​This week our learning has been focused on Road Safety and the message we have conveyed is ‘stop, look, listen and think’ and we have used the Super Cat Rap to help us remember this. Can your child remember the rap? Within our learning on road safety we have also discussed how we need to be bright to be seen. Rather than our usual Welly Walk this week we went out in smaller groups and really focused on crossing the road safely. Our learning activities this week have included designing a poster to teach others how to be safe when crossing the road, designing our own reflective hi-vis vests, we have been practising careful colouring within the lines and we have been practising our cutting skills by cutting along the patterned lines. 

​Year 1 children have started a new unit of learning within Literacy and our text driver for this unit is ‘The Tiger Who Came for Tea’. This week we have learnt to add the suffix ‘ing’ when there is no change to the root word and we have been practising leaving spaces between words and practising forming capital letters. The children know that we will be working on sentence structure and our purpose of writing is to read our writing to our favourite teddy that we have chosen to invite to our tea party on the 7th December (more information to follow shortly). Our Reception children continue to access appropriate RWI groups and it is an absolute pleasure to see how enthusiastic they are about reading and writing! The Reception children love to practise forming their letters and name writing in their own independent learning time – we are so proud of them!

​In Maths, Reception children started the week continuing to practise describing shapes by playing a game called ‘shape shop’. The Reception children have been practising joining in counting to 10, using their fingers to represent numbers to 5 and to 10 (in the quickest possible way), have continued to develop their understanding of equal amounts, recognised numerals to 5, represented quantities in more abstract ways, such as by clapping or jumping, remembered that the 'stopping number' tells us how many we need altogether and began to understand that when a set of objects is rearranged, its quantity remains the same. Our Year 1 children have partitioning the numbers one to five in a systematic way, found a missing part when one part and the whole is known, shown one more and one less than a number using representations and used a bar model to represent a whole partitioned into two parts. 

​In Science we conducted this half-terms enquiry on researching using secondary sources. We used Google and searched ‘What are the most common British garden flowers?’. Miss Overton named some garden flowers that she thought were common. We then went on a variety of different websites including; CountryLiving, BlueIris Landscapes, Primrose and used the top 10 garden flowers on Google to research whether the names of the flowers Miss Overton had decided on were common. When the name of the flowers appeared on these websites we put a tally mark in the corresponding box. 

In Computing, our Year 1’s started by looking at the painting by Piet Mondrian. We learnt that he was an artist who was born in 1872 and died in 1944 at the age of 71. We then discussed how we thought the picture had been made and that to make this picture an initial square was drawn then divided into smaller shapes using straight lines. We found out that Mondrian used primary colours: red, yellow, and blue and know from previous learning that primary colours cannot be made from mixing colours together, but they can be mixed together to make other colours. We watched carefully as Miss Stuart modelled creating a piece of Mondrian-inspire-art then it was our turn! Look at some of our amazing pieces of digital art!

​Our learning has focused on anti-bullying week and being kind. We started the week by wearing odd socks and listening to ‘Simon Socks’ by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet. After listening carefully to the story we spoke about how Simon was sad because he felt left out because he didn’t have a pair. We also discussed that we were wearing odd socks to help us remember that it is not nice to feel left out and we should always try to play with others. We have thought about the different ways we can show kindness such as; smiling at people, offering to help, checking others feel okay and giving a hug to name a few. We have learnt that being kind can make others feel happy. As part of anti-bullying week we have also enjoyed listening to several Elmer stories. The Elmer story taught us that it is okay to be different. We looked at the ways we are different such as; eye colour, hair colour, who we live with, if we have any pets, the languages we speak and our favourite fruit.
Our learning activities this week have included; matching the pairs of socks, creating our own odd socks, creating an Elmer and using a pipette to fill the holes on Duplo with water.

​Reception children continue to access appropriate RWI groups. Our Year 1 children have worked hard to hold sentences and have produced amazing writing with capital letter, finger spaces and full stops. We then practised re-reading our sentences before we went to present our writing to Miss Clementson and the Rainbows. We could speak with confidence about what our text driver was and what we had been working on!

​In Maths, Reception children started the week learning to describe the properties of circles, squares, triangles and rectangles and we will continue with this next week. We have investigated ways to compose and de-compose sets of 3 and know that 1 and 2 are parts of 3. We have also investigated ways to compose and de-compose 4 and used spatial language to describe our stampoline patterns and we also investigated ways to compose and de-compose 5.

​Year 1 children have used a part-whole model to represent a whole partitioned into more than two, explained that numbers can represent how many objects there are in a set, explained that ordinal numbers show a position and not a set of objects and partitioned the numbers one to five in different ways.

