Lucky us!

RG would like to say a big thank you to Miss Griffiths’ auntie who donated us a lovely sofa! It has been a great addition to our reading corner already and the children are loving cosying up to read lots of stories. We have a box of books in here that the children have written themselves so we are hoping this will be a lovely incentive to develop both our reading and writing skills.

Y4 Musical Storytelling

To celebrate National Storytelling Week, Year 4 told the story of Baba Yaga using rhythm and song.

The story was a bit creepy and scary but we really liked it!

Phonics Heroes

In Reception we are loving our phonics lessons! The children are doing great at learning the sounds and beginning to write and read them in simple words. They are excited to start phonics in the morning and are happily doing these activities in their independent time too. Superstars!

1L are in Superhero headquarters...

Year 1's new topic this half term is Superheroes and they have a special challenge...

Today they used their role play skills to show others what powers their superhero would have.
They had lots of fun and then drew and coloured their very own superhero.

Our Super Reading Corner!

Today 1L enjoyed having a lovely reading time in our new, super reading corner.

It was great to watch children get excited and enthusiastic about reading books.

They read brilliant and shared books nicely.

Keep it up 1L and I am really glad you like the new corner :)

A visitor arrives in Year 1. What is his story?...

Today we had a visitor in year 1!!..

What was his name? Fred, Zac, Jack, Tiger?

Where has he been? The forest, an aeroplane, on holiday, looking for the end of the rainbow?

What has happened? He has lost his camera, he has lost is family, he is going on holiday?

These were just a few of the ideas from Year 1, about the bear, using the clues they found and their imagination :) It sounds like he had a great adventure!

They were all so enthusiastic about the bear and what he had been up to, that we just had to write a super story all about him.

Well done Year 1, I cant wait to read all your stories!

RG Farm

We loved our visit from Farmer Ian and his animals last week! The children learnt lots about the animals and how they grow. They listened well to Ian and answered his questions with excitement. This carried on through the week as our learning continued to be inspired. We have made animals on the making table and been writing letters to thank Farmer Ian. what great fun!

Little Scientists in Reception

As part of our Science Week here at Shirley Warren we have become scientists. All week we will be looking at 'Changes'. Our first experiment was to make slime. We followed instructions, looked at the different ingredients and carefully mixed them together. As we were working we described the different ingredients and predicted what will happen next.

We wrote down our predictions and experiences. Some of us were so motivated that made up a magic  potion recipe. We are going to make this tomorrow to see if it works. 

Literacy in RG

Mondays are a good day in Reception where we love to find out our new literacy jobs for the week! Today we have been super tricky word spotters. The computer made the words so tiny so we had to use the magnifying glasses to read what they are! We have also been writing like astronauts as our topic is space. Astronauts often have to do things upside down as there is no gravity in space so we tried to write like that too! This is great for strengthening our shoulder muscles which will help us when we write the correct way round too. What a great start to the week.

RS celebrating World Book Day

Today we have been buzzing of excitement as it is dress up day. We spoke about our favourite stories, story characters and settings. We had lots of opportunities for role play, dancing and making up our own stories.

World Book Day in RG

What a great day we have had today! We have loved dressing up, talking about our favourite stories and listening to new stories. Take a look at our brilliant costumes.

Missing Reindeer

Exciting news were received by Reception children: Santa had lost his reindeer and asked the children to help find them. The adventure began! We researched information about reindeer using child friendly websites, made a carrot trail and a sledge to attract them. We also wrote posters to let the school know about the news and guess what? The reindeer spotted the posters and realised that Santa was missing them. We saved Christmas!

Phonics

Last week in Reception we started learning the letter sounds in phonics. The children have done brilliantly with learning to write the letters and use the sounds in words. On Friday we had 'Phonics Friday' where we taught some of our grown ups the sounds that we learnt this week. Thanks to all who attended it was a great turn out and great to see you all joining in! 

Reception's first week

Well done to all our new little ones for a brilliant first full week in Reception! We have been very busy getting to know our new friends, exploring our new enviornment, playing maths games and playing listening games ready for when we start phonics. We are all very tired now and look forward to a restful weekend ready for lots of new learning next week! 

Year One Traveled Around the UK!

In Year One we have started to learn all about aviation and the countries in the United Kingdom. We decided we wanted to write an exciting adventure story about flying around the UK on an aeroplane. So, we created our own aeroplane in our school hall and flew to the different countries where we learned lots about the characteristics of each country... including special foods! We had so much fun and really enjoyed being passengers on Year One Airways! 

Our Flight around the UK

Year 2 are learning to learn...!

Year 2 have had a pretty fantastic first day back! We had a morning of amazing sports and have just been "learning to learn" by looking at our non-negotiables and practicing using them. These include things like underlining and crossing out using a ruler and a pencil, using a green pen to check other people's work and using cursive handwriting. We checked some of Miss Derby's  writing that she did this morning and we found quite a few mistakes! (Sorry Year 2 - looks like I left my brain at home over the holidays!)

We spotted the things that she needed to change and had a go at copying her writing using our non-negotiables. Here are some photos of us making changes and improving her work.



Speaking of fantastic presentation, we've had a lot of children earning their pen licence in Year 2 recently...

Exciting post from 10 Downing Street!

Year 6 have been learning about illnesses that are caused by sugar such as fizzy drinks, sweets, chocolate etc.

We wrote letters to the Prime Minister to tell him about the sugar tax. We think that the new law about increasing prices of sugary drinks and other products with a high level of sugars will be very helpful.  This is because people would not buy a lot of sugary products, also when the price goes up on sugar things, fruit and veg can be cheaper, so they can eat more healthy things.

Surprisingly, we received a mysterious letter, but when Miss looked at the back, it said "10 Downing Street!"  The whole class (including the teachers) were all very excited.  It was from the Correspondence Officer because the Prime Minister was a bit busy.  It said that the letters were extremely well written and he was going to pass them to HM treasury.

Here is the letter!

By A and R in year 6

The Bigfoot Mountain Debate in Year 6

Today, Year 6 hosted a debate about whether Bigfoot Mountain should be developed for tourism.

Children were put into groups such as environmentalist, skier, developer, farmers, Indians and local people and they had to argue whether they were for or against the proposed development.

Here is the agenda...

The discussion was heated with strong debate, but when it came to vote for "Should Bigfoot Mountain Ski Resort be granted planning permission?" "yes" gained 10 votes but "no" gained 18 votes, so the motion failed.  

However, Mrs Carrington said that the best debaters were really those for the Ski resorts.

How do you think you would vote?

Year 2's pen licences!

Year 2 have been working really hard on their presentation and handwriting, and we are super proud to say that this week we gave out our first ever Year 2 pen licences during our celebration assembly!

From Blog photos

What fantastic handwriting they have! They have all worked really hard to make sure that all of their letters are formed correctly, start and finish in the right place and are all joined up correctly.

If you haven't got your pen licence yet, keep working hard and ask your teacher for your Orange Next Steps in your handwriting! Some of you are trying so hard already and we're very impressed. Keep up the good work.

Phonics Easter Egg Hunt in Year 2

We had a ridiculously fun time in Year 2 having an Easter Egg Hunt in Year 2. Eggs were hidden around the classroom, and we had to find them. Inside each egg was a grapheme that we had to recognise and write words with those graphemes. As an extension activity, we then hd to use these words in a sentence using some of the skills that we have learnt in Year 2. Some sentences included exclamation sentences, the -er and -est sentences, adverbs and similes.