Summer Term
Information for parents and families
Knowledge Organisers
Week ending 12th July
It’s been a very busy week with our trip to Audley End miniature railway and sports day.
We have also managed to squeeze in some instruction writing about how to be a good pirate as well as learn about money in maths. The children have been focusing on coins and their values. They’ve also been practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.
The children have also been bug hunting, gardening and observational painting outside and have learnt about a Hindu mandir and the art you may find inside.
Week ending 5th July
Sunstone have had another fabulous week. Our book in English has been ‘Oi! Get off our Train’ and the children have been really interested in the theme of endangered animals that is covers. They have understood what it means and why, discussing how humans have had an impact in so many animals lives. They have written sentences using the conjunction because with incredible skill to explain what they have found out.
In maths, we have been learning to tell the time to the hour, yet again they all impressed me and used our clocks brilliantly to make my demanded time.
On Thursday, the children made their own stomp rockets inspired by their visit from Rexroth last week. They worked surprisingly well and we had lots of fun testing them out.
The children also voted very responsibly and respectfully for their new class names, the winners were announced in assembly.
We finished the week with our walk around the local area to identify human features. As always, they were brilliantly behaved and were excellent at spotting so many features around our school.
Week ending 28th June
This week our focus story was ‘The Bad-Tempered Ladybird’ by Eric Carle. The children were brilliant at following the pattern of the story and recalling what happened. They designed their own creature that the ladybird might want to fight and used the conjunction ‘and’ to join and improve the details of their descriptions.
In Maths, the children have been continuing with their place value of numbers up to 100. They have recognised and compared numbers using the ten and ones.
They have also evaluated their moving story books with a critical eye in DT, begun to learn about places of worship and built waterproof houses for animals outside.
We were also really lucky to have some visitors from Bosch Rexroth this week for a STEM themed morning. They showed us stomp rockets and we learnt about how the force of the compressed air makes the rocket fly. The children had a fantastic time having a go with them and aiming them at different targets in the hall.
Week ending 21st June
Unbelievably we have come to the end of another busy week. As always the children have been amazing.
This week was assessment week. The Year 1’s have completed their special booklets to show how much they know. They have blown me away with their incredible work and I am so impressed with how much they have remembered and their fabulous progress, especially in reading, writing and maths.
The reception children have been practising writing with more independence this week and have produced some brilliant work.
We have had snails in the classroom this week (don’t worry they haven’t escaped!) and the children have made careful and detailed observations of them.
We have also finished our moving storybook in DT, used computers to research and present data in a bar chart, investigated footprints like scientists, explored pointillism with painting and creating beautiful natural art pictures.
We finished the week with the treat of a special visitor reading a new book about Sitka, a spruce tree and what happens to trees during and after their life.
Finally, we had a picnic to celebrate how fantastic the children were at sharing their learning and showing off their superb behaviour during our recent ofsted inspection. We had food and a good dance, someone has told me they have had a “wonderful day!”, which sums up my feelings too!
Week ending 14th June
We have continued our seaside themed learning this week. The Year 1’s have storymapped and written their own animal adventure for Mr and Mrs Grinling from ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’.
Reception have learnt about seasides from the past and have enjoyed some Punch and Judy, including designing their own traps for the crocodile. They have also looked at similarities and differences between the seaside in the past and now, made their own puppets and used them to act out their own puppet shows.
In Maths, the children have started their new topic of place value up to 100 by partitioning numbers into tens and ones.
In their outside learning, the children have picked and tasted some of the produce that has started to grow.
In geography, the children have learnt about the seas and oceans surrounding the UK and have used the atlases well to locate these. The children enjoyed computing this week as we used sketch pad to create pictograms of data.
We also started practising for sports day with great enthusiasm!
Week ending 7th June
As always, another busy week of fabulous learning.
We have begun our half term of learning with a seaside and 5e coast theme. Our book this week has been the classic ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch’. The children have learnt the story brilliantly and have enjoyed listened great to all the sequels as well. They have written about the story, made speech bubbles for the characters and have designed different ways to,stop,the pesky seagulls from stealing all the food.
In Maths, we have learnt about position and direction. We have given each other directions using left, right, forward and backward and followed these well. The children have also begun to learn about full turns, half turns and quarter turns, this was definitely trickier but they were very persistent and we will carry on practising this.
This week, we have also started to investigate sliders and mechanisms in DT, played tennis in PE, answered the scientific question ‘Do taller trees have wider trunks?’ and begun our new Geography topic by sorting UK landmarks into human or physical features.
Week ending 24th May
This week, we have continued along our space theme. The Year 1 children have explored non-fiction texts, found out lots of facts and written some fabulous,ours non-chronological reports. The Reception children have delved into the past and have written some fabulous space adventures inspired by Mr Benn’s spaceman.
