Sense poetry
We've been thinking about what makes Autumn, Autumn. This is what we came up with.
To help us get a better sense of Autumn we went for a sense walk, talking about what we could hear "swishing leaves", "birds tweeting". What we could see "Leaves floating to the ground", squirrels running with beech nuts". What we could smell "fresh air". Then to get a better feel for what we could feel, we gather handfuls of leaves.... and threw them in the air!!!
Then came the leaf fight.
As a result of the leaf fight, many conversations about events that happen over the Autumn period; Halloween, Harvest, Diwali, Bonfire Night and the changing colour of leaves.
We have produced some beautiful pieces of writing. Here are a few examples.
This is the whole display, that everyone has had a part of. The addition of Diva lamps, finishes off the display as it links in with our Autumnal theme.
We've been reading Farmer duck this week.
As part of this, we've been learning about some rather grown up vocabulary in SPAG (Spelling Punctuation and Grammar) lessons. Such as Noun = a thing, Plural = more than one thing, Verb = an action. These will be reinforced next year, but it's good to start thinking about it now. We will be continuing to work on Farmer Duck next week.
Geography & DT
We have had so much fun planning and building our houses. I bet you can't wait to have them back. That will be happening next week! There have been some great opportunities for working collaboratively, sharing, communicating effectively to get the job done. Something I was very pleased with seeing was children asking their peers to hold a part of their model while they taped it together then returning the favour later on.
Before the models could be put in pride of place on top of the Year 5/6 lockers, the children had to do a presentation about their model. They informed us what type of house they had built (semi-detached, flat, cottage, even a canal boat and a caravan), what materials they needed and a little preview of the steps taken to build their home.
Thank you for all of your contributions and bringing enough to share your junk with other children in the class. Without your recyclables we would have had very lack lustre houses.
Maths
These are Cuisinaire rods (Mrs Morris-Bowman's favourite word of the week because it's fun to say). We had an exploration lesson where we worked out how they work.
Each rod is worth a different amount, based on its length. For example the light blue rod is twice as long as the smallest rod brown, therefore it's value is 2. There is a yellow rod that is the same length as 2 blues and 1 brown, so it must total 5.
Still not sure? Have a play on this to explore it further, and it is a part of the maths homework this week.
We were then able transfer the cuisinare rods into part whole models.
This would be the pink is worth 2 brown. 2 = 1+1
Yellow is worth 2 pink and 1 brown. 5 = 2 + 2 + 1
We are getting sooooooooooo good at representing numbers in different ways, then explaining what we can see. Have a read of those comments, they have been edited at all. Their vocabulary and ability to justify and explain their thinking in maths is AWESOME!
This on the display explains different ways to make 8.
Today We started talking about addition.
"A 5 and a 5 makes ten".
"8 and 6 altogether is 14"
"10 more than 10 is 20"
We made 13 by adding 7 and 6 - Deni & Olivia C
Ava's is 3 and Isobel's is 8. They counted them and found out it totalled 11.
Our's makes 18 - Joel
Two 4s make 8 - Michael
We have 20 altogether - Jemima and Indiah.
We made 9+6=15 - Olivia H
Me and Katie make 15 - Marius
Computing/Music
As part of our computing unit this term, we have to show our understanding that technology can be used to record sounds. So we made some sounds, recorded them. Now it's your job to guess what they are. So click on a link and close your eyes. If you need a further clue you can have a look at the picture.
This week we had a go at creating some art work on the computer, so to get us used to the tools of paint, we did some colouring in, making sure to experiment with different colours this week. Next time it will be different brushes. Here is what we made:
Magical Mindful Beans
It sounds silly, but this is one of my favourite activities to do in the classroom with a bit of spare time on our hands, or as an activity to bring us back down from the yellow zone.
Each child is given a handful of a mixture of pulses, they sort them into groups, then can make a picture of what they like using the beans as different colours to their pallet. It takes a lot of concentration to distinguish between the different types of beans, listening to the sound they make as you scrape them across the table, feeling the different textures - some are smooth, some have ridges on them.
Mrs Hunt walked through the room yesterday as we did our 2nd mindful beans session and I could tell by the look on her face she was wanting to get a piece of the action 😉
Zones of Regulation
Here is our Zones of Regulation display, they are all the children's ideas for bringing ourselves back to the green zone so we are ready for learning. They selected the emojis to represent the different emotions they could feel in each zone. They are well aware that there are no naughty zones, it is acceptable to feel like you're in any zone, everyone has been in the red zone, but we all have different triggers.
Alex had a go at the cuisenaire game and has produced loads of ways to make amounts.
What a super duper job!
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