​In Geography, we looked at our local area and learnt to identify physical and human features of geography within Wombwell.

In Computing, our Year 1 children began the new unit on ‘Creating Media – Digital Painting’. Within this lesson they used Paint and explored the different freehand tools – paintbrush, pencil, eraser, fill tool, spray can and undo tools to create a picture of themselves.

This week we have started our new learning journey ‘Sparkle and Shine’. We have had a fantastic and busy first week back! Our learning has focused on ‘How do we celebrate Bonfire Night, Diwali and Remembrance Day?’. We started the week listening to ‘Sparks in the Sky’. We then learnt about the Gunpowder Plot, we know that it happened in the past and discovered that this is the reason that we celebrate Bonfire Night. We know that Bonfire Night is always celebrated on the 5th November. Next we moved onto the celebration of Diwali and impressed our grown-ups with how we remembered the actions for the characters in the story of Rama and Sita. We were able to join in with the actions and could retell parts of the story. We know that Diwali is the ‘festival of light’ and is celebrated by Hindu’s, Sikh’s and many other religions around the world in October/November. We have also learnt about Remembrance Day and how we remember the soldier who fought for our country in the war – we know we wear poppies to remember. We know that nocturnal animals come out in the dark and know owls, bats, moths, hedgehogs and badgers are all nocturnal animals!

​Our activities have included; printing with shapes to make Rangoli patterns, printing with potatoes to create poppies, making name rockets, using creative resources to make fireworks and sparklers, ordering the Gunpowder Plot and our funky finger activity has been using the tip of paintbrush to make pre-writing patterns in the glitter!

​In Literacy, our Reception children continue to access appropriate RWI groups – some children continue to learn sounds, some children are learning to blend with magnetic boards and some are learning to blend with the pocket chart and the matching green word cards! Our Year 1 children were introduced to our text driver for our new unit of work which is ‘The Highway Rat’ we were able to predict what would happen in the story and answer questions about what we had heard. We have begun to learn about the suffix ‘s’ and know we add this to the end of a word to make it plural. We have practised leaving finger spaces between words and have practised forming some capital letters – T, H, S and I in preparation for our hold a sentences next week.

​In Maths, our Reception children started the week identifying circles, squares, triangles and rectangles. We have been identifying a ‘whole’ when shown 1 part of a familiar object. We have identified parts of our own body and recognised that some whole objects have parts that cannot be removed and we investigates ways to compose and de-compose sets of 2 and 3. We know that 1 and 2 are parts of 3.

​Our Year 1 children started the week looking at what a whole object is and explaining that we can split a whole into parts. We have learnt that a whole can represent a group of objects. We then moved on to identifying a part of a whole group. We have learnt what a part whole model is and used it to represent a whole partitioned into two parts.

​In Science, we have been investigating properties that allow materials to change shape. Our inquiry question was “Can all objects change shape?”. We started by making a class prediction which was “We think that some objects will change shape and some objects won’t because we think some objects are made of hard materials and some are made of soft, bendy materials.”. We looked at several objects made out of different materials and concluded that not all objects can shape. The objects only changed shape when the material was flexible and soft. When the material hard and rigid the objects did not change shape.

This week our learning has been focused on Spooky Surprises and Halloween. We started the week by listening to the story ‘Funny Bones’ by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. We learnt that a surprise is something that is unexpected. Our activities this week have all been Halloween themed and we have had a very week. In the creative area, we have been drawing an outline of a pumpkin and then using PVA/pritt sticks to glue on squares and triangles for the eyes, nose and mouth. We have also been making ghosts by drawing an outline of a ghost and using PVA glue to stick on cotton wool we have then added on spooky looking eyes! In the writing area, been drawing and writing about what we would put in our cauldron to create a potion! We have also been using our Fred Fingers to write the CVC Halloween words in the phoneme frames. In the small world area, we carved a pumpkin to use as a tunnel and used the train track to create a spooky train ride! In the funky fingers area, we have used the tweezers to remove the spiders from the web! We have also enjoyed singing lots of Halloween songs such as ‘Halloween is Coming’ and ‘5 Little Pumpkins’.
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For our Talk through Stories sessions this week we have been enjoying the book ‘Room on the Broom’.

In Literacy, our Year 1 children have worked hard to punctuate a sentence independently with a capital letter and full stop mostly correct through hold a sentence. We have tried hard to form our letters correctly and leave spaces between words.
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In Maths, our Year 1 children have been introduced to the equality and inequality symbols (<, > and =). We have used them to compare sets of objects and to compare expressions.