In Maths, we have investigated a quarter. We are brilliant at knowing that when we find a quarter we must find four equal parts.
In Science, the children learnt about all the different parts of a plant we can eat. We continued making our paper sculpture insects in art and have also made straw rockets. The children tested these brilliant,u, measuring how far they flew and then deciding how they could make them fly further.
Outside, we have begun to dig a trench for our sunflowers to grow and have been litter picking, we were very unimpressed with the amount that we found.
In PE, we were really lucky to be joined by Year 5 play leaders who taught the children some great team games to play.
Week ending 17th May
Sunstone class have had yet another brilliant week. They ventured to space in their learning, based around the book ‘The Great Balloon Hullabaloo’. Reception designed their own balloons, described their designs and created them. Year 1 wrote a diary entry about the adventure into space. All of their writing was excellent, including different tenses and some superb adjectives. We also headed to space as we learnt about the significance of the first moon landing.
In Maths, the children have found half of shapes and quantities as well as manipulate shapes to create pictures.
In Science, the children looked closely at seeds and bulbs and predicted what they would grow into.
Our outside learning session was very wet this week so the children used fabric, leaves and petals to create art.
Week ending 10th May
This week, our learning was based all around rhymes, songs and poems. We read a lot of Julia Donaldson books and explored the rhyming words in them. The children thought of their own rhyming words and created their own rhyming verses. We also read ‘Kitchen Disco’ and created our own version of the song called ‘Classroom Disco’. The Reception children performed the song brilliantly, complete with their own made shakers, and we finished the week exploring tempo in our own classroom disco.
In Maths this week, the Year 1’s have been sharing and grouping, exploring early division methods. They have been superb at making sure groups are equal and have even explored remainders. The Reception children have explored numbers beyond 20 with a focus on bridging the tens numbers and spotting the patterns in the numbers.
Outside the children created their own stick and wool collector for things they found interesting. The children have also looked at trees in Science this week and have measured leaves of different trees to help them identify if the tree is deciduous or evergreen. In History, the children learnt about Amelia Earhart and the impact she had on the history of flight.
Week ending 3rd May
Sunstone, yet again, were superstars this week. Our story was ‘The Extraordinary Gardener’ by Sam Boughton about a little boy who plants a seed and is amazed by all the wonderful things he can grow. We planted our own seeds and the children have taken amazing care of them, some are already shooting! The children also wrote instructions about how to plant seeds, created a flow diagram to show the life cycle of a plant and used their imagination to draw and write about what wonderful things they could grow. The planting theme continued in outside learning as everyone planted a sunflower seed, we are looking to seeing which ones grow really tall. The children also learnt about wild and garden plants in Science.
In Maths, the children have learnt about odd and even numbers, sharing and grouping. They have used resources brilliantly to help them with this and have begun to arrange them in arrays too.
In Art, the children used the paper sculpting techniques they have been practising to create their tree of life. They look brilliant and really demonstrated their skills well. They have also been creating some wonderful observational drawings of flowers using a variety of media. Finally, in History, the children learnt about the pilot Bessie Coleman and why she was significant in aviation history.
Week ending 26th April
Sunstone have had yet another busy week of learning. They continued with the the theme of Jack and the Beanstalk by reading lots of variations on the traditional tale. They have discussed similarities and differences and used these to inspire them when writing their own version.
The children have begun grouping and sharing in Maths. They have been excellent at ensuring groups are equal and explored remainders. They year 1’s have also begun to practise counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, spotting the patterns to help them.
This week, we have also been exploring outside a bit more. The children went bug hunting and made a bug house and a hedgehog house. We talked about what they would need to keep them safe.
The beans the children planted last week are starting to grow, the children have been excellent at taking care of them and have made some brilliant observations too.
In Art, we continued our topic of sculptures and experimented with different paper shapes. The children were incredibly resilient while doing this as it was a little frustrating at times, they knew what they wanted their sculptures to look like and had to really persist with some of the shapes to get them right. The finished results were very effective and a great credit to their hard work.
In PE, the children have been practising their ball skills.
Week ending 19th April
Sunstone have had a fabulous week back after the holidays. Their learning this week has been based around the traditional tale of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children have practised using story telling vocabulary, have described a character and setting using adjectives and have learnt about the suffix -ing to add to a verb. Their writing is making great progress and their sentences are really improving.
In Maths this week, the children have learnt about volume and capacity through measuring and comparing a variety of containers.
The children have begun their new Science topic of plants. They have been plant hunting outside and have all planted a bean. Fingers crossed we look after them well and they grow!
Our history topic this term is ‘How did we learn to fly?’ and the Year 1’s have learnt about the Wright brothers.
We finished this week with some music, exploring pitch with glockenspiels after making some guitars and harps using bands throughout the week.
