Commotion in the Ocean

This week we have continued our topic of ‘oh I do like to be beside the seaside’. We have been focusing on the story- ‘commotion in the ocean’. This story has helped us to learn lots of seaside vocabulary, particularly the names of many sea creatures that live in the ocean. We have had lots of fun learning about the characters of the story and used our cutting and joining skills to create a ‘commotion in the ocean’ character headband. We have also cut out pictures of characters from the story and used lots of imagination to create our own beach scene. We have thought carefully about the things we need to take to the seaside and had lots of fun creating our own holiday suitcase. We then explored the dressing up box and decided which clothes would be most suitable to wear to the seaside.

The most exciting part about our topic this week was our school trip to the beach. We enjoyed walking down to the beach together; learning about road safety as we checked carefully for the green man before crossing the roads. When we arrived at the beach it was really exciting to have a picnic and drink our home-made lemonade. The weather was a little drizzly but we didn’t let that stop us as we instantly started exploring the beach, finding lots of shells, rocks and tiny pieces of different coloured glass. After exploring and braving a little paddle in the sea we explored the park and had a great time pretending to climb a ship’s rigging when trying to climb to the very top of the rope pyramid. It was very tricky! Finally, just before we left the sun decided to shine for us and we had so much fun in the sea, trying to jump the high waves. We all ended up very wet and tired but had such a lovely time together on our first pre-school trip.

In maths this week we have had lots of fun exploring the water trays; learning about capacity. We filled lots of different containers and talked about which one held the most water. We then had fun completing an experiment to find out whether the jug or bottle would hold the most water. We all made a prediction and then tested it out with the jugs and bottles. We were all surprised when the jug held the most water. Marcel and Jordi enjoyed the extra challenge of recording their results by colouring in and circling the amount of jugs needed to fill different numbers of bottles. We then learnt the vocabulary of ‘empty’ and ‘full’ and had to use the water to make these different capacities. We then thought about the concept of the cup being ‘half full’ but this was a bit tricky! Marcel and Jordi enjoyed the challenge of cutting out and ordering the different quantities of water shown in the cups. Jordi was particularly confident to explain how much water was in the cups, using the new capacity vocabulary he had learnt.

In phonics this week we have been learning about the letter ‘n’. We have had lots of practise forming the letter, using felt tips, air writing and creating the letter with sticks. We have learnt lots of words which start with the letter n. When learning the word nose we also learnt the song ‘Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose’. During the week the children became very confident to show the actions to the song. We also learnt the word ‘nest’. The children were very motivated to collect lots sticks from the farm. We then worked as a team to make a nest, using the sticks. The children work hard to use wool, pipe cleaners and sellotape to join the sticks and they created a fantastic nest!

This week in science the girls have been learning about animals in the environment. They have read information and completed little experiments when learning about the concepts of evolution, food chains and the effect that climate change has on animals. Both girls created a fantastic food chain to display on the wall and they are both now confident to explain the effect that the arrows have within a food chain and can clearly explain what would happen if one part of the food chain was removed.

In reading comprehension this week Sara has been focusing on non-fiction information texts. She is now very good at distinguishing between facts and opinions within a text and understands how the opinions written in a text can affect the purpose of what is written. Sara has also been learning how to retrieve information from the text by directly quoting part of what is written to help her answer the comprehension questions. Sara is beginning to understand the purpose of quotations but needs a little more practise when selecting the correct parts of the text to help her clarify her own opinion. Within punctuation and grammar Sara has been working on the concept of full stops and exclamation marks. She found it very difficult to place the punctuation in the correct place in the text but is beginning to understand the effect that a full stop has on the text when reading.  We have been practising pausing and taking a breath when reaching a full stop within her texts.

In reading comprehension Judit has been focusing on biographies. She now understands the difference between a biography and an autobiography and she has been very motivated to read the moving texts written by and about heroic people. Judit has been extremely confident when answering the comprehension questions and she is now reading the questions much more carefully and is able to provide much more accurate answers. Judit has become much more confident this week when using the dictionary and she has been really kind to understand the meanings of the difficult vocabulary written within her texts. She is creating quite an extensive dictionary of her own! In punctuation and grammar Judit has been learning the differences between  a simple, compound and complex sentence and she is now confident to identify examples of each of these sentence types,  using the subordinate clauses to help her. Judit has also been learning about contractions and how these are used to join two words together. She understands the concept of this but needs more opportunities to put this into practise.

In maths this week, Sara has been learning about decimals. She is now extremely confident to order decimals from smallest to largest and now understands how to add two decimals together, with the help of a number line. She has also worked really hard to understand how to multiply and divide a decimal by 10 and is now becoming much more confident to do this. Sara is beginning to understand how to round a decimal number up or down to the nearest whole number but she is still finding this a bit tricky. We will keep practising this skill next week.

In maths, Judit has been learning about factors of numbers. She is extremely confident to find the factors of numbers, using her timetables to help. However, this is now becoming more of an automatic process for Judit. She has also learnt that prime numbers can only be multiplied by one and themselves and she is very confident to identify whether or not a is prime and she has developed a great method, which allows her to work out the next prime number after any given number. Judit has begun to learn about square numbers but she needs to continue practising this skill next week.