Holly Class w/b 30th January 2023

We have had a lovely week in Holly Class and been very busy, as usual! This week we have taken Pog the penguin on the Holly class plane to India. It really is a fabulous around the world adventure we are taking part in. We have been thinking about what we might need to pack to visit these different countries and what would go in our suitcase would be different for hot and cold places. In their Geography lessons, Year 1 have been learning about the equator, where this goes on a map and how this influences the hot and cold parts of the world. 

In our literacy lessons this week, the children have started to learn about writing instructions. After becoming penguin experts over the last couple of weeks, all of the children had a go at coming up with some instructions for how to look after a penguin, like Pog. The Year 1 children have then looked in more detail at an instruction text and learnt about the important features such as a title, ordering instructions correctly and using imperative or bossy verbs to tell the reader exactly what they must do. 

In phonics lessons, the Reception children have been learning some new phonemes; x, y and z, as well as tricky words 'me' and 'be'. They have particularly enjoyed playing a tricky word bingo game this week that helps with speedy reading! The Year 1 children have been working on the 'c' phoneme this week and learning some spelling rules about when to use the different graphemes. It has really stretched our brains learning when and where to use c, k, ck and ch graphemes when spelling. 

On Tuesday the children did some brilliant listening as part of our music lesson. They listened carefully to different parts of Carnival of the Animals and had to try and work out which animal the music was being. They listened first and shared their ideas, then tried moving to the music to see what sort of animal it could be (as you will see from some of the photos), and then finally drew pictures of the animals each piece of music represented. I was so impressed with the imaginative and carefully thought through ideas. 

We had a lovely forest school session on Wednesday up at the meadow. First the children continued some of their science learning thinking about animal habitats and then we had a special hot chocolate and biscuit treat together enjoying the lovely view of Ashton. Cheers! 

The children have done some fabulous maths this week. The year 1 children have worked hard on their number bonds and have been learning how to systematically work out number bonds to 20 from their number bonds to 10. The Reception children have been learning about the concept of 'equal' and exploring using numbers to 10. This all finished with an exciting number day on Friday. The children all looked fabulous in their costumes and we enjoyed all sorts of number themed games and a numicon number hunt throughout the day. I hope you enjoy our photos of this!