Homework menu - Spring

Maths Must have's - Spring 

 

 

Project 1 - Find our freedom 

Our first project is called ‘Find our Freedom’. Within this topic we will be discussing the topic of freedom and what this means and looks like in daily life.

 

We will be using the book ‘wonder’ as our stimulus to writing.

 

 

 

 

As part of our immersion in this topic, we drew what our place of freedom looks like. We then researched the artist Ian Andrews and practised his techniques of lighter and darker colour tones. We learnt to make a colour lighter, you need to add white and this is called a tint, and then we add black to make a colour darker, which is called a shade.

We then used this technique to paint our place of freedom ready to describe it in our writing next week. The children really tried to capture their place of freedom with the lighter and darker tones.

As a class we talked about what freedom meant to us:

Freedom means being able to play with who you want.” – Maya

“Freedom means eating as much chocolate and sweets as you want.” – Archie

“Freedom is being able to play out with your friends after school.” – Harry

 

After discussing what freedom looked like to us, we looked at freedom in the past and how this may look different from today. On Martin Luther King Day (Monday 15^th January) we discussed how people with different coloured skin in the past were not given as much freedom as people with white-coloured skin. MLK stood up for these people and fought for their rights to be free and be treated the same as everyone else.

Have a look at some other people and stories we discussed who did not face freedom like we have today.

We then discussed whether our opinions of freedom had changed.

“Freedom means being able to do what you want, but you have to be safe and not hurting anyone.” – Jude

“Freedom means everyone being able to do the same thing and being treated the same.” - Sophie

 

Project 2 - The skies above our eyes 

Within this topic we are exploring space and the history of the space race and the importance of that on today.

Our stimulus for writing is the book 'Moonshot' and we will be writing our own diary entry as if we were Neil Armstrong going to the moon. 

Our immersion into the topic began with the Spaceship Earth show. We shared the joy with over 1,200 other people and schools to share this interactive experience. 

We picked a rocket to send up into space and decided what to do whilst we were up there. Most of us picked to take detailed photos of the earth.

After the session we talked about the first moon landing and how that has helped us to get into space today. The children then created posters to share with each other to remember. 

"I loved this lesson because we could send our own rocket up into space and that is so cool." - Sam

 

 

Funded by Idle PTFA, the children enjoyed the Snow White pantomime to end the week. It was full of joy and laughter, they even had some members of staff join them dancing. 

"I loved the part where Mr Boocock was dancing with the puppets." - Orla

 

Whole school values day  - 22.1.24

As part of our values' day to celebrate our 3 school values of love, joy and courage, 2G focused on the value of Joy and discussed what that meant to us.

“I feel joy when people ae kind to me and let me play in their games.” – Penny

“I show joy when I am at dancing because I enjoy it, and it makes me feel good.” – Betsy

“We can all show joy in school by helping each other and making sure no one is left out.” – Jude

 

During the day, we were practising and using our sewing skills to design and sew a bell which would eventually be attached to bunting to display in the link corridor. We chose the bell to represent the value of joy, and we all showed lots of courage and perseverance!! It was a very tricky skill. 

The day also included a visit from hand to mouth for a godly play session. We listened to the story of Zacchaeus. He stole lots of money from people as a tax collector. One day when Jesus came to town, he couldn’t see him because he was short so he climbed the tree. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”

We discussed why Jesus chose Zacchaeus’s house to stay at and what this meant to us. We then drew photos of what the story showed and the key part of the story. All children had different interpretations.

"Jesus shared love with Zacchaeus because he chose to go to his house." - Jude 

"Zacchaeus was courageous because he climbed the tree to be able to see'" - Betsy

 

 

Our planetarium visit

We had Chris from the Wonder dome visit us to tell us all about our space topic. We watched videos and sang some songs all about planets and space. 

We learnt some interesting facts about space we didn't know:

"We learnt that the blue star is the hottest." - Aria

"The sun is a star." - Archie

"The yellow stars are our stars." - Stanley 

"Some stars are bigger than the sun." - Noah

"We all showed love in the dome because it was exciting." - Betsy 

"I showed joy because i liked it when we visited the moon." - Tommy 

"We all showed courage in the wonder dome because we went into a dark dome, and we didn't know what would happen." - Louis 

 

On Friday we celebrated numbers day (2.2.24). Linking to our space theme, we first made our own Mars Rover that we had previously designed. We added tin toil to give the space effect and some children added tubing and different materials to accessorise their rover. 

