Quadblogging

Following a successful first half term sharing our work on our blog, and receiving over 1000 page views, we are now looking forward to reaching a much wider audience.

After half term we will begin quadblogging!

What's quadblogging?

Quadblogging is where 4 schools with class blogs all join together and take turns in visiting each other's blogs, leaving comments about the work that the 'host' school has been doing.  It means that every four weeks we get to share our work with other children our own age, and during the other three weeks of the cycle we get to see what classes are doing in other schools... we might even get some great ideas to help our own learning.

"In terms of young children developing as writers this is the most interesting development in the last 20 years." Pie Corbett

All around the world.

We are delighted that our quad is made up of schools as close as Athersley South in Barnsley, and as far away as Papakowhai in Wellington, New Zealand; with St Margaret's in Somerset completing our quad.  You can visit their blogs by clicking the links on the top right of our blog page.

You can find out more about quadblogging by clicking here.

Meet this week's bloggers

Hi! Thank you for visiting our blog.  We are really excited to be this week's blogging team.  As well as helping Mr Littlewood decide what to put on our blog this week we would like to tell you about our own favourite moments of the week...

Me    frend     drought   in

An    amonnite   fossil.

In show and tel my friend  brought in a t-rex claw fossil;.it was amazing

We  made maps  and pretended the playgrawnd wos a

island

Stranded!

This week we have been working our imagination muscles and preparing for an independant write.  First we watched some clips from Jurassic Park and followed it up by thinking about how we'd feel if we saw the dinosaurs for the first time.  We created our own word banks of wow words to use in our writing... here are some of our fantastic suggestions...

enormous          huge        gigantic        terrified         pounding          thumping

Then we created our own desert island maps by staining paper with coffee and drawing on features like volcanoes, rivers, beaches, jungles and camp sites.

The next day we all went out in to the yard for some role play.  The yard was our desert island and we dashed from one place to another.  Mr Littlewood asked us what we could see, and we stretched those imagination muscles as we talked about pteradactyls swooping over the rumbling volcano, and the foul smell of the T-Rex's breath as he roared through the jungle.

With all these thoughts fresh in our minds we went back in to the class room and began writing about our experiences on the desert island.  Rainforest sounds played in the background as we used all our ideas and 'wow' words to complete our writing.

First I found a T-Rex.  He was stamping and knocking down the triceratops.  He was getting other dinosaurs.  He ate one, all the blood came out of his neck it looked horrible.  Next I saw brachiosaurus, it plucked the branches down on the floor then was dirt then made me cough.  The T-Rex came again.  There was branches on the floor I was terrified.  The T-Rex ate the brachiosaurus then he went away.  It was Ok now.  I saw a pterodactyl.  He swooped his tail.  I nearly got hit with it.  He swung his tail at me again, hit a coconut tree. I caught a coconut in my hands.

Help with reading and phonics

At our school we follow a literacy scheme called Read Write Inc. However, if you want to practice sounds at home then Mr Thorne (an expert in phonics, endorsed by the Times Educational Suppement) has a series of great iPod iPad and android apps, such as this one...


Download it here

You can see an example of Mr Thorne at work here...

Meet this week's bloggers

"I  went  on a scool canolsel  trip  wif  scool  cool  trip.   I  went  on  a  tren  to the toun hall."

“I     lakct  making  the   fosl    because   it  is    gooud.”

“Brachiosaurus.    It  is  a lot  taller   than   a   t-rex    and Brachiosaurus is     30   feet    tall.” 

Data input in ICT

In ICT we've been learning how to collect data using computer programmes.  After collecting the data we could easily find out the most popular colours, foods and pets in our class, and also the most common hair and eye colour, by looking at the block graphs that are created by the data that we have collected.

We took turns adding our data and predicting how the results would be effected

Super Shapes

This week we have been doing lots of work with 2D shape.  We've been naming all the different shapes that we know, and describing shapes using the correct vocabulary, such as 'sides' and 'corners'.  We've also been sorting shapes according to their properties... such as shapes with 4 sides and shapes with 3 sides.

