Blackbird Class

Welcome to Blackbird Class!

We are a class of Year One and Year Two children taught by Mrs Mee and supported by Mrs Vranch and many other adults throughout the week including- Mrs Singer, Miss Clayson, Miss Thompson, IG sports teachers and Mrs K.

Home Learning 2023-2024

Autumn Term

September 2023. Last week the children made up their own class rules for the new school year. Their first home learning challenge was to read them with an adult and then to sign them, to say that they agreed to keep them.

Most home challenges will be sent home in termly blocks. However sometimes additional home challenges will be given out to individuals or groups, when needed to link with specific learning.

All home learning should be stuck into the yellow home learning scrap books and when completed put into the purple box near Blackbird class door. Thank you for your support.

Please read our Spring class letter, topic balloon and knowledge organiser. We have been having regular retrieval "True or false" active quizzes to see what we can still remember so please read the knowledge organisers with your child and keep them out all term .You can even make up your own home quizzes!

This term-Spring 2024

We started this term with a "WOW' moment looking at a crime scene in the media hub....

We all helped by looking at the clues and solved the mystery of who'd been into school over the holiday using our team work power gem (amethyst).....it was The Gruffalo! Then we tidied up the mess he'd made!

We had fun retelling the Gruffalo story with puppets, masks and games.

Next we then went on a cold walk through the countryside to see if we could see signs of any local animals.We had hoped to see the ones from the Gruffalo story (mouse, snake, owl and fox ) but sadly we did not! We did however see squirrels, ducks, a robin, a crow, a blackbird and many footprints of animals and holes where we think animals live. Now we are going to find facts about UK animals and write our own reports.

This term our topic is "Superheroes" we are looking at some superheroes from nursing history and will then explore our own emergency services superheroes followed by some fun work about comic book superheroes with a fun dress up day! 

Don't forget to look at our class displays for the BIG questions we have been asking and then finding out about.

We Are Historians!

Using drama skills in our history lessons about Florence Nightingale has helped understand how Florence Nightingale might have felt.We made a "conscience alley" and Florence (Teo) had a big decision to make about whether she should stay at home like her parents wanted or go to help soldiers in the Crimea.

DT

Testing for waterproof materials

Remaking capes waterproof

Making Window Biscuits

Life Education Visit

Open Afternoon

Making Rain Gauges

Countryside Walk

Maths

Book Week!

Superhero "Wow" Day!

We designed and started to sew superhero hand puppets and either a superhero fresh fruit salad or kebab. It was rather tricky sewing evenly without the needle falling off but we persevered!

We did some drama when we had superhero adventure in the hall, using our super powers to rescue people and finished the day with a superhero feast to eat our very healthy fruit salads and kebabs.

We had a very, very busy (but fun) day!

We worked in partners to retell a traditional tale with a 'twist' (we changed the setting and characters and tried to add a surprise!).

Developing our football skills with Mr Phillips

We used our new skills, stopping the ball and changing direction, in a football match.

We are Artists 

We have experimented with printing techniques.

First we painted our feet and hands in partners and made a piece of art prints which contained these prints.

COMPUTING

We Are All Animators!

We made mini animation films of Superheroes and Villains using the software Puppet Pals.

First we discussed the characters and "problem" we wanted to have in our film and then drew a story board to help us when we recorded the animations. We tried to use our voices in an interesting way and learnt how to move characters around while we recorded our films. The software we used really made our storyboards come to life!

Using sources as historians we asked lots of questions and told each other what we'd found out from looking at the pictures.

We are Scientists!

In "Health and Well Being Week" we baked cornflake cakes to look at how solids can change form to liquids and back to solids again.

We all worked together as a group to make them.

We felt very happy when we ate them too!

Autumn : 

In order to settle the class into a new school year happily, we started with a two week mini topic of "All about Me" and Art week. The children have been amazingly creative, resilient and had lots of fun establishing themselves as a new class, whilst working together wonderfully. You should be very proud of them all. Lots of learning gems have already been awarded!

This term our topic is Amazing Animals! 

We have lots of exciting learning opportunities coming up so watch this space!

Please read our class newsletter.

We are artists: 

SPIRAL ART

Blackbird Class have been exploring circles and spirals during arts week. We have made them using different media and in different sizes. A Danish artist, Molly Haslund, made circles on the ground using giant compasses and encouraged people from the city to join in. We made a group circle picture and experimented with circles in our sketchbooks.

We looked these patterns in the natural world and did some observational drawing.

We also looked at the detailed Kolam patterns made every morning from rice flour outside the houses in Chennai, India. Then we designed our own.

The children were set the challenge:

What kind of marks can you make using chalk and oil pastels when creating a snail?

Do you think they blended them well? What patterns can you see?

We also talked about different emotions when looked at Pablo Picasso’s “Weeping Woman”.

We are artists!

We Are Musicians!

We repeated patterns with lots different instruments. Then we composed music to suit emotions using percussion instruments and wrote our own music score. We worked in small groups and practised using our topas learning gem power.

Forest School

Forest school "finds".

We Are Mathematicians! 

In Year 1 we have been using shapes to create different images! We have also been making repeated patterns using different 2-D and 3-D shapes .

Computing

In computing we have been programming Bee-Bots to move in sequences around various tracks!  We then had fun debugging algorithms!

Religious Education

We Are Artists

Christmas Crafts in Art 

We used press printing to create a fireplace to go on a Christmas card. We designed our own brick fireplace to print onto our paper.

D.T.

Making frames in DT for our nativity photographs to give as a present.We liked the glue gun!

Christmas