Thursday and Friday Week 5

Drawing:  Growing Artists 

This unit focuses on teaching children the use of shapes, shading, and texture in art to enhance their drawing skills. It emphasises developing a sense of light and dark, using frottage for texture, and experimenting with different tools to create expressive and abstract art.

In Science we have been learning about Light.

This week we investigated the question: Can we see without light? and we used reflection to see pictures on our friends backs. 

This term we are reading poems from I am the seed that grew the tree.  We have enjoyed listening to the poem The Garden Year and reading it together. We have checked that we understand the meaning of the words, identified rhyming words and begun to think about how we can perform it to the class in pairs.

Mathematics Week 1

This week we revised grouping and sharing for division and dividing a 2-digit number by 1-digit number where there is no remainder.  We then moved onto dividing 2 digit numbers by a 1 digit number with remainders.

Mathematics Week 3 and Week 4

Length and Perimeter

This unit focuses on measurement in millimetres (mm), centimetres (cm) and metres (m). Children will learn how these units of measurement relate to one another and convert between single and mixed units. They will apply their knowledge of number to compare, order, add and subtract measurements of length and calculate the perimeter of 2D shapes.

Mathematics Week 5 and Week 6

Fractions

In this unit, children will understand the concept of a unit fraction and a non-unit fraction and understand what the numerator and denominator represent. Children will compare and order simple unit fractions and also non-unit fractions where the denominators are equal. In addition to this, children will learn to recognise and show, using diagrams, equivalent fractions with small denominators. They will explore a fraction wall and use it to find equivalent fractions. Children will order fractions on a number line and compare two fractions using bar models and the comparison signs or =. They will learn to add and subtract two or more fractions with the same denominator, answering questions in more than one way and comparing the efficiency of each method.

English Week 1 

We revisited the main events of the BFG and then used these as inspiration to write our own stories.  

Monday 6th - Thursday 9th January

We wrote the beginning of our stories.  

Freddie was wide awake even though, he had tried for hours to get to sleep.  Suddenly he felt a cold feeling over his body.  Shadows of ghosts danced on the wall.

By Freddie

After tossing and turning for hours, Ayla was still wide awake.  Suddenly she felt a strange feeling in her tummy.  She saw shadows dancing on the walls and she heard a noise coming from the kitchen that sounded like ghosts crying.

By Ayla

Jelani was wide awake even though his eyes were heavy he could not go to sleep.  Suddenly he felt a cold eerie presence, his heart raced.

By Jelani

English

We created posters to persuade people to recycle.

Week 2 we spent time discussing Zones of Regulation. 

Zones of Love

We have been thinking about zones of regulation and love for our church service assembly.  
We looked at a painting called Four Hearts by Jim DIne. 

This artwork made us think about how we can show love when we are feeling different emotions. 
We created our own hearts to show different emotions and thought about how we can show love for each of them. 

What are the zones of regulation?

Zones of Regulation is an approach used to support the development of self-regulation in children. All the different ways children feel and the states of alertness they experience are categorised into four coloured zones. Children who are well regulated are able to be in the appropriate zone at the appropriate time.

How do the Zones of Regulation help children?

• It provides a vocabulary to talk about emotions
• It helps children recognise their own emotions
• It helps children to detect the emotions of others
• It helps them recognise what might trigger certain emotions
• It helps them see how others may interpret their behaviour
• Gives them tools for problem solving

A person who can self – regulate is able to:

• Remain calm in a stressful situation
• Cheer themselves up after a disappointment
• Know when they are experiencing an emotional overload and adjust.

Important things to remember:

• There is no ‘bad’ zone.
• Everyone experiences all of the zones at different times and different circumstances.
• We can’t change the way children feel but we can help them manage their feelings/states and behaviours and validate their feelings, ‘I can see you are angry and I understand, but it is not okay to …’
• You can be in more than one zone at a time
• If a child is confident using words to describe their emotions, they might not always need to relate this to a zone.  However, making links to the zones will help them choose the right strategy to manage their feelings.
• If a child is in the red zone, you must limit the verbal – this is not a teachable moment!  Instead, discuss the use of tools when the child is calm and well regulated and plan for if/when it happens again.

Sensory breaks

Some sensory strategies include:

• Squeezing playdough or scrunching up paper into a ball
• Use of a fidget toy
• Blowing bubbles
• Listening to calming music
• Using of a trampoline
• Rolling on an exercise ball
• Drawing
• Reading
• Counting
• Deep breathing