Welcome to Fir Class' page!

Week beginning 11th July 2016

What an amazing week!

History week... our walk to the grave as part of our research. We managed to find evidence of a few of the people that we were looking for. The Green family... we found out that they had three children who died at a very young age in a fire. We later discovered that in total they had five (possibly six) children. Mrs Green's maiden name was Holland, so we researched her family tree.

We are still looking for the location of their house. It is believed that the house was either in Purls Bridge or Welches Dam.

On Friday 8th July we go on our class trip to BeWILDerwood! We can't wait!

Week beginning 4th July 2016

Coaching and mentoring

This week we have been helping the year three's develop their skills before their first Key Stage two sports day. We thoroughly enjoyed supporting them and seeing them learn quickly.

Week beginning 27th June 2016

Getting ready!

We had our fifth and final production performance this morning. Here is a photo of us getting ready... rollers in!

Dance!

We have just had a one off dance lesson with a dance instructor. It. Was. Awesome! We discussed our theme (Jekyll and Hyde) and the contrasts between the two personalities. We explored the emotions and pain that Dr Jekyll went through as he transformed. This helped us to better understand the dance moves we were learning.

In the space of 40 minutes we learned several new dance moves, rehearsed them and then performed.

See the images below...

Second PE lesson of the week... Sports day preparations for the new events!

See our movie below!

Today's assembly was all about the EU... should we stay or should we go?

We voted! 22 said stay, 21 said go! 

We are looking forward to finding out about what will happen and how any changes will impact on our future.

Week beginning 20th June 2016

Persuasive lyrics

As part of our topic on persuasion we have been altering lyrics to make others change their opinions.

Week beginning 13th June 2016

Preparations

This week we have been putting together the final pieces before the summer production next Thursday and Friday. See the fun we've been having along the way!

Week beginning 6th June 2016

Finishing projects

Several projects are coming to an end this week; flour babies which has been part of our science and PSHE work and our Sci-fi books are in production.

See the photos of us below; hard working parents balancing our literacy work with caring for a bag of flour!

Week beginning 23/5/2016

Stone Age to Iron Age; a great finale!

What a fantastic end to a great topic. See Fir Class' dramatization of the invasion.

Week beginning 16th May 2016

The maths challenge

Today we had a great maths lesson investigating, conjecturing and convincing. Have a look at the challenge and see what you think...

Our week

This week we have been planning science-fiction stories using practical resources to link to our characters and build what we imagine. We have had a great fun with these outdoor literacy lessons and it has really helped us prepare for our stories. Our favourite part was building our characters a home (we have big imaginations in fir class) as you could see your ideas in front of you. The building part was very arty and it was exceptionally fun because we love art.     

Week beginning 3/5/16

We have completed our work on debates (however, everything since has turned into a debate)!

See the example of our argument work below...

Week beginning 25/4/16

Our great, big, monumental surprise!

Today at the end of our literacy lesson we went on a walk to see our completed surprise... hear what Fir class have to say about it... Can you guess what the surprise is? See the photos underneath to give you more clues.

"It's small, but there are enough resources for us all!"

"It has resources on different types of topics."

"You can flick through pages and pages of words."

"We can enjoy even more reading now!"

"The new room looks fantastically beautiful."

"It is better than the other one!"

"The new room is airy and relaxing."

"It is spacious yet snug and cozy."

"The new room has a grand sign which makes it stand out compared to the rest of the school."

"We like it because it has lots of books and it's a really nice place to relax."

"In this room, trees grow... not the ordinary trees you see outside!"

"From cloakroom to books of wonder!"

Week beginning 18th April 2016

The Great Debate!

As part of our arguments and debates topic, we have been developing our debating skills today. We've had a great time discussing topics of interest.

See our photos below...

Week beginning 11th April 2016

Geometry

This week we have been learning about angles, polygons and polyhedra. We discussed what an apex is (it is the pointing part at the top of a pyramid). 

We also looked at regular and irregular shapes. We investigated the total angles you would turn if you walked around the edge of a shape.

This week we also drew irregular shapes and measured the angles to compare them with regular shapes.

