Over the past couple of weeks the children of JF have been working incredibly hard to write their very own seaside stories! They included beautiful descriptions of their days starting with the journey there, a day at the beach, a disastrous problem, realistic solution and a tiring car ride home! 

As we generated our ideas, it made us all want to go! As a result of this, we decided when we had finished we would present them to each other with a seaside theme! 

The children loved being outside in their summer essentials, enjoying a well deserved ice cream! 

This week Team JF had their class sports day. Firstly, thank you for coming along to support us and getting involved! The children worked really hard in preparation for this and had been practicing their skills during some PE sessions. I'm sure you will all agree they were amazing and had great fun! We definitely have some budding athletes among us!

​I hope you enjoyed the event as much as we did! 

Maths 

This week Team JF started a new unit of learning to explore position and movement. To begin with we discussed new mathematical vocabulary and the directions we move in. From this we focused on identifying our left and right and went outside to give our partner some instructions to follow! From this, we recapped the vocabulary we used the previous day and built upon it including in front, behind, above and below. We carried out a range of practical activities to deepen our understanding of this concept. Firstly, we used objects in the classroom with sentence stems to write about their positions. After that we had a challenge activity to build a tower from cubes using the instructions I gave. Finally, the children had to carry out the same activity again but with a partner to give their own instructions for each other using the extended vocabulary. 

Literacy 

This week we also started a new unit of learning. We decided as we had been learning all about seaside habitats in Science, we would write about what we could get up to if we went for a day there! To begin with, we read the book ‘A Day at the Seaside’ and discussed the adventures within that. From this, we unpicked the genre of this text and why these types of stories are written.
Finally, we worked together as a team to think of many different things we would get up to if we went for a visit to the seaside.  As the week progressed, we moved into our skill building and looked at speech within writing and expanded noun phrases to describe our characters and a beach setting. 

Maths
This week in Team JF we have continued our work on learning to tell the time. Last week we started with o'clock, half past and quarter to/past which as a class we completed with ease. We used our own small clocks and practiced lots of different times. As well as this we learnt how to write time by looking at the teacher clock at the front and jotting down the time on our whiteboards. This week we moved on to telling the time to 5 minutes. We learnt that although the minute hand might be pointing at a number on the clock, it can also mean minutes past or to something even if it doesn't say it. 

Science
We have been learning about living and non-living things this week in science. First we discussed what we thought made something living and Team JF concluded that something must be able to move to be living. Next, we watched a science video explaining to us that for something to be living it must be able to grow and have energy. This made us think, that a tree or a flower doesn't but it definitely does grow. On our desks we had lots of images of things like toys, animals, plants and cars, we sorted them into living and non-living piles and discussed why we put them there. 

Maths 

This week in maths Team JF have continued learning about shape. We moved on from 2d shapes and into exploring 3d shapes! We started the week by handling, identifying and learning the names of these new shapes. From this we moved into the numbers of vertices and faces each shape has. The children have worked incredibly hard this week to master this skill and have made excellent progress in their learning! 

Next week we will move onto time! 

Literacy 
In literacy this week we have started our new unit of learning! This is linked with our science topic of animals and plants at the seaside. We were so excited and eager to find out more about this topic we decided to write our very own non fiction pieces to inform ourselves and others about life in this place. To begin with we unpicked the features of non fiction pieces and what we needed to include in our own writing. From this we recapped some of the grammatical skills required to make ours fantastic! Next week we will plan our informative pieces and be ready to write! 

 Maths

This week Team JF started a new unit of learning- shape.  To begin with we looked at a variety of 2d shapes and discussed what they look like and their names. Once we were familiar with these we were able to identify some properties. For this, we had to look really carefully at what made them that shape. Team JF were absolutely amazing at this and focused on the number of sides each shape had and the number of vertices. As our learning continued, we began sorting shapes in a variety of ways.

As always, Team JF have worked their socks off and amazed me with their knowledge! After the holidays we will  move into 3d shapes. 

Literacy

Over the past couple of weeks Team JF have continued writing their very own stories based on our class book 'Handa's surprise'. This week the children wrote their first drafts including an introduction, problem, solution and ending. They have also worked incredibly hard to include a variety of skills into their pieces such as contractions, prefixes and expanded noun phrases. I am so proud of the children's achievements over the past couple of weeks and they are becoming such talented writers!

Finally, I hope you all have an amazing Easter break! 

Computing 

This week in computing Team JF have continued their learning on Purple Mash. The children logged on independently and were able to edit their profile with ease. From this, we started exploring the ‘topics’ section on the site. The children found our topic ‘The Great Fire of London’ and started creating their own story board adding text and pictures. 
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Music 

Today in Team JF we explored beat and rhythm in music. We first listened to a song and decided what we did and didn’t like about it, we also discussed what instruments we thought might have been in the song. We then got into a circle and made some out our own beats by clapping, stomping and banging. We took it in turns to listen to one another’s beat and rhythm and then copied what we heard. We focused on our timing to make sure our beat sounded the best it could be. Next we copied some funny dancing animals on the smartboard to explore the rhythm. 

This half terms focus enquiry is observation over time. In Team JF we decided to observe changes to cress plants and what the best condition for them to grow in could be. We each planted our own cress plant, using seeds, cotton wool and a plant pot. Next, each table was given a condition to grow their plant in: blue table had no light, green table were inside, pink table had no water and yellow table were outside. After one week we had a look at our cress plants and found out that yellow tables cress plants grew the best. ​