​In Maths, our Reception children have practised subitising amounts to 4, revisited ‘more than’ or ‘fewer than’ by looking, compare groups of up to 3 objects by matching them 1:1, said when they have an equal number, built towers with an equal number of squares, matched the squares in the towers 1:1 and said when there is an equal number, too many or not enough.

In Geography, we took a birds eye tour of each capital city of the UK, we listened carefully to the name of each landmark and had to decide whether it was a physical or human feature of geography - we were fabulous at this! Our Year 1 children then went away to complete their learning activity - they had to name the 2 pictured landmarks for each capital city and circle to identify whether it was a physical or human feature. We have some budding geographers!

In RE, we began by recapping that the religion we are learning about is Judaism and was introduced to the Star of David. We were able to recall that the special Jewish scroll is called a 'Torah' and that the special Christian book is called the 'Bible'. We listened carefully to Noah's Ark which is a story for the Torah in the book of Genesis. After we had listened carefully as a class we were able to join in with retelling the story. We then used the story sequencing cards to sequence and retell the story as we made our own book of Noah's Ark! 
What fabulous learning we have had in RE this week!

In PSHE our focus this week was on recognising and naming emotions. We started by looking at photos of other children and we had to decide how they were feeling. We were able to say things that made us happy, what cheered us up when we were sad and what we could do if we felt scared. We then listened attentively to the story 'The Colour Monster'. ​ In the story yellow is happiness, blue is sadness, red is anger, black is fear, green is calm and by the end of the story the monster is pink, he feels loved. For our activity, we had to listen carefully to the emotions being read and match them to the correct colour monster.

In Team EO we have a learning journey displayed so that we can recall and discuss our learning over the course of the half-term. At the end of each half-term the display is taken down and stuck into our learning journey floor book that is kept in the reading area so that children can continue to enjoy revisiting our previous learning and strengthen their knowledge.

Here is our learning journey display for Autumn 1 on our 'Marvellous Me!' topic. 

Team EO staff hope you all have a lovely, restful half-term and we cannot wait for our next learning journey to begin - 'Sparkle and Shine'!

Today ​we took park in a dance workshop that introduced us to the Hindu festival of Diwali – the Festival of Light. We performed a dance that told the story of Rama and Sita.

We showed excellent listening skills as we were introduced to poses for Rama, Sita, Ravana and the diva lamps and  different moves which helped us to create our dance.

We are excited to be learning more about this festival after half-term and on Friday as a school we will be 'wearing it bright' to celebrate Diwali.

We started the week reading the story “In Every House on Every Street” by Jess Hitchman. We know there are different types of houses - flat, bungalow, terrace, detached and semi-detached. We have learnt to say that we live in Wombwell near Barnsley in England. We know that we can use Google Earth to find where we live and we had lots of fun on Tuesday and Wednesday trying to find our house on Google Earth on the IWB and iPad using school as a starting point. Our activities have all been linked to houses! In the creative and painting area we have made some wonderful junk modelled houses using the lollipop sticks to create the outline of our houses! We have been drawing and colouring pictures of our houses and we have been using the different construction resources such as the wooden blocks and Duplo to build houses – we have even been building different parts of our homes such as garages! This week for our funky finger activity we had to roll the dice, use the tweezers to pick up the cubes to build a tower!

On Thursday, we enjoyed playing a game of Jenga with our friends - we practised turn-taking and teamwork to rebuild the tower when it fell over!

​Reception children are continuing to work hard in their RWI groups to learn and consolidate previously taught sounds. In Maths, we have had a focus on counting, ordinality and cardinality. We know that the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether in a set of objects – and we have practised their 1:1 correspondence skill, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging objects. We know that we have 5 fingers on one hand and that ‘5 and 5 makes 10 altogether’.

​Year 1 children have continued practising letter formation and will be moving on to hold a sentence next week – we will still be ensuring letters are formed correctly! In Maths, we have; explained that items can be compared using length and height, explained that items can be compared using weight/mass and volume/capacity, practised counting a set of objects and compared a set of objects.

​In Science, we have been thinking about suitable uses for a range of materials and used our knowledge of properties to say why that material is good for the given object.

In RE, we have started our learning on Judaism. We started by Miss Overton sharing her favourite special book with us which was ‘Superworm’. We then learnt that the special book/scroll for Jews is called a ‘Torah’ which contains the 5 books of Moses.

In PSHE, over the last 2 weeks we have been thinking about what makes us special. This is something that we have found tricky so our friends have been giving us ways in which we are special. These have been recorded down and will be shared with the children throughout the year as a reminder as to why they are special!
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For our Talk through Stories story sessions this week we have been enjoying the book ‘Five Minutes Peace’!

