Class 1: Aren't our children wonderful!

Sharing Assembly
Hands up Mums and Dads, who got a bit teary today? Weren't they fantastic! I'm so pleased they were able to show much they have learnt and grown as individuals and as a team.

A demonstration of adding and subtracting on a number line.

Our portrayal of The three Billy Goats Gruff. As all great traditional tales start, ours started with a
"Capital O, Once upon a time."

"There's three things you need to know about Trolls:
1. We're really really really really mean.
2. We're always hungry.
3. Our favourite thing to eat is Billy Goats Gruff!"

"Spinach?! Not today thank you." Plop, back under the bridge he went.

"Don't eat me I taste like gherkins."

"GHERKINS?! Yuck! No thank you, on you go." Plop, back under the bridge he went.

Cue the slow motion. *Chariots of fire playing in the background*

And the Troll was never to be seen again *WHOOOSH*

They were so happy that had a little party.

Some talented authors.

A talented reader. Reading Spots

Super sounds everyone

I wanted to say a big thank you those of you who were able to make it, you were rewarded with a brilliant show (best turn out of parents this year). Our children have really raised the bar for what a sharing assembly is, especially for such a young year group.

Thank you for practicing lines at home, you can really tell they'd worked on them. My mum always made me shout them to her from the top of the stairs, whilst she cupped her ear and strained her eyes then still said it wasn't loud enough.

Thank you for all of your support throughout the year and the kind words after the assembly. I'm glad we were able to put on a show for you.

I think know who will be having some leading roles in next years Christmas performance.

Anti-Bullying
We started off the week with and anti-bullying workshop.

We watched a puppet show about a little cat who didn't always think about the words she used before

saying them to her friends. Words such as "stupid" and "smelly" were greeted by gasps from the children. "You can't call people that" noted Kye.

Some of the children were invited to come up and offer ideas of how to be a good friend.
They then turned these ideas into rules they can use in real life. Rules such as
First tell the person that you don't like it. - Please don't call me smelly, I don't like it.

If that doesn't work then walk away from them, tell them I'm going to play with someone else.

And if that doesn't work, then remember there are a lot of adults in school and adults that we know who we can talk to, to get help.

Then they got a High five for being a super friend.

The little cat used these rules to make up with the dog and the duck and they had a hug.

Then the head teacher came along to recap the rules they had come up with.

Can you remember what this actions were for?

The children made freeze frames, acting out scenarios that happen in the playground and could be fixed by being a good friend.

"We're being good friends and helping up someone who has fallen over."

"We're good friends because we take it in turns and make sure we share toys."

"We make sure no one is left out of our games."

"We're good friends making up and hugging after a fall out."

Science
So I'm hoping everyone went home buzzing about snails today, as well as the brilliant performance.
Some of the girls found snails today in the playground. We took them inside and found them somewhere safe to live for a while.

Millie tells me that she found the snails somewhere muddy.

Kaysie said that she found her snail in a grassy flower pot.

We talked about things we knew about snails already.

We came up with some things we didn't know about snails and wanted to find out.

To begin with Nathan read us some of a book about snails, which told us the answer to this one.

Then we watch a video and found out that snails shells are like a house, and we thought we would be pretty slow movers if we had to carry our house around on our backs all the time.

We used a primary source of Mrs Ivory, an African snail owner, to answer the next one. She informed us they put the food in their mouth and it turns to mush.

Millie helped us with this one. She remembered she'd heard the word mud in Nathan's book. So we reread the page to find out that snails like it damp. A bold word?! Whatever could this mean?
"Well Miss Morris, it means that you can find out what it means at the back of the book." Says Safiyah.
"The glossary" confirms Lucia.
Thank you very much Year 1, I'm glad the drilling of where is the contents page? what is the glossary for? How do you use an index? during guided reading sessions has paid off.

We found out that damp means a little bit wet. So we discussed how they don't like it to be a swimming pool, but a desert dry won't work for them either, they're a bit of a goldilocks and like it juuuuust right at damp.

Well.... this was probably the most exciting fact that we found out. Snail slime is called mucus. It's very similar to snot, I learnt something new too. But the mucus has multiple uses.

However, our research didn't bare fruit for these questions. They were left unanswerable. Maybe this is one for you to work out at home.

Say hello to our little friends. The newest members of our class.

Now the science bit.

We started to write investigation questions about the dietary needs of snails.

Ranging from:

Do snails eat ham?

Do snails eat grass?

To:

Would snails prefer macaroni and cheese or blueberries?

Would snails prefer mint leaves or flies?

To finally:
Are snails carnivores? Are snails vegetarians/herbivores?

Then this is my shopping list for Thursday.

And a time lapse just for fun.

We will be continuing our investigation of snails on Thursday. So if you find any snails in your garden, we will be happy to have them. Stop them from eating your flowers, or your dog. We don't know yet what they eat. We'll let you know when we find out ;)

Maths
We've begun looking into dividing, by sharing equally into groups of...

The children did some great talking, they're getting so much better at reasoning and explaining their thinking to justify the maths they are doing.