In History, we have been learning about castle life and Mary, Queen of Scots. We went on a visit to Bolton Castle and had an amazing time, It gave us the opportunity to experience first hand what life would have been like in a castle. We got to handle artefacts, made plague bags and carried out soldier drills! In DT we have been creating our own fruit smoothies. We designed packaging and learnt how to safely cut fruit to put into our smoothies. We also got to taste test a variety of apples and thought carefully about the vocabulary we could use to describe each one. 

Year 1 took part in a Multi-skills festival with other local schools from our area. It was a fantastic morning (we even got sunshine!) and the children displayed great resilience, cooperation and listening skills. 

In Science, we have been learning about plants. We planted beans in bags at Forest Schools and then observed them as they grew. We created models of what happened to the seeds as they germinated and labelled them with the parts. Year 2 children also created posters to explain what the job of each part is. We kept a close eye on the beans over several weeks and compared what happened to seeds that grew in the light and seeds that grew in the dark. 

We also carried out an investigation growing cress. We planted some cress in cotton wool and some in soil and compared what happened. We then got to eat the cress we had grown in cress sandwiches. Yummy!

We used watercolours to create these beautiful pictures to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. 

 To tie in with our class text 'A Walk in London', we went on a walk around Spa Gardens. We looked carefully at all of the different features of the gardens and thought about what people can do there when they visit. We then used what we had found out to create our own leaflet about the gardens to persuade people to visit. 

We had great fun exploring magnets and finding out which materials are magnetic and which are not. 

In Science, we have been learning about materials and their properties. We carried out an investigation to find out which material would make a waterproof roof for a house. 

We also used our knowledge of forces to help us investigate which material helps cars to move more quickly. 

We enjoyed playing with the fantastic story stones made by children and families of school for our World Book Day Competition. It was very difficult to choose a winner. 

We went on a school trip to Yorkshire Air Museum as part of our History topic on flight. We made our own paper aeroplanes, learnt about the progression of flight over time and had the opportunity to get up close to lots of different planes from the past!

In DT we have been exploring structures. We used lots of different construction kits to make chairs for toys and to help us work out what was needed to make a structure stable and strong.

In Art we have been learning about the work of the artist Judith Scott. We have been learning how to weave and enjoyed making our own woven mats from paper. 

We visited Ripon Cathedral to learn all about St Wilfrid. We also create dour own crosses to take home. 

As part of our work on other faiths we have been learning about Judaism. We learnt about Hannukah celebrations and played spin the dreidel. 

In Maths we have created these fantastic patterns using shapes. We had to rotate the shapes to help them fit together and look carefully to check that our pattern was repeating. 

In Science we went have been learning about animal diets. We went on a a hunt around our grounds to find different animal cards. We then had to look at the clues on each card to help us decide whether the animal was a herbivore, omnivore or carnivore and group them accordingly. 

In our DT units we have looked at Pneumatics and Food.  For our food unit we made fruit kebabs. First we looked at examples of them and used the ideas to design our own. We learnt how to chop safely. They looked and tasted delicious.

In Pneumatics we created toys and had great fun exploring how to make the moving parts. 

Continuing the theme of Keeping Ourselves Safe we took part in a First Aid workshop with Flat Stan. We learnt how to help somebody if they were hurt whilst keeping ourselves safe at the same time.

We visited Ripon Fire Station where we learnt all about Fire Safety. We even got to put our skills to the test with a bit of target practice with the hose!

We have had a brilliant time learning all about the Great Fire of London. We took part in a workshop where we re-enacted the fire which really helped us understand the conditions that made the fire so catastrophic. We have linked lots of our writing to this topic this term- writing explanations about how the fire spread and biographies about Samuel Pepys. 

Autumn 2

Coasts

In RE this half-term we have been learning about Advent. We created some beautiful silhouette paintings to show Jesus' birth.

Linked to our Geography and RE we went on a visit to Ripon Cathedral. The children took part in a trail, identifying different parts of the Cathedral and found a lot of references to St. Wilfrid. To follow on from this we used our geographical skills to make a map of the area surrounding the Cathedral. Thank you to our parent helpers as we wouldn't be able to take the children out without your support. 

Our Christmas party day was fantastic. We played party games, made party hats, enjoyed a delicious lunch (kindly prepared for us by Mrs Jones and Mrs Gordon) and then relaxed watching a Christmas film in the afternoon. It was wonderful to see the children being so happy for their friends when they won at games and there were smiles all round. Well done children. Your dance moves were brilliant and the whole class Macarena and Conga were great fun! 

We really enjoyed having our parents and carers in to make Christingles with us. We thought about what the different parts of the Christingle represent. We also thought about how we can shine our lights in the world, just like Jesus.

Lots of fun has been had in the lead up to Christmas. We have made thought carefully about each candle on the Advent wreath and what it symbolises during our acts of worship. We used collage techniques on our Christmas cards to depict a candle from the Advent wreath. 

