Wow! What a fantastic week we have had in Hazel Class. We have been so busy learning new things and sharing our ideas. Here’s what we have been up to:
Eid Celebrations
We have loved hearing all about Eid from our friends who celebrated this special festival! They told us about the wonderful food they shared with their families, the beautiful clothes they wore, and the exciting gifts they received. Some children spoke about going to the mosque with their families, while others described big parties with lots of delicious treats! We even looked at some of the special decorations used to celebrate Eid and spoke about how this festival brings families and friends together. It was so lovely to hear about the joy and excitement of this special time!
English
In English, we have been learning all about non-chronological reports. We have explored what makes a good report by looking at different examples and identifying key features like headings, subheadings, introductions, facts, pictures and captions. We worked together to sort sentences into the right sections and discussed why reports do not need to be in time order like a story.
We then started researching St Francis to help us prepare for writing our very own fact files next week. We found out lots of fascinating facts about him! Did you know that St Francis gave up his rich lifestyle to help the poor? We also discovered that he loved animals and was known for preaching to birds. Some of us were surprised to learn that he started a special tradition of setting up a nativity scene at Christmas! Next week, we will be using all of our new knowledge to write our own reports about St Francis, making sure to include all the key features we have learned about.
Maths
This week in maths, we have had lots of fun learning about positional language! We played games like Simon Says to practise using words such as ‘in front of’, ‘behind’, ‘next to’, ‘on top of’ and ‘under’. We then challenged ourselves by describing the position of objects around our classroom using these words. It was tricky at first, but we got really good at explaining where things were.
We also explored turns and directions, thinking about quarter turns, half turns, and even tricky three-quarter turns! We had lots of fun giving instructions to our partners, telling them to turn left or right by different amounts. Some of us even pretended to be robots, following positional instructions to move around the classroom! We discovered that two quarter turns make a half turn and that four quarter turns bring you back to where you started.
Topic
In our geography lessons, we have been finishing our learning about our local area. We looked at maps of our school and the surrounding streets, thinking about what makes a good school environment. We then had a very exciting challenge—designing our perfect school grounds! We thought about all the things that would make our school even better and drew detailed maps to show our ideas.
Some of us designed huge adventure playgrounds, while others thought a peaceful garden with lots of flowers and benches would be a great idea. A few children even suggested a swimming pool or a petting zoo! After designing our maps, we worked together to write a letter to our local council, explaining our ideas and why they would be good for the school. We had great discussions comparing our designs to the real school grounds, thinking about what changes could actually be made. It was amazing to see how creative we all were!
That’s all for this week – we hope you have a lovely weekend!
Hopefully the sun will keep shining!
Mr Cummings and Miss Martinez