Did you know... the external angles (turns) always total 360 degrees.

We used a 3 by 3 grid (dots) to draw as many quadrilaterals as we could... there are a lot! 

This week we have been conjecturing (predicting) before we investigated.

See some of the pictures below...

Week beginning 21.3.2016

This week we finished the term with the egg challenge.

We received a letter from the RSPB asking us to create a fake, portable tree as they can't plant real trees... See the work that went in to solving this problem.

Week beginning 14/3/2016

Zentangle

We have looked at the art of zentangle to represent parts of an image. We worked on creating our zentangle style and 20 different tiles before creating our final piece...

Week beginning 7.3.2016

Safety visit!

This week we visited the March Fire Station for a fun packed, learning focused afternoon. We learned about how to be fire aware and keep safe near water. We practised first aid and became really good at bandaging an open wound.

We learned about the affects of not wearing a seat belt in a road traffic collision and what could happen to you if you portray anti-social behaviour in a public place.

See our pictures below:

Week beginning 29.2.2016

French alphabet

We have been learning the French alphabet. See how much you can remember...

Week beginning 22nd February 2016

Movie Magic

We have had an amazing first week back in school! On Tuesday we were visited by Mr Thompson who supported us in developing our understanding of film and how to make and edit movies.

We will keep you updated with our progress!

Group one:

We enjoyed making our romance film and it made us all feel better friends because we worked together well. Our acting skills progressed as well as our film making. We were confident and got into our roles. Practising really helped!

Group two:

We found it really exciting when we got to make our own mini movie. During the rehearsal we kept making mistakes but we had opportunities to fix them. We can't wait to make movies again! We loved it!

Group three:

We had an amazing experience and a great time filming. Everyone had a part and was happy with it. It was something that I would not want to change and can't wait to make movies again!

Group four:

We did well and we enjoyed it especially working together as a group. We each got into character and loved the acting that we experienced. We made a good plot but next time we would want to add more detail during the editing.

Group five:

It was really good experience because we had the freedom to make the movie we wanted to make! We had fun editing and improving our movie together. Adding sound effects and theme music made a big difference to the final film.

Group six:

Our group enjoyed making a mini movie because we worked well together as a group. We learned about different types of shots and the effect they can have on the audience. We can't wait to make another movie!

Week beginning 8th February 2016

What a busy week!

We started off the week with a gymnastics challenge. We combined our floor routines with a partner and either mirrored one another or worked as a canon (one after the other). See the images in the scroll below.

We have been continuing our investigation of air resistance. We discussed what we had already discovered (parachute last week) and planned then carried out an investigation to find out about the length of a propellers arms in relation to the resistance in the air.

We have been writing our own poems using music as inspiration. We looked at the chart toppers and mimicked the repetitive style to create our own as a group.

We are looking forward to the new half term and the adventures we will be going on.

Week beginning 1st February 2016

Class Assembly!

This week we prepared for our class assembly. We learned and recited a poem by Michael Rosen. We had some laughs along the way. Listen to our practise session:

Week beginning 25th January 2016

Conjecture and convince!

Today we have been conjecturing (predicting mathematically) then convincing ourselves and others that we were right or wrong (depending on our discovery).

We were exploring the relationship between the 3, 6 and 12 times tables (these are the times tables we have been revising recently).

Have a look at our built and drawn representations. What do you think we discovered?

Week beginning 18th January 2016

Amazing maths!

Bowling our way towards our goals, today we had great fun in maths.

We played a game of bowls (to our own rules)! We rolled the ball across the room and worked out the distance it had traveled. We weren't allowed to hit the wall. We used our measuring skills. We talked about the forces needed and then we added our decimal numbers to find our total score and ultimately the winner.

Welcome to the New Year!

2016

We have been thinking about and sharing our thoughts on the term ahead. Here are some of our goals...

• I'd like to develop my independence,
• I'd like to improve my handwriting,
• I would like to work on the use of vocabulary,
• I'd like to exceed my expectations,
• I'd like to concentrate more,
• I would like to improve my presentation,
• I would like to work on my self-assessment comments,
• I would like to continue to have a positive, happy and hard-working class.