We then added wheels and had a competition to see which Rover could go the furthest. We had a starting line and the children pushed their rover to see how far it could travel. The furthest Rover reached 4.5 metres!

 

Later on in the day, we had a class challenge to answer as many questions as possible on Times table Rockstars. We completed the 1-minute maths challenge from White Rose maths and we each got a certificate. Then, to finish our day, we tested our space rocket experiment where we tried to send a rocket into the sky and measure how far away it landed. 

Here is how our values were shown throughout the day.

"I loved today when we made our rovers because it was fun to share things with each other to help our rovers be better." - Orla

"We all showed courage today when the rovers were hard to make, but we didn't give up." - Olivia

"I showed joy when I got all of my questions right on TT Rockstars." - Jude 

"We shared love when we worked as a team to get the most points as a class on TT Rockstars." - Arlo 

 

 

Timeline 

"We showed love learning about space because we were all so excited." - Betsy

"Yuri was the first man in space and he showed joy because he was really happy." - Sophie

"Neil showed courage when he was the first man on the moon." - Sam

 

Project 3 - The long walk to freedom

In this project we are using the book 'The Water Princess' to inform us to learn all about South Africa. In our writing we will be retelling the story and our theme is all about Africa. 

 

Class assembly

We produced a class assembly to showcase our learning from the spring term so far. We explained all the facts we found out about space and our freedom topic. 

Did you know sunsets on Mars are blue? - Sonny 

Did you know you could fit 1.3 million earths into the sun? - Jude

"Stanley showed courage when he read someone else's line without practising." - Adam

 

Project work:

In our project we explored South Africa in the atlas and looked specifically at Cape Town and found it on the map. 

We then used our map knowledge to help a little boy to get back to his home in Cape Town after he was lost in Idle. This meant we had to find ways to travel to Cape Town. We explored different ways of getting to Cape Town - by bus, boat, plane, taxi, ferry. 

We decided the best way to get there was to:

Drive to Manchester Airport --> then we would need to get the bus to the right terminal --> Walk to the plane --> Fly to Cape Town Airport --> walk to the car or taxi --> Finally we would arrive at his house.

 

We then used the map to locate different places and then categorised these into human and physical features. 

 

We made African pots using salt dough to represent the same pot in the story of the Water Princess. 

"I showed joy when making my pot by making something that no one else made." - Noah

"I showed courage when making the pots because it was really hard to do, and I didn't give up." - Tommy

We then added paint to decorate them to make them look like clay. 

 

Sean Gaffney - para Athlete 

Sean led a sponsored fitness circuit with all the pupils and then delivered a really inspirational assembly. The aim of the event was to inspire the pupils to be more physically active and to encourage them to discover and pursue their passions in life.

The athlete event was fantastic for connecting the pupils to an extraordinary athlete role model and gave us the opportunity to raise money to improve physical activity in school, whilst also supporting both athletes and para-athletes, so that they can continue to inspire the next generation. 

"Sean showed courage when he didn't give up after he had the accident. He now spreads courage to other people and shows us that we can do things if we don't give up." - Harry  

"Sean showed joy when he was teaching us new exercises." - Sonny

 

World Book Day:

As part of this year’s theme ‘Idlebury’, the children dressed up in festival clothes, and we spent the day celebrating and sharing all things books.

 

 

 

 

 

We designed our own book cover and tried to see if others could guess what our book was about.

We had a competition against the whole school about who could decorate the best wooden spoon. Unfortunately, no one in 2G won the children’s competition as it was a pretty difficult one with some amazing creations!!

However, Miss Gravestock won the teachers' competition with her Harry Potter and Hedwig spoons! Can you spot them?

 

We also shared reading in year 5. We read to them, and they read to us. It was lovely to share our Love of reading with another year group we rarely see.

DT

We have been developing our DT skills recently in the form of lots of different end products. We made Mother's Day cards with a theme of being pop up. We explored the art of pop-up books and then used this to explore how they work and how we could make them. We watched a video which showed us a great idea we could use and made a pop-up flower vase for our mums.

As part of our immersion into our next writing phase, we made levered African animals. We spent a few lessons on this understanding the need for levers in tools and objects. Then exploring how they work, having a go at making our own and then creating our end product of a moving African animal. There were some really creative designs!!