KS1

Off on a Pirate Adventure
Year 1, Autumn 1

Year 1 had a 'Pirate Day' where some real pirates visited our school. They taught us about life at sea and let us handle some of their objects including a cannon and a treasure chest. 

  

In literacy, we used adjectives to write a pirate description.

 

In history, we researched the life of 'Pirate Blackbeard.' We found out lots of facts through shared reading. We created a fact file using a 'Talk for Writing' approach.' 

  

In DT we created our own pirate ships following a design criteria. Our ships had to have a window you could see through, a flag and it had to be able to float on water. We designed, made and evaluated our ships. 

   

Year 1 celebrated 'European Day of Languages' where we explored the country Romania. We tasted some local food and participated in some traditional dancing.

  

Toys
Year 1, Autumn 2

Year 1 compared new, old and older toys. We were challenged to make our own games as part of our home learning.

    

In our science lessons we explored materials and sorted our own toys. We found that some toys are soft and some toys are hard, and some toys are made of plastic and other toys are made from wood. 

In literacy we answered the question 'How are old toys different from today?' 

In art we used line and shape to draw our favourite toys using pastels. We also created a 'Pop Art' style piece of artwork based on the work of Andy Warhol. 

         

Our Grandparents joined us for a 'Toy Afternoon.' We asked them lots of questions to find out about toys from the past. We really enjoyed learning about different toys and games.

    

In November we participated in 'Remembrance Day.' We watched the 'Poppies' animation clip and discussed what soldiers may have seen or heard and how they may have felt. 

 

Up, Up and Away!

Year 2 Autumn Term

Year 2 started our Autumn term with our topic 'Up, Up and Away'. We thought about all of the places we had visited and located them on a World Map.

In Geography, we located the 7 continents on a map of the world and researched what each of these places was like to live in. We then looked at Africa and used our iPads to research some interesting facts about Africa. We compared Kenya to Ellesmere Port and looked at the human and physical geographical differences between the two places.

In our History lessons, we learnt about Nelson Mandela as a famous person from Africa and how he impacted our lives today!

 

In Literacy, we read 'Dougal's Deep Sea Diary' by Simon Bartram, and wrote some amazing descriptive noun phrases about what we might find under the sea. We used our expanded noun phrases in our own diving adventure stories to make them more exciting for our readers! We also used our class book to look at the features of a diary and then we used this to write our own diarys as an African child to show how much we had learnt during our topic of Africa.

In D&T we looked at a wide range of tribal masks and used these to design our own. We used a range of patterns and designs to make our tribal masks unique to us. We also made our own musical instruments using materials that we had collected at home. We thought about how we could use these instruments to play simple rhythmic patterns alongside traditional African music!

  

 

In science, we learnt all about animals and their habitats. We looked at different animals and their features. We then learnt how each animal is suited to their habitat. We researched some African animals such as the hissing cockroach and learnt about how they are adapted to their habitat. We even managed to visit Knowsley Safari Park to see real life African animals and learn about their diet from the experts!