Happy New Year!

Week beginning 5th January 2016

We have started our Web Quest... see the Quest below... can you help us?

Week beginning 7th December 2015

Colour of light

Today we continued our educational journey by investigating the colours of light. We have used prisms to separate light (refract). We have found out some amazing things...

A rainbow experience

Our group has been making rainbows using clear plastic prisms of different shapes and sizes. When we were trying to make rainbows we came across lots of beams of white light.

While we were trying to create the rainbows we were using the light primary colours (red, blue and green). It was an amazing sight!

How rainbows are formed...

Rainbows are formed by using white light, water or prisms. The light travels through the water or prism which makes a rainbow. It has to shine through a glass, water or plastic 3D object to make a rainbow.

White light

The three primary colours created, magenta, cyan and green. These make three secondary colours. When all six colours are together (overlapping) they create white light.

We also discovered that there are more than seven colours in the rainbow.

Our light experiment

We investigated how to form a rainbow.

First we tried to make a rainbow by shining light through a prism. However, we discovered that we needed a thinner beam of white light. 

After this, we make a colour light using different coloured plastics.

Next we found out that if you put a prism in front of the coloured light then the light refracts coloured light.

Then we discovered that some beams of light can affect the shape that has been refracted.

We can make one!

If you have a prism that is see-through and a white light, you can make a rainbow too! 

Shine the white light through the prism that is transparent. Then you may see an image of various colours... this is the rainbow!

Air doesn't have prisms so the rain acts like it. That's why you need the sun and the rain out when the rainbow is formed.

Go looking for rainbows!

Primary colours of light

The primary colours of light are red, blue and green. If you mix these colours together it make original white light. When you create a spectrum of colours, white light is refracted through a transparent prism.

When you experiment by mixing different saturations of primary colours it makes different coloured light.

The spectrum

A spectrum is formed by white light refracting through a transparent object, for example a glass. The white light spectrum starts with red, then orange, yellow, green, blue and magenta.

There are lots more colours by shining colour lights together. You can experiment with these weblinks: 

Week beginning 30th November 2015

Debugging the bee-bots!

Today we have been collectively solving problems in class. The bee-bots, which we are all familiar with, needed to travel across the room and around a table. We thought that this would be easy. As it turned out it was easier said than done.

Tomorrow we will be creating and using algorithms to help us when debugging.

Today we had our fifth swimming lesson. We are making great progress as our water confidence grows!

Just keep swimming, swimming... just keep swimming!

Week beginning 23rd November 2015

Recounts

This week we have continued our recounts unit of work in literacy. We have used our UFOs to inspire our writing. Interviewing each other and becoming reporters. We are writing a newspaper report to share what happened in Fir this week.

See our UFO images below:

Monday 16th November 2015

Buddy reading!

Today we welcomed Elm into our classroom for buddy reading. What a great success! We shared our books with year one and enjoyed Mr Lenton's retelling of Room on the broom.

See our pictures below:

Friday 13th November 2015

Our rambling adventure

Today our school rambled! We strolled around the pit, well we started at a stroll! Whilst we were there Mrs Stone told us to look out for an alligator! It turned out to be a pile of leaves. 

Right in front of our eyes the weather changed. It had started as a bright and sunny morning. In the blink of an eye the wind whipped up around us and howled through the trees. We thought it was the hurricane that we had heard about on the news. Clinging to each other, so that we wouldn't fly away, we made our way steadily back to our meeting place.

Eventually we travelled back over the slippery bridge. Soon after, the wind became more ferocious.

We enjoyed the whole experience (particularly the quest for the alligator in the woodland).

Please listen to our experiences below including the reason for our ramble.

Thursday 12th November 2015

Guided reading; green group have been reading The Wreck of Zanzibar by Micheal Morpurgo.

Listen to our reading of the story and our discussion.

Friday 6th November 2015

Amazing first week!

We have had a busy and enjoyable first week back. We started the week by sharing the new trail with Elm Class. We think they really enjoyed all the work we had put into it and we certainly enjoyed the experience.