In English, as part of our writing to entertain focus, we have been looking at the story Flotsam by David Wiesner. It is a really unusual book because it doesn't have any words! The children really enjoyed making inferences about who different Flotsam trays that appeared in our classroom might belong to. They used the clues in the trays to help them decide whose it might be! 

In Maths the Year 1 children have been making some fantastic patterns. They thought carefully about which shapes would fit well together and how to make their pattern repeat. 

In Science we have been learning about light and dark. First we learnt about what a light source is and how to keep safe in the sun, our most powerful light source! We have had great fun exploring light. We learnt about how light is reflected and used mirrors to reflect light to help us travel along obstacles. We also used mirrors to investigate what happens to writing when it is reflected.  

This half-term our topic is Geography based and is all about Coasts. We have started by learning all about the United Kingdom. We have learnt about the four countries in the UK and some of their special characteristics (flags, national animals and national flowers). We have used an atlas to label the countries, seas and capital cities of the United Kingdom. We then moved on to learning about coastal locations and their features. We used our atlas skills again to identify coastal towns in the United Kingdom and labelled them on a map. We also learnt lots of Geographical words linked to features of coastal locations and will revisit these throughout our topic.

In English, we have changed our focus to writing to entertain. We have started off by looking at poetry. We wrote some amazing poetry about poppies for Remembrance Day and will be putting them into a book to share with the residents of Lister House. 

We have been having lots of fun with language,  learning about how we can use alliteration, similes and metaphors to help paint a picture in the reader's mind. Year 1 created a fantastic poster of similes linked to Autumn. 

Autumn Term 1

The Victorians

During our first half-term we have been learning about the Victorians. We learnt about Queen Victoria as a key person from this era. We also learnt about what life would have been like for children and families living in this period. 

In English, we enhanced our learning by reading the story 'Major Glad, Major Dizzy;' by Jan One. Linked to this we made Victorian toys (peg doll and thaumatrope). For our writing we focussed on writing to inform. We wrote instructions to explain how to make peg dolls, diary entries imagining that our peg dolls had come to life and recounts of our brilliant trip to Ripon Workhouse Museum. We had a fantastic day and got first-hand experience of Victorian life. 

In RE, we have been learning about Stewardship and how we can look after our world and be good stewards. We looked at the story of Noah and his Ark and thought about why God had decided to send the floods. 

We have been practising skipping and it has been fantastic to see the children's perseverance- it is a very tricky skill. They are improving all the time! 

In PSHCE, we thought about developing a growth mindset, which is really important when we are learning new things. We also thought about our virtue for this half-term, Respect. We talked about ways that we can show and grow Respect and Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Webber have been awarding us footprints whenever they have spotted us showing this virtue. We have already earned out first class treat of hot chocolate and a movie for filling our footprints! We have also enjoyed spending time with our Big Friends from Year 6, sharing stories and learning all about one another. 

We had a fantastic time at Forest Schools. We have been learning about all of the rules to follow to help keep us safe and have linked lots of our learning to science. We have looked at different types of animals, thought about what they eat and whether they are herbivores, omnivores or carnivores. 

In RE we have been learning about Pentecost. We created beautiful artwork to show symbols of the Holy Spirit and learnt about how Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to Earth so that he is always with us. 

In Computing, we have been learning about stop start animation. We have created frames and learnt how to add a background, object and make the object move.  You can practice some of these skills on this website. https://www.j2e.com/jit5#animate

In Science we have been learning about plants. We have learnt about the differences between deciduous and evergreen trees, identified leaves from different trees and learnt about seeds. We have also looked at wildflowers and created beautiful watercolour paintings of them, using our observation skills. 

We our enjoying our Forest Schools sessions again this half-term. The children have been able to put lots of our science work into practice- identifying leaves and wildflowers. 

We took part in a Box2BFit session with Dave. We had great fun learning some new boxing skills and challenging ourselves to see how many of each exercise we could complete in the time limit. The teachers got to have a go after school too!! 

For Children's Mental Health Week we held a special Wellbeing Day. We did activities linked to the 5 Ways to Well-Being: Connect, Give, Learn, Be Active and Take Notice. We built a class web made from giving one another compliments, we took part in a noticing hunt around the grounds of school, we learnt some greetings in Makaton and we got active using our new skipping ropes. 

In Computing we have been handling data. We collected data about people's favourite animals on a tally chart. We then represented this data on pictograms, bar charts and block graphs and pie charts using the Junior Toolkit programme. 

In Geography we have been learning about the weather. We learnt about the job of a weather forecast and all the weather-related vocabulary in them. We then worked with a partner to create a weather forecast of our own which we presented to the class. We have also been developing our atlas skills. We have learnt about the continents and oceans of the world and located them in an atlas. 

 In Science we have been learning about light. We have learnt about how light travels and have explored using mirrors to reflect light into different places We have also conducted an investigation to find out how we can change the size of shadows.