Well I think science went okay on Tuesday, I hope you all enjoyed investigating sound – it was lovely to see all of you too! (Don’t worry, Mrs Bowen has promised to be online soon.) 

This Friday I’m going to organise a fun Maths lesson for Year 2 on shapes so please join me – details are below, if you need more information about using Zoom for the first time see previous blog post.

– Dr Fishwick

LO: Can I identify different 2D and 3D shapes?

Time/location:  
Y2, Friday 3/4/20,  11 am, https://zoom.us/j/8168811198 access code 816 881 1198 

You will need:  
– Big smiles and plenty of energy

Mrs Bowen brings you a simple art project to try at home. If the picture doesn’t show in the video, download the file here.

Dear Parents and Carers,

Over the last few days, we have come across lots of online resources that are available to support children’s learning at home during the unprecedented times. This list is by no means exhaustive, nor are we promoting anything in particular, but we thought we’d share some of them with you. All children have different learning styles and interests – maybe something below will click! We will also update our learning packs on the class pages as time goes on.

With very best wishes from the staff of Lickey Hills PSN.

https://www.themathsfactor.com/ THIS IS GREAT!! Carol Vordermann is offering free access to her great website for maths offering games, challenges and daily lessons to support learning. There are motivational medals to earn too… Also lots of fun times tables games at https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables . Finally – great online, live lessons and follow up activities from Gareth Metcalf at http://www.iseemaths.com/home-lessons/

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/ – Fantastic resources and games for reading, writing, spelling and maths.

Some lovely reading opportunities to share at https://www.storylineonline.net/

https://www.literacyshed.com/home.html Go to The Literacy Shed for some great ideas for story writing. The Literacy Trust have developed a fantastic portal of resources for families – go to https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/ . Also there’s a list of virtual author activities at https://www.weareteachers.com/virtual-author-activities/

Joe Wicks – The Body Coach is running a daily workout, Monday – Friday at 9am. https://www.thebodycoach.com/blog/pe-with-joe-1254.html?fbclid=IwAR13SHNgsUZEGLVRZYjbFzTf8PDAJvD4I8BxOASuWkVmjSNI6fsKHP1vs40

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zhyb4wx (KS1) and https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zxsvr82 (KS2) to practise your Spanish skills

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/mar/23/10-of-the-worlds-best-virtual-museum-and-art-gallery-tours The Guardian published 10 of the World’s best virtual museum and art gallery tours – but this list is not exhaustive!! The Tate Modern, for example, will give you some ideas for really crazy art to try!!

https://kids.sandiegozoo.org/ Learn about all the animals around the world!

https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/ for geography and science ideas and fascinating facts. https://bpes.bp.com/the-emperors-new-clothes Some great science activities on BP’s website for Primary children – including this fun activity to help the Emperor find the right clothes for each season!

More science fun at https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/collections/primary-games/1

We started our exploration of a new text by Julia Donaldson, this week being ‘The Smartest Giant in Town.’ We explored repetition and sequencing before writing some wonderful sentences about each of the key events. Both Mrs Pitcher and Miss Troth were left speechless by the writing produced by every child.

The giant then became the stimulus for our Art activity. We worked in two groups to create life size collages of the giant before and after he changed his clothes.

         The giant before!                                                The giant with his new clothes!

Our week ended with Sports Relief. We spent the majority of the day involved in some sort of sports activity both inside and outside of the classroom. We were all exhausted by the end of the day!

Agility races in the classroom:

Exercise Class with Joe Wicks:

Outdoor team challenges including:

• Agility course and Ball Skills races

•  Team Ball Skills 1 minute challenges

The Winners!

This week was full of investigating characters and books as a celebration of World Book Day.

Literacy focused on The Detective Dog by Julia Donaldson. We worked to rewrite the story before creating our own drama interpretation. The pupils thoroughly enjoyed the drama games and were able to improvise conversations based on hot chocolate and Super Mario!

In Music, we continued to find the rhythm and beat of popular songs. As always, the pupils were completely motivated by the instruments and are beginning to recognise 1, 2 and 4 beat patterns.

Purposeful Play focused on creating characters and role-playing different scenarios linked to story cards. Lots of imaginative play evolved and some rather interesting characters too!

