We have used the story Mr Gumpy's Outing for our literacy work and everyone has had great fun acting out the story, making story maps and writing speech bubbles for each of the characters. Children have been working hard developing literacy skills such as rehearsing the sentence they would like to write, listening carefully to hear all the sounds in the words they are writing, remembering to use spaces between words and adding punctuation at the end. Fantastic work Form 1!

In maths, we have been learning all about taking away and using different strategies to solve these problems, using real objects and their fingers as a starting point. Children then learnt how to use a number line to find the answer, finding the number we are subtracting from on the number line first and then drawing the jumps back to find the answer. We have had fun jumping along and back on large number lines outside and singing songs where numbers get smaller each time.

Boats offered up a great opportunity for the children to explore floating and sinking, so we conducted an experiment to see which objects sink or float. Predictions were made not only about what might happen but also why. Children shared their ideas and theories and then conducted a test to find out. Lots of conversations about different materials, shapes, weight and sizes were had as children explored this concept. We discovered that often metal things sink, but that foil will float depending on shape - very interesting!

Children have also been making their own rafts using twigs, tape and wool. Some children chose to work as part of a team whilst some worked independently. Everyone found various different ways to join the twigs together and it was lots of fun testing them out to see if they would float or sink! Some rafts could even carry some little plastic animals. 

Form 1 have been so creative this week and built their own boats using paper plates and other various materials. Some children added masts, sails, portholes, anchors and even fishing nets! Lots of fantastic problem-solving skills were used when deciding how to join elements together and how to approach this challenge.

As it was lovely and sunny this week, children have taken full advantage and enjoyed playing and exploring outside even more. They have been setting up the guttering in the water tray to make water slides for the boats and using the paints to create pictures of their choice. It's been another wonderful week in Form 1.