On Tuesday we had our first swimming session. What a splash! (groan at the terrible joke). We loved the changes that have been made to the building and were excited by the new challenges we have faced swimming in year five.

Thursday we were thrilled to discover we had a visitor in school. What a life enhancing experience we had and we can't wait to get down to planning and writing our own stories about the dragon with a house on its back!

We'll keep you posted next week as our stories develop!

Friday 22nd October 2015

Our maths trail

This week we have been working together to create a maths trail for year one. We were split into three teams then we looked at what year ones maths curriculum to help us decide what we would set.

We typed up our activities and our clues to move between the different posts.

We found the activity a great challenge and we enjoyed applying our skills to the task.

Good luck with the trail Elm Class!

Friday 16th October 2015

Harvest Assembly

This morning we had our Key Stage two harvest assembly; it was great! Singing, story telling, poetry reciting, and actions galore. We celebrated what this time of year means to us, discovering that it means a lot!

Tuesday 6th October 2015

'Make do and Mend!'

As part of our history topic we have been investigating the 'Make do and Mend' campaign. We have discovered that people used old materials to make new clothes instead of buying them. If something was broken they didn't throw it away, they fixed it or if they couldn't they made it into something else.

Waste nothing

They had a limited amount of rationing coupons so they didn't waste a thing. Why throw something away when you can turn it into something else? Money didn't make you rich, coupons were what you needed!

Darning a sock

We found out first hand what it is like to make do and mend. If you had a hole in your sock, you would need to sew it up. Fir class each had a sock with a hole in. We had to sew up the sock so that it was still comfortable. It wasn't easy! But it was rewarding!

Tuesday 29th September 2015

Our History presentations...

We have been studying Winston Churchill as part of our work on World War two. Today we presented our work to the rest of the class.

Ask us what we know about this famous leader.

Week beginning 21st September 2015

This has been the most incredible week! Some of us went on a fantastic trip away to the East coast. Whilst some of us stayed at school learning about rationing and designing and making soup!

The residential

On our way to Kingswood there were a few bumpy roads. When we arrived we had a tour of the site. It had the most amazing old manor house in the centre including a table from Harry Potter. Whilst we were there we took part in lots of activities such as; quad biking, archery, low ropes, laser tag in the woods, fencing, Jacob's ladder, climbing and aeroball. It was a trip to remember!

The soup challenge

We were planning to make a soup out of a variety of vegetables. We made a spider diagram of the ingredients to help us design our soup. When we were chopping all the vegetables, some people regretted having the onions! The final result was an incredibly tasty, healthy soup.

Ask us about our great adventures!

Thursday 17th September 2015

The great debate!

In literacy we are learning and reading about King Arthur. There are many tales around this historical name. The big question on everyone's lips... is it all fact or fiction?

See below for some of our ideas and outcomes.

Wednesday 16th September 2015

Today we have been completing a maths challenge... 

a+b-b=a

See what we did to find out if this is always true and why!

Wednesday 9th September 2015

Today is a special day for H.R.H Elizabeth II. We have been learning about how today she will become the longest reigning monarch.

We have had a fun packed day including a special assembly, being Queen for a day in literacy, reading 'The Queen's knickers', calculating our age in days like the Queen's reign and finally designing a pair of knickers for the Queen if ever she came to visit Manea.

Have a look at our pictures...

Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th September 2015

Earlier this week we began learning about WWII. It was an active experience that involved us being prepared for the air-raid siren going off. We were safe under our tables and continued working hard as the bombers flew overhead.

Later we were rewarded for our bravery with wholesome jam sandwiches during story time. We are currently reading 'Friend or Foe' by Michael Morpurgo. It is set during the war and is based around two evacuees.

Thursday 3rd September 2015

Today we have learned a lot of things including...

• How to make a parachute and why they are used,
• Some of us have been investigating capacity,
• We have started to fill our "book-spine" bookcase by making book-spines of the books that we have read,
• Some Fir Class members have made repeating patterns using building blocks.

We have had an unexpected, awesome, wonderfully supreme day and we can't wait until tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we have also discovered that Miss Booden sometimes deletes things before they are saved (by accident).

Fir Class.