Monday started with a quick chat with ‘talking partners’ and we soon discovered that between us we knew quite a lot about snails. A non-fiction Usborne text entitled ‘Snails’ added to the children’s knowledge and they all wrote some interesting facts for their writing in class.
A story recall of ‘Odo the Snail’ on Tuesday was for some, the best writing of the week and they added lots of adjectives (Wow words) to our word wall. On Thursday for our ‘Big Write’ the children chose a picture of a snail and wrote their own story. Once again it is very clear which children are remembering and applying words learnt for spellings and those who are applying the taught diagraphs to help them spell words. It is also clear which children are remembering the fundamentals….a sentence needs a capital letter and a full stop at the end, in a story characters have names, names start with capital letters. Some creativity is starting to develop but making up stories is something that needs to be practised and developed and children are becoming more confident to try.It is certainly an area we will be revisiting every week until the end of term
Spellings are more demanding this term, with a few more year one words to learn. After the test we are writing a spelling sentence and many children are missing the chance of another sticker and house point by not putting capital letters, forgetting the full stop at the end, spelling one or more of their spelling words incorrectly or not listening carefully to what they have been asked to write and reading it through at the end to check. Keep practising!
Art and technology this week introduced the children to the artist Henri Matisse and his work called L’Escargot.(The Snail) Having observed snails in their investigation and drawn them throughout the week they knew what a snail looked like. The children were pleased with their finished pictures which they made using off-cuts of felt from the Scrap Store. I think that they look more like snails than the great artist himself created. Look at some of the pictures and see what you think! We heard the story of the Whale and the Snail’ on Friday and made a model.
In our science work we watched ‘Come Outside’ where they visited a giant African land snail. It also involved observing and investigating the way in which snails moved and what they choose to eat. Each group had 4 or 5 different size snails to observe and then we had an interesting discussion. Looking closely at Mrs. Buckinngham’s two year old African land snail was also extremely interesting.
The butterflies have grown considerably this week. We are hoping that they will change into their chrysalis next week and into butterflies by half term!
Next week we will be learning about other minibeasts. We hope to go mini-beast hunting later in the week if the weather is suitable and learning more about the creatures that live in our school grounds and gardens.
Don’t forget the summer fete on 11th June. Well done to those of you who have already signed up. Lots more volunteers are still needed to ‘do a stint’ on the many stalls that are run. Have a look and see if you have any toys that your child has grown out of playing with. Full tins and bottles are required for the tombola’s and all donations for these will be gratefully received in school. Enjoy your weekend.