message. Ah the youth of today, they have no idea. So this has been educational in more ways than one/

Lost Teddy stories and SMARTIES!!!

English
Year 1 have thoroughly enjoyed their English topic about lost teddy stories. We read the story Knuffle Bunny and then adapted it to make our own stories.

The children read their story and a partner filmed it using the ipads. They were focusing on 'reading fluently'. This means they had to speak at a reasonable volume, Keep a good pace to their reading, alter their pitch depending on what they read (eg. sounding excited when exclamation marks were involved.) and pausing for full stops.

Afterwards we watched the videos back as a class and rated the reader out of 4 using the success criteria above. Here is a selection of the videos.

BL - 3
CL - 3½
EJ - 3½
EP - 4
ER - 4
FB - 4
IC - 3½

KH - 3

LD - 3½
MB - 4
MM - 4
OK - 4
PC - 4
SO - 4
TB - 4
WH - 3½
ZA - 3

Maths
We had a very exciting this week which I'm sure you've all heard about at home. "We got to eat SMARTIES!!!" 
It wasn't just a lesson on eating smarties, we were trying to find out do all tubes of Smarties have the same number of Smarties in them? If they do, are there the same amount of each colour? 
To do this we  made predictions, sorted them, counted them, and recorded the data in a tally chart. 

Here are some of our results:

Scarlet M

Molly

Mehde

As you can see we found that no, not all Smarties tubes have the same amount in and the number of each colour widely varied.

Just for those interested, we had the following totals: 33, 32, 32, 31, 30, 30, 30, 27, 26, 23, 21. Which we put into order starting with the biggest. We discarded the results of pairs who hadn't recorded all of the data of their Smarties.

The next day we used this information to make block charts.

Emily

Lucia

Erin

                            

After the results of the test came in the children felt disgruntled. An injustice had happened. Some children got more Smarties than others, which meant other children had less than them - which was way more important. This was not fair. 

We watched a video of how Smarties are made, to see if that would give us some clues to where the difference in numbers had come from, which cleared some things up as to how they're made, but not WHY there is a difference in numbers.

So they asked if we could write a letter to the people who make Smarties, to find out WHY there is a difference in numbers. What kind of teacher would I be if I turned down this writing opportunity? 

The results were great. The class was so engaged. We wanted answers! They had to end their letters with a question for Nestle to answer.

Scarlet O asks - Is there something wrong at the factory?

Donny-Lee asks - Why do they have different amounts?

Zac asks - why aren't they the same?

Oliver asks - Why do others have less?

Toby asks - Why don't tubes have the same amount in them?

Afterwards, we discussed that the number of smarties wasn't the measure for the tubes. In fact the tubes are measured in weight. Therefore some tubes with less smarties in must have some bigger or heavier Smarties in them. Whereas the tubes with more in must have smaller or lighter smarties in them. But it was too late by then, we had eaten them. 

We agreed next time we'll weigh the Smarties to see if they're the same weight. Or maybe move onto another company, skittles? M&Ms? Starburst? Sandridge school quality control. Watch out sweet companies, we're coming for you.

So Smarties... an incredible learning opportunity. I'll let you know if we get a reply from Nestle. Hopefully we will be rewarded for finding such of an inaccuracy of the amount of smarties in each tube. 

Certificates

Merit

Ella & Bella (03.02.17)

Neat Presentation

Lucia (03.02.17)

Star Writer

Isla  (03.02.17)

FROGGY
Author & illustrator Isla

This is Isla and Froggy. Froggie is green and squishy.
One day Isla and Froggie went to the Cafe. They had some cakes and tea.
After Isla went home. Then she realised Froggie had gone!
Isla felt tears prickling in her eyes.
She rushed back to the cafe.
"There you are! said Isla. She felt joyful.




UPDATE: Nestle have replied to my email and we have a freepost address, guess what we're doing Monday morning kids?!