Finally, World Book Day arrived. The class had the delight of arriving in school dressed in their pyjamas. They spent the day sharing their favourite stories and participating in activities alongside the other KS 1 classes.

Oh my goodness, what a crazy week – snow, rain, snow, floods … when will we find some organised weather system?

However, the confusion of the weather has not phased our wonderful LB 1 pupils. Instead, they have worked like little Trojans, proving how resilient they are all becoming; persevering at tasks that have challenged them and talking about their emotions when events have upset them! Well done, LB 1!

Shrove Tuesday arrived in LB1 and the pupils put their creative chef hats on to create new topping ideas for their pancakes. After exploring how the different countries in the British Isles have their pancakes, the pupils were set the challenge of creating a unique topping for Mrs Pitcher, using their fine motor skills to plan, prepare and create their own pancake toppings. Yummy!

Firstly, they visited the ‘Cookery Shop’ to decide what toppings would be best before planning and designing their creation. 

Of course, once their creations had been made, we had to give them the opportunity to taste test!

Visit to the Cookery Shop to buy their toppings – 

Time to create – 

Time to taste – 

Lesson learning – 

Maths this week explored bigger and smaller numbers: proving it, finding more and less and finding the difference.

Yr. 2 have really shone this week in their Numeracy. They were introduced to the new symbol of bigger than > and smaller than  < in the style of crocodile teeth. They rolled 2 dice to find numbers less than 30 before making a comparison. Great group work was observed as they enjoyed proving Mrs Pitcher wrong!

Finally, we have begun our preparations for the SEND Dance Festival, early in April. We spent our Music lesson exploring the song before Miss Troth used her dance expertise to begin creating our performance. Thank you, Miss Troth. Photos and videos to follow as the performance takes shape.

Julia Donaldson continued to enthuse and interest our pupils in LB1. This week, we have focused on the text, ‘The Snail and the Whale,’ a text new to many of them. This led to activities in Art where Yr. 1 pupils created their own design of a fish that the snail may have encountered as well as exploring sea mammals in Science.   

In Literacy, pupils worked hard all week following the story line of ‘The Snail and the Whale’. Their final goal was to present a retelling of the entire text in small groups. The aim was to use the key vocabulary – First, then, after and last. All worked productively in their trios and earned ‘Golden Tickets’ in the process.

Our Computing lesson used Scratch as a programming tool. Pupils used ipads to make the cat character of Scratch move around a screen before changing his colour and the background. We had about 30 mins of pure focus and concentration. Wow to the power of technology!

Finally, with Valentine’s Day being the focus of many conversations, we used our art and craft skills to produce some heart themed gifts for our loved ones.

Have a lovely half term everyone,

From your teachers in LB1.

What a busy week as always! Who can believe that we have already arrived at the end of week 5? Wow, indeed.

This week, we have continued to explore the texts by Julia Donaldson, focusing on Tiddler. The class loved joining in with the story telling, shouting out the repeated phrase, ‘Tiddler’s late!’ Based on the story, we introduced them to question marks, linking our key questions to the 4 posed by SaLT – Who? Where? When? What? 

Science continued to investigate animals. Using our Science knowledge, we worked in pairs to design a new animal that could survive living in a mountainous habitat. Pupils presented their mammals before receiving feedback from their peers. Lots of features were considered but the only weakness that most had was camouflage! We had a wonderful array of rainbow mammals!

Our Numeracy lessons focused on consolidating ‘more’ and ‘less’ within 20 – finding the order of numbers, 1 and 2 more or less a number and varying the context of using them. The pupils played a final game and it was lovely to observe their team spirit as they supported each other in finding and checking their answers.

Finally, we have started our mission to become ‘programmers of the future!’ The pupils worked in pairs to explore ‘Scratch,’ a programming resource which enables them to move an object around a computer screen. What extremely competent computer users, LB 1 are!

Linking our Art, imagination and cookery skills, LB 1 created new classmates for Zog (a text by Julia Donaldson) by designing a gingerbread man.

This incorporated a multitude of skills as they chose the colour, considered the features they needed and used their fine motor skills to delicately cut out the nose, eyes, spikes, tail, claws and lots more different features.

Our final characters –