Design and Technology learning this term has been gearing up to building and cladding our very own pavilion. We have considered what pavilions are for, who the audience is and if our design is appealing to the chosen audience. This is consistent with the purpose of DT which is to create something for a purpose. Our purpose was a pavilion to host learning.
The children’s creations are amazing and have been made with just lollipop sticks, paper and PVA glue. Carson led the way showing us how to take care, measure twice and cut once. While Sky and Sarina took the modelled cladding techniques to new levels to finish their pavilion with panache.
After weeks of mastering different 2,3,4 or 5 point balances, rotations and different level balances. Jade class put that learning into a routine to show their classmates.
The children were allowed to get their creative juices flowing by selecting and then refining a routine of at least 2 balances and 2 rotations. The creativity was outstanding with children even balancing on each other in a level balance. Rivalling anything I have seen on Britain’s got talent.
What we learned during this block of PE is the amazing things our body can do and what we need to do to make it safe. Laying the fundamentals in this gymnastics learning that would allow people to be better athletes in whatever their passion becomes in the future.
The learning stars for Jade class were the Star of the Week, Star Writer and Math Magicians.
The star writer was recognised for their hard work allow eek developing their handwriting. It can be difficult to master a new skill and something that is personally difficulty for you. However, with a growth mindset this boy set the week alight taking this challenge head on and making great strides in their neatness.
The Math Magicians were stars who showed a great aptitude for fractions and were able to express quantities as parts and wholes across several calculation types.
The star of the week is a repeat winner because she has been showing others the way each and every day. This has led to great gains in her group work and lots of insightful work in her books. This has been possible thanks to her exemplary behaviour by always listening, being sensible and ready at all times.
This weeks computing class took the learning on Turtle Academy to a new level. Using all the commands from previous weeks Jade class took the time to experiment and explore what it took to write their initials on screen.
Showing great growth mindsets the children didn’t stop there and pushed themselves further. They moved onto creating extravagant shapes using the repeat function with some incredible results.
This week’s music lesson brought together some of the concepts we had been learning about Ostinatos and added in instrumental accompaniment.
The key aspect pf the ostinatos has been how they repeat their rhythm over and over. We added the music from drums and xylophones to make our music even more impactful.
The theme was rivers and water so each rhythmical piece was inspired wither by the upper course, middle course or lower course of a river. Challenging the children to work together, cooperate, choose a rhythm that complimented their vocals from the last lesson and finally, keep in time with each other.
They tried really hard and pushed themselves showing a great growth mindset to persevere and act on feedback from their friends to make the best possible Ostinato they could.
We have continued to read the book ‘Lob’. We focussed on the events between the characters of Lucy and Trudie. We acted out a conversation they had had.
We then created a freeze frame in a group, before using thought tracking to explore what the characters were thinking or feeling.
We had our postponed mentions assembly on Friday after the spring snow that hit Sheffield last week and the wait was worth it. In mentions assembly Lacey was recognised for her outstanding work in Jade Class recently. She always tries hard and recently she has found her voice, answering questions to help the whole class, explaining things for her groups and shoulder partner. Lacey has an amazing growth mindset because she never says she can’t do something…she says she can’t do it yet. Then she works hard to master a new skill.
Evie was also celebrated for her excellent effort this week and is an example for others to follow. Evie displays quiet elegance as she tackles new tasks such as our news reports, drama and programming in computing with little fuss. However, she works really hard when making her corrections, improving her handwriting and remembering key facts. The new tasks don’t faze Evie because she knows she will make the effort to succeed.
Our writers of the week were celebrated for their poems and script writing. it was amazing to see such personification, structured writing and repetition used in our writing of an ode.
Our mathematicians were celebrated for their outstanding work balancing equations when we increase a factor or a dividend by 10 and 100. To do this they had to have a secure knowledge of place value and apply it fluently by using their known facts to work out the answers. Well done everyone.
This half term our computing lessons see pupils learn about programming in Logo. Logo is a text-based programming language where pupils type commands that are then drawn on screen. Pupils will learn the basic Logo commands, and will use their knowledge of them to read and write code.
Our first lesson saw us programme the turtle (icon on screen) to draw shapes as we experimented with commands. Learning the basics such as forward, back, right and left turns.
Alfie said he loves computing because it’s fun and it sure was fun seeing the children create the prescribed shapes and ones of their own.
This term we are studying electricity in Science and this week’s learning was all about circuits.
The children were fantastic at connecting to their previous learning about circuit when making torches in D&T. They were very confident at making their own circuit with students such as Roman and Soliana even proclaiming it to be easy.
However, it got much tougher because we began to introduce more of the scientific principles of the circuit and to learn about the flow of electrons and protons around the circuit. We purposefully created some incomplete circuits to discover that we need to connect to both the positive and negative parts of the battery. We also added extra load onto our circuit via an extra bulb to think about power, strength of flow and what we would need to make the bulb brighter.
There is more learning to celebrate this week in Jade class. We begin wit our star writer who has made it onto the working wall t as an example for others to follow. She wrote a short piece of text in the role of the Lucy, our principle character in our book Lob. She wrote about events that had happened in the story, expressed feelings as if she was Lucy and even managed to use all of the key sentence types and writing devices we have been learning about to make her writing interesting and exciting to read. Things such as times adverbials, if,if if then sentences and expanded noun phrases.
Our scientist of the week has been able to apply our knowledge of electrical currents to write about how she would make the bulb brighter after making a circuit. She clearly understood that electricity is the flow of electrons and protons around a circuit, that the circuit needs to connect to both sides of the cells and that we need more power in a series circuit to make the bulb brighter.
The mathematician this week as recognized for how they have adopted all the distribution techniques we have bene learning about to answer enormous multiplication calculations.
Finally, this week we have a lot of growth mindset awards because we have been introducing new cooperative learning techniques called Kagan Strategies. We as a class have already been using Rally Coach, Rally Robin, Round Robin and time, pair share. This week we introduced mix pair share. Mix pair share involved moving around the class finding a partner discussing a topic. Then when moving onto the next partner they have to relay their previous partners messages to the next. Reinforcing their listening skills, memory and embedding the knew knowledge. This was a growth mindset because they took on the challenge, used feedback and information from others to compliment their learning and tried their best. It is a great growth mindset.
Jade class 