We played a game outside where we had to 'bust some shapes' dancing around, and then Mr Littlewood would shout a shape, and our groups of 4 would have to try and make that shape...  It was easy until he shouted Octagon!

Mr Littlewood helps our group of 3 make a diamond.

We're using our whole bodies to make a square

We also played a game called 'What's in the bag?'  The bag is full of different shapes.  We have to choose a shape, feel it, and then describe it to the rest of our class by using the correct vocabulary .  We are all very, very good at it!.. Why not play something like this at home?

Farmer Pete helps us with number bonds

Here's a handy song that helps us remember our number bonds.

Why not have a sing along at home?

There's also this handy app for iPads, iPhones and other smart devices... Download it for more number fun at home.


Download the app here

Dino bits and bobs

Here's a selction of photos showing some of the work we have been doing in the various learning areas in the Y1 base... all linked to dinosaurs.  We'll keep adding pictures to this blog entry, so check back soon.




Intricate skeleton work!

  

'Box-it-up' history of the dinosaurs
 in our reading area.





Our finished dinosaur skeletons

  


Making dinosaur skeletons with art straws

 

 



I built a raft to save the dinosaur from the volcano

 

Quick!... the volcano is errupting.






  



The finished fossils... they're fantastic.



We made fossils by pressing shells
in to play dough and then filling the
space with plaster

 



We're SO in to dinosaurs that we draw them
on anything!



Dinosaur discovery!

On Friday we received a message from a palaeontologist

We had to write to him and tell him what happened on our big dig.  Here is some of our independent writing.

Big Dig



The dig begins



Today we did our big dig.  We all had different jobs.  Some of us were palaeontologists, some were scientists, and the rest of us were news reporters, artists and note takers.  The diggers got to work scraping away the dirt, and when they unearthed the bones they took them to the scientists to clean them and lay them out to show us how the skeleton would look.



Carnivore or herbivore?



 





We found a whole load of bones and when we cleaned them all and separated them from the stones and dirt, we laid them out on the stage to see what we had found.  We talked about whether we thought it was a carnivore or herbivore and checked the teeth in the skull to help us decide.





Another way that we thought of to find out more about dinosaurs was digging up and finding some... so that’s exactly what we are going to do tomorrow.  We all had a think about all the important people involved on a big dig; from the diggers, to the scientists, to the people who record all the information... and we wrote letters to Mr Littlewood telling him what we wanted to do.

A great reason for wanting a job "I want to get mucky, digging."

Whenever we learn about dinosaurs, we get ourselves warmed up by having a dance to a special song.

Today we had a reading workshop with our grown ups.  Lots of mums, dads and grandparents came in to read our favourite books with us.  It was great.

As part of our dinosaurs project we have been gathering lots of information in various ways.  We have looked at information books and how features such as contents, index, headings and glossaries can help us find information quickly.  We gathered lots of information about dinosaurs, and found out that some dinosaurs were as long as our playground, and as tall as the biggest tree on our field!  Amazing!

An Egg-citing discovery

We discovered some eggs in our class today, they were large and round, and smelled of coffee!

One of the eggs

We had a class discussion about what it could be, using as many descriptive words as we could.  Then we all recorded our ideas, adding a picture to help show what we thought would be inside.  We kept a close eye on the eggs at all times, because we were sure we could see them moving.

Here's some of our fantastic work!

What is in the shell? Could it be a butterfly?

I think it is a dragon and it breathes fire.

I think it is a dinosaur.

I think it is a cute, little, baby lizard.

I think it will be a baby turtle

By playtime the eggs still hadn't hatched, but when we came back in there were cracks in the shell!

We were all very excited now! what could it be?  Mr Littlewood used the visualiser so that we could all see what was hapenning on the big screen as he broke open the eggs.  Guess what was inside... Dinosaurs!

It was a trick!  Some of us were a bit annoyed that it wasn't a real animal, but it was still exciting thinking about what it could have been.  Mr Littlewood told us that our next topic is going to be all about dinosaurs and that we have lots of interesting things to do.

Later in the afternoon some of us worked in the drawing area with Mrs Donegan.  We used charcoal to draw pictures of dinosaurs, blending the charcoal with our fingers to make different effects.  Here are a couple of our drawings.