Ash Class Blog

In Ash Class, we have been consolidating our learning about plants. We applied everything we learnt to describe a tree of our choice and revisited our knowledge of evergreen and deciduous trees. We enjoyed getting outside to explore our learning and ask quality questions about our science topic.

Creativity is our main focus in Ash class. We have been very lucky and we now have a Kappla set. The children have been very creative and have independently made some incredible models. Some children chose to make a forest and a cabin based on our story ‘Pumpkin Soup’, it looked great!

The children worked very hard this week on their new ‘Play Projects’ to earn ‘Commando Coins’ to enter a secret mission. Some children build a house and the children made cement to make the house very strong. Others made hopscotches linking to games children played in the past. We have loved to watch the children let their creativity lead their choosing time.

After all of our hard word, the children were able to complete their secret Commando Joes mission. The children had to transport water form one bucket to another to help put out the fire of London. They did a great job and we learnt the value of being patient and calm in hard situations.

In Ash class we have been getting active! The children really enjoyed their taster sessions of the new after school clubs coming up. They especially loved dance and fencing. They learnt new vocabulary and different ways of moving.

We made use of the lovely sunshine in our outside area today and revised our knowledge of colour mixing to decorate our fence. The children loved making it their own.

We also had a game of volley ball where we made a make-shift net for the children to hit the ball over. They showed some great skills by the end of the game.

To further our learning about the weather, Ash Class have been conducting experiments. This week the children made their own rain gauges to measure the amount of precipitation over the weekend. We then considered our results and looked at whether our predictions were correct or not.

In our DT topic, we will be making London Taxis. In order for these to be effective, we have been learning about wheels, axles and chassis. The children created their own moving model to fully understand what a vehicle needs to be able to move.

Finally, in PSHE we are discussing how to keep ourselves healthy. The children grouped items into safe and unsafe and we discussed how our adults at home and in school might keep us safe against these items, like put them of a high shelf.

Ash class have had a great start to this half term. We had a very fun week back and enjoyed celebrating World Book Day. We started by taking part in an online reading event with Julia Donaldson with Birch class. We learnt how to draw key illustrations from some of their book and Julia Donaldson read one of her stories. We then went to the library with Acorn class. We were able to choose our very own library book to enjoy at school.

We have been transforming our outside area into a garden. We have been filling pots with compost, planting seeds and looking after them. The children have been very responsible and always remember to water their plants. We can’t wait to watch them grow!

To further our learning about London, the children have been giving each other directions around maps. They used their directional language to direct each other to London Landmarks.

In Ash Class, we have developed our learning of measure to comparing heights. He used our problem solving and debating skills to order ourselves from shortest to tallest. The children were very good at working as a team and all got involved to help. Now, when we line up, we can order ourselves by height.

Last week, we learnt about the Great Fire of London. We learnt our facts then made a scene of the fire, including houses, the River Thames and boats for the people to escape. The children then went on to write about the Monument that remembers the Great Fire of London, linking to our topic ‘Bright Lights, Big City’.

After the preparation with our practice run about Meerkats, the children wrote fact files about the Kalahari Desert, linking to our text ‘Meerkat Mail’. The children blew the adults way with their independence and flair for writing about this topic. Well done everybody!

In Ash class, we have been writing our information texts about Meerkats. The children put a great amount of effort into their writing and information collecting. The added illustrations to show their readers what they look like and where they live. We even snuck in an exclamation mark or two!

We also told the story of Little Red Riding Hood for Story Telling Week. We performed to Chestnut and Oak class and we loved seeing what the other classes came up with!

In Ash Class, we had Police Officer Chloe come in and talk to the children about what the Police do and how they keep us safe. We were very lucky and got to try on Police uniform and ask lots of questions.

In English, we have been learning about Meerkats and the Kalahari Desert in preparation to write a fact file. The children have enjoyed collecting facts and have been amazing at designing what they would include in their fact file.

In our Reading Explorer sessions, we have been reading ‘The Elves and The Shoemaker’. The children have loved retelling this story to each other with the use of puppets and sitting in Miss Green’s story telling chair to read independently. The children are showing a real pleasure for reading and loving exploring stories more in depth.

To start our week in Ash class, we discovered that our alien friend Beegu had been found by her parents thanks to our posters that we made to help people find her. Our character descriptions must have been really effective!

We have been doing Gymnastics in PE this term and have been learning how to safely jump off a raised platform. The children have been showing some amazing skills and have moved on to adding their own type of jump, like a star jump or a pencil jump.

In our Reading Explorer sessions, we have been reading the story Little Red Riding Hood. The children have been using this as a stimulus in the provision. Some children wanted to make a poison for the naughty wolf in the story, they mixed up lots of ingredients to make the perfect trick.

We have had such a fun first week back in Ash Class and we have been very busy!

We have started our new English topic based around the book ‘Beegu’. We discovered that an alien spaceship had crashed into our classroom and we explored and drew what we thought an alien might look like, using our adjectives to explain its features.

