Our focus was speech, so the children then considered what the characters might be saying at different parts of the story. The children shared their ideas with one another on the carpet and they generated some thoughtful suggestions about what the three friends might be saying. The children worked as a class to complete a sentence on the CTouch board and then set to work to write their own. The children are becoming more at home in their new classroom and increasingly confident to work at the tables independently.

Form 1 have been practising their Sports Day races and they love working in teams and cheering each other on. They have worked on throwing, ball skills, running and the obstacle course and they can not wait to impress you all next week!

In maths this week, the children have continued to secure their ability to solve addition problems. Using the story book One is Snail, Ten is a Crab the children were challenged to find the totals of all the creatures' feet in the story. This story is lots of fun and encourages the children to apply their understanding of counting up in 2’s or 10’s to solve the problems. They have been recording their answers in their maths books and trying hard to form their numbers correctly. Later in the week, the children were challenged to solve simple addition sentences using the mental strategy of counting on. They were fantastic at doing this and some children started to see how they could easily add single digits to larger numbers, solving 20 + 5 for example, knowing they only had to think about the second digit. 

The children have been getting creative this week and made their very own watercolour rock pools! First, the children looked at various shells and creatures in our information book and used shells from the shell basket to gather ideas about what to include in their picture. Then, using black pens, the children drew the animals and plants on white paper. They then added colour using watercolours, which created the perfect effect for a seaside picture. To make the edge of the rock pool, the children cut the center out of a paper plate and used the outer edge. Painting this a sandy yellow or grey, the children made a rocky edge to add to their picture. They look really effective and are displayed proudly in our classroom.

We have also been learning about food chains and how the habitat impacts the food available for each animal and how they rely on one another to survive. We watched a BBC clip about rock pools and learned about the seaweed, crabs and sea anemones, thinking about what each of these creatures eats. We looked through a PowerPoint to further understand what a food chain is and the children could think of lots of examples of habitats and food chains that exist within them. We then thought about what food chains might look like in a rock pool. After discussing this, the children drew their very own rock pool food chain. Starting with seaweed, then whelks, then crabs and finally seagulls. They labelled their food chains and coloured their drawings.