Over the past three days, the children have begun writing simple sentences using colourful semantics. They started by describing pictures verbally, identifying key elements such as who, what, and where. This was followed by a shared writing activity, where the class worked together to construct sentences. The children then had the opportunity to write independently, using a help sheet for support.
As part of our expedition ‘To Infinity and Beyond’, Crew Godley have been exploring the incredible journey of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and discovering how coding played a vital role in making space travel possible.
We began our learning by diving into the world of binary – the language computers use to communicate. The crew were fascinated to learn that everything a computer does is built from just two digits: 0 and 1! Using this knowledge, we had a go at writing our own names in binary code. It was a fun challenge, and we quickly realised just how complex things would be if we had to communicate like this all the time – thankfully, computers do the hard work for us!
Building on this, we moved into practical coding. The children applied their understanding by programming a traffic light sequence, carefully instructing it to change colours in the correct order and at the right time. This helped them to understand how precise and logical instructions need to be when coding – just like the instructions used in real-life space missions.
Crew Godley have been working incredibly hard to deepen their understanding of how numbers can be represented in different ways – particularly focusing on thousands expressed as fractions.
To support their learning, we used a range of manipulative to physically explore how a whole can be divided into equal parts and how those parts relate to thousandths. We investigated how one whole can be partitioned into 1,000 equal parts and what this looks like when represented as fractions. Through discussion and collaboration we were able to recognise patterns and simplify these fractions, linking their understanding to equivalent fractions and decimal forms.
Find out more and apply here to #JoinOurCrew
https://xptrust.org/were-looking-for-a-primary-teacher-at-xp-trust/
Last week, we extracted seeds from a tomato and carefully laid them out to dry over the weekend, getting them ready for planting. Learning the life cycle of the food we eat, with this were planting more edible plants each week. We also watched a video about how tomatoes grow, and the children were fascinated by a time-lapse showing the plants growing taller and taller. They loved seeing how tomatoes start off green and gradually turn red, and were excited to learn that tomatoes can come in many different colours too. We’re all looking forward to watch how tall our tomato plants will grow!
During maths this week, we have been looking at using our subitising skills in increasingly complex arrangements. We looked at arrangements of 6 and how we can use our knowledge of number bonds to 6, and our skills of subitising to 5, to help us to identify the number represented. We worked together to decide whether an arrangement was 6 or not 6, and then we used counters to replicate the pattern, before explaining how we knew the pattern showed 6, by identifying known patterns within.
This week, Crew McGlone have been focusing on the story of ‘Storm Dragon’ by Dianne Hofmeyr. We have really enjoyed taking part in a sensory story to help support us with the structure and sequencing of events in the story.
Our writing this week saw us create ‘I can see’ sentences using a stimulus of a depiction of the storm dragon. We talked about the different parts of the storm dragon we could see, some of us even challenged ourselves by adding in some detail to our sentences to give a clearer description. We even used our sentence building knowledge in provision when drawing our own pictures.
We have also absolutely LOVED using our imagination and leading our own learning when accessing provision – we have created shelters to protect us from the storm, large scale models of the storm dragon, small world scenes of the story, created our own role play sensory story, made a collaborative collage dragon, made models out of playdough, made our own spyglasses to search for storm dragons, and lots of things in between!
Crew McGlone have hooked into their new expedition by creating a mini beach in their outdoor area. We enjoyed playing together, digging in the sand, and paddling in the water talking about all things ‘seaside’. We are really looking forward to our final expedition in Reception!
In writing today the children made their own stick house from The Three little Pigs.
In Crew McGlone, we have been using our magic counting wands to help us to count numbers beyond 10.