Our Reception children started this session reviewing Ginger's 'rules of listening' and ensuring everyone was showing good listening before we beginning. We recapped that when someone is happy their; mouth will be smiling, head will be lifted high and eyes will be wide open and when they are sad their; mouth is turned down, eyes are small and head is lowered.

We listened carefully to the poem 'Bears bears everywhere' and discussed how the words in it rhymed.

We then took turns holding Ginger and we had to listen carefully to the scenarios Miss Hansom described and say whether they would make Ginger feel happy/sad. Some of the scenarios included:

• Humphrey will not share his toys with ginger
• Mummy tells Ginger off
• Ginger gets a sticker from her teacher
• Ginger is playing with Mopsy
• Ginger gives her Daddy a cuddle
• Ginger falls over in the playground

We spoke about how if we see someone looking sad that it is kind and caring to check on them, we practised asking our friends if they are okay and we said that some children may say that they are not okay but they want some time on their own and how that is okay.

Next, we went around our circle and each made a happy/sad face and we had to say how our friends were feeling. We had some really thoughtful members of Team EO in the circle as when they could see their friends were sad they asked if they were okay!

Finally, we spent time with our friends colouring in pictures of Ginger looking happy and sad!

This week our learning has been focused around the question “What jobs are in the community?”. We started the week reading ‘When We Grow Up’ by Melanie Walsh which introduced us to a variety of jobs and explained what these jobs involved. Following on from this we used our stem sentence “When I grow up I want to be…” with our talk partners and then shared our ideas back as a class. Team EO have lots of ambitious careers such as ballerina, rockstar, vet, doctor, teacher, engineer, builder and firefighter to name a few. We also listened to the stories ‘When I Grow Up’ by Tim Minchin and ‘A Superhero Like You’ by Dr Ranj.

​As part of our learning this week our home corner was turned into a bakers, we have been junk modelling emergency vehicles and drawing pictures to show what we want to be when we grow up! For our funky finger activity this week we have been seeing how many hoops we can thread on a strand of spaghetti in a minute. We have continued to explore our Autumn investigation area.

 We have continued to learn and enjoy listening to the poem ‘Cake-o-saurus’. A copy has now been sent home for your to share with your poem!

​Reception children continue to work in RWI groups and have been put into new groups this week. Some children are consolidating previously taught sounds to ensure they are secure in them whilst others continue to learn sounds. Children are working on blending to read using magnetic boards and green word cards. In maths, we have been playing a game of 'show me' - where Miss Overton says a number and children have to show that many number of fingers and then show it in a different way. The children have been comparing 2 sets of objects and identifying which is ‘more than’ and which is ‘fewer than’. We have also been learning to use the positional language; ‘over’, ‘under’, ‘through’ and ‘around’.

​Year 1 have continued to practise letter formation ensuring they are formed correctly, starting and finishing in the correct place. They are getting really confident at writing the tricky red words we have been practising. In Maths, we have continued counting within 100, we have had a specific focus on counting forwards clapping on each multiple of 10, counting from a given number and recognising numerals on a 100. Additionally, we have used the number line on BrainingCamp to count within 100 and we have been working on identifying numbers by counting on from the previous multiple of 10.

On Tuesday, in Computing our Year 1 learners started by recapping that the computer mouse is an input device. We learnt that a keyboard is an input device that allows us to write using a computer. We looked at different types of keyboards and discussed similarities and differences – we concluded that even though they look different they all perform the same function. Next, we opened the Paint app and used the text tool to write words. We learnt that to use the text tool we need to select it using a single click on the mouse, we insert the text box by clicking and dragging. We explored the text function by typing our names – we found it quite tricky so this is something we need to keep practising but we worked hard. We learnt that the space bar should be pressed once to leave a space in between words just like a finger space. Our next job was to alter the size and colour of our text. We then saved our learning into our designated file by typing our name and the date. 

On Wednesday, ​Team EO carried out our pattern seeking investigation our enquiry question was ‘Do all apples have the same number of seeds?’. Each talk partner was given an apple cut in half, we had to carefully count how many seeds were in each apple and report our findings to Miss Overton who recorded them in the table below. We looked at our findings and concluded there was not a pattern to the number of seeds in an apple. 

​In Geography, we have begun learning about human and physical features of geography. We know that human features are made by people and physical features are made by nature. Year 1’s then used the Odizzi human and physical features worksheet to name the pictured features.

​On Welly Walk, we worked in pairs to complete an Autumn scavenger hunt!