A massive thank you to Mr Davenport for bringing in his 9 day old ducklings.

As you can imagine this caused wild excitement in the Magpie classroom.

What a lovely day to learn all about our local Nature Reserve.

Yesterday in the lovely October sunshine we had an outdoor science lesson. Our objective was to try and identify birds that live in our locality. We watched a video first and found out that the Sparrow is the most common bird in our English gardens.

Armed with a bird identification sheet we spent 10 minutes recording the birds we saw.

Funnily enough, we saw no sparrows! Pigeons were the most common birds in our playground. The children were very excited though .....the magpie class actually saw a magpie!

We also discussed how binoculars help us to see the birds from a long distance. The children decided that binoculars help you see the details on the birds and also mean that you can be far enough away so that the birds don't hear you and fly away.

Finally we returned to the classroom and watched a video that showed a bird hatching from its egg and growing into an adult. The children were all able to then complete an activity about a bird's lifecycle using the words egg, hatchling, nestling and adult..

For our science lessons this week we were getting to know the trees in our school grounds. In pair,  we chose a tree and we are going to observe this tree throughout the whole of the year to see if it changes.

What a fantastic year the Polar Bear class have had.

Next term, the classroom will be the same but the class name will change.

We will be turning into the 'Magpie' class.

Following up from the drop in about the phonics screening test click on the document at the bottom to see a list of some of the apps we have been trialling to help support the learning of phonics in a fun and engaging way.

If you weren't able to come and see us at the drop in - take a look and feel free to talk to us next week when we return to school.

As well as the apps there are other resources we often use.

Practising phonics with the Alphablocks!

Why not try to grab a few minutes with your child to watch and discuss some of these videos? You could write down the sounds in each video and make up words together afterwards!

 

• Level 5 – Phonics Long Vowels: Long Vowels Sounds and more Vowel Letter Teams Level five is time to see what vowels can do can do when they get together! Sing-a-long with the long vowel songs and meet an amazing E! There are 10 short videos here.

 

 

• Level 4 - Phonics Letter Blends: Consonants that Blend, also known as Clusters Level four is time to start reading longer words with letter blends: letters that blend together at the start or end of words. There are 8 short videos here.

 

 

• Level 3 - Phonics Letter Teams: Digraphs, Two Letters that make one sound. When your child is happy with letters and simple words, it's time for level three! This is when we meet the letter teams; two letters that make one sound. There are 7 short videos here

 

• You will find more videos from Alphablocks here, including levels 2 and 1.

 

• Alphablocks on the BBC. More videos and games from Alphablocks