This week at school it has been STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) week, the theme for the week was fairgrounds. In Oak Class we have been designing vehicles to get the animals to the fairground for the exotic petting zoo and making enclosures for the animals once they are there. We have used many different materials throughout the week including Mobilo, Lego, Duplo, pegs and lollipop sticks.

The week came to an end with biodiversity day. We did a summer bug hunt, we found lots of different bugs compared to the other bugs hunt we have done on previous biodiversity days. The tree we focused on this time was the Sycamore tree, we identified the tree within the school grounds, we investigated seed dispersal and made Sycamore leaves out of clay. We ended our day with a leaf hunt around the school grounds, we identified the different trees and made art out of the leaves we found on the floor.

Maths

In maths this week we have moved onto learning about odd and even numbers. We received a letter from the Numberblocks asking for our help to figure out the secret codes, the only information we knew is that the code is made of odd numbers under 10. We combined all our learning about doubling and sharing to help our investigation into odd and even numbers. We learnt that when odd numbers are shared equally between two groups there is always one left over, whereas, when an even number is shared equally between two groups there is not one left over.

Phonics 

In phonics, both groups have been reviewing the sounds and tricky words that they have already learnt. We have been writing words and phrases with the sounds in and doing different phonics activities to help with our retrieval.

The new lunch rotation, for which team will be at the front of the line for next week:

Monday – Yellow

Tuesday – Blue

Wednesday – Green

Thursday – Red

Friday – Yellow

 

Oak Class have had a busy week, continuing their learning about animals.

We visited Tilgate Nature Centre on Monday and saw animals that normally live in different parts of the world. Some of these animals included macaws and tapirs from America, meerkats and tortoises in Africa, snakes and lemurs in Madagascar, reindeer and owls in Europe and wallabies and cuckuburras in Austrlasia. We then finished our visit by seeing some domestic animals such as donkeys, goats and guinea pigs.

For the remainder of the week, we flew to the Artic and learnt about the different animals that we might find living there, including polar bears, artic foxes and walruses. We also learnt that there are no penguins living in the Artic. We explored ice and made up stories using the small world animals that we might find in the Artic.

Maths

We have been continuing to develop our understanding of sharing which will help us in Year 1 with our division and times tables. We moved on from sharing between 2 groups to sharing into 3, 4 and 5 groups. We were challenged by counting croc to share out the treasure equally after he tried to steal it all!

Phonics

Mrs Ford’s group have been learning the digraph ‘ow’ and have been practising reading and writing ‘ow’ words in sentences. They have also been practising their tricky words and learnt ‘like’.

Mrs Fogden and Miss Lenharth’s group  have learnt the sound ‘z’ and have continued to practise reading and writing three letter words using all of the single sounds we have learnt so far. They have also practised the tricky words taught so far, as well as learning ‘we’.

Next week we are taking part in a whole school STEM weeks where we use our science, technology, engineering and maths skills to build various things based around a theme of carnivals. We look forward to a busy and fun week!

Have a wonderful weekend 😀