In Geography, we have started our new topic ‘Bright Lights, Big City’. We experienced what a day in London might be like. We climbed Big Ben, we walked across Tower Bridge, we practiced our posture at Buckingham Palace and crossed the River Thames. We are looking forwards to exploring our topic further.

In Ash Class, we have been loving the snow! We have build snow men and enjoyed finding all fresh bits of snow to leave our footprint.

We have also been doing some investigating. We are learning about senses and how they help us. The children investigated how loosing their sight would impact them and conducted experiments, testing if they could identify certain categories like weight, height and colour of objects using their other senses.

We have also loved performing our Nativity to families. Thank you everyone who joined us!

In Ash class, we have been writing instructions based on the book ‘How to Catch Santa’. The children came up with some incredible ideas and we decided that these couldn’t go to waste. The children set up traps in our classroom to try and catch Santa who was coming because the adults wrote him a letter inviting him to our classroom over the weekend.

The children set up nets, glue trays and cupcakes and milk as bait.

The security cameras we set up caught Santa trying to sneak into our classroom and footprints and dismantled traps left showed us that he got caught up in our traps. We might not have got him this time, but there is always Christmas Eve!

Ash class had a very exciting week! We dressed up in our spots and raised money for children in need. It was great seeing how creative everyone was with their spotty outfits.

We also went to the ‘Really Wild Reading Festival’ to listen to Tracey Corderoy tell us about her book ‘Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam’. The children engaged in drawing a character from the book and finished off with a board game.

We also have been building dens! The children worked together to create a frame and chose the best material to make it waterproof, something that was on the success criteria that we discussed. We even invited Mr Hales to come and test our dens, we are glad he didn’t get stuck inside!

In Ash Class, we have been preparing to build our play den in our outside area, so we have been building prototypes to test how we might build it and how we will make it strong and stable. The children have come up with their favourite design and we look forwards to building it!

We have also been undertaking roles of patients, doctors and nurses in our new role play area. The children have been linking their play with their science learning where we are learning about the human body.

The children continue to excel with their rainbow challenges. We have been so pleased to see the children take joy in their writing. For example, a challenge was to fill in a sheet titled ‘All About Me’, linking to the autobiographies we are writing in English. The children went into detail and chose to write instead of draw examples on many occasions. We love to see the writing in year 1 flourishing.

The construction skills of Ash Class grow every day. The children created a play area for an animal outside and thought about a bed, a feeding area and a play area to keep it entertained.

Well done for another amazing week Ash Class!

In Ash class, we have been enjoying our new topics for this half term. We are learning about the human body and have been labelling outlines of our own bodies. The children really enjoyed this experience!

We have also started our unit on movement in PE. The children came up with movement motifs based on the words ‘creep’ and ‘step’ and performed movement pieces in groups linked to a story we made up.

We also loved engaging in the construction workshop last week. The children brought some of the skills they learnt back into the classroom and applied these to the equipment we have. The did amazing building!

In Ash Class, we have been working towards being superstar writers. The children have been planning a story based on “Where the Wild Things Are”. This week, we wrote our stories up in neat in our new writing books. The children have persevered and produced some amazing pieces of work that they should be very proud of.
The children have extended their challenges throughout the day to create their own which has promoted self-belief. They challenged themselves to create one large marble run with the resources outside and worked as a team to reach their goals.

This week in Ash class, we have been celebrating the life of the Queen. We discussed what made the Queen’s life and reign so significant and the children gave some great idea, such as “she has been Queen longer than other kings and queens” and “she was a young queen”. Together, we created a piece of art to remember the queen, making red, white and blue rosettes to decorate her picture.

To enhance what we are learning, this week we introduced ‘Rainbow Challenges’ in our class. The children completed activities throughout the week and when one is attempted, they can colour in part of their rainbow with the colour of the activity that they have completed. The children have adapted very well to this new concept and have been attempting challenges to the best of their ability, showing enjoyment in all. For example, the children created a scene from our class book “Where The Wild Things Are” and used their knowledge of materials from our Science and D&T lessons to match materials with descriptive language e.g. hard, smooth, waterproof.

This half term, we are continuing with our Balanceability scheme. We have been practicing our bike riding skills and remembering to use our brakes and practice spatial awareness to avoid any pile ups! The children are incredible bike riders and have been thinking about how they can go faster now they have their necessary skills.

What a great first week we have had in Ash class!

This week we have been getting to know our new environment in our classroom and outdoor area. We have been completing activities such as organising animals into their farmyard areas, building walls and bridges in our construction area and being shopkeepers and customers in our toyshop.

In our learning, we started our D&T topic “Shade and Shelter”. We discussed what these words meant and went on a hunt around our school to see how many different types of shelters we could find. The children were amazing hunters and were able to find lots of different types of shelters. We are all looking forwards to be able to build shelters of our own! Also, in Art, we learnt what primary and secondary colours are. We practiced mixed our primary colours to see what we would create. The children were excellent at their mixing and produced some amazing pieces of art.