Spring week 5

We have had a lovely last week of term in Owls. 
In English we have been putting our own spin on the original Goldilocks and the three bears story. 
The children came up with brilliant story maps with lots of ideas in for their own story! 

In science we have been looking at how to keep our bodies healthy. The children made great posters for us to refer back to when we need to remember why keeping healthy is important and how we can do this. 

MADD week 2024 

What a wonderful enrichment week! We have had so many different musical experiences for the children, which hopefully has sparked an interest in music!

A massive thank you to Miss Allen who organised everything and gave the children a cultural rich experience. 

Owls: Term 3 Week 1

Wow, what a great start back to school for Owls. 

We have introduced our new topic which is superheroes, and have had an opportunity to look at 'real life superheroes'. This week we looked at Florence Nightingale and how she influenced the future of nursing. The children looked closely at the difference in healthcare back then, and how lucky we are now. 

In maths we have been partitioning numbers up to 12 in year 1. And the year 2s have been looking at multiplication and division! We have lots of fun in our maths lessons and enjoy using manipulatives to figure out the extra challenge at the end of our lessons. 

In English the children have been learning about recount writing. We have been reflecting on our Christmases and writing about the things that we did. 

Owls Term 2

Week 3&4 

We have had a lovely couple of weeks. 

We started our Christmas celebrations and created some decorations to go on our tree, which is displayed at the local church. 

We have started learning our Christmas songs for our play, and the children have all been assigned a very important role in the performance! 

Owls have been working really hard in English, we have been learning a new story. To help us begin writing the story we all created a story map, the outcomes were brilliant! 

In maths we have been looking at subtraction. The children have been doing incredibly well. 

Owls Term 2 

Week 1 & 2 

A lovely couple of weeks back for the Owls class.

Last week, we took a trip to the Stroud book festival, where the children got to hear Ken Wilson-Max share stories of writing his beloved book- Astro Girl. 

The Children created information leaflets on the National Trust, which would inform you of all the wonderful work they do around the UK, and how they are helping our environment. 

This week Owls have finished writing their own stories! They are a wonderful read and I encourage any loved ones to ask them to tell you their story.

We had a Dodgeball tournament within school that was led by the Eagles. There were some great dodging skills and the children thoroughly enjoyed it (as you can see from the pictures).

The final week before a well deserved break for these hardworking bunch! 
I have had no voice this week and the lovely Owls have looked after me and made sure to pay attention when I am trying to talk… 

They have managed to create some lovely Halloween posters, which were brilliant. 
In English we wrote a story! The children’s writing was so neat and I was incredibly pleased with the results. 
 

I hope everyone has a lovely half term and a well deserved break. 

What a fun week we have had!

After a lot of prep, this week we made our bird feeders using the instructions the children wrote. We had SO much messy fun making them! Next week we are going to find places around the school to hang them.

 
In English, we have been getting ready to write the story, Monkey see- Monkey do! We created our own story maps and we have learnt it off by heart (ask the children to tell you it with our actions). 

Mrs Knight had lots of compliments after teaching Owls PE, she couldn’t believe how many different ball passes they knew, and how well they played ‘piggy in the middle’, we are getting ready to introduce all of our new skills into a netball match… 

Overall another delightful week with lots of learning. 

I would like to thank the children for bringing me in so much homework, I love seeing the learning you are doing at home, and I love how enthusiastic you are with it.

Keep it up Owls :) 

Another busy week learning in Owls. We have been looking at and exploring the properties of shapes in Maths.

Within English we have started learning a story, to help us, Miss Nicholas created a story map with some dodgy drawings of Monkeys on...

Additionally, I wanted to thank all of the children in Owls for always trying so hard at school, but also at home! The children are constantly amazing us all with their hard work ethic.

I am very proud of them all 😀

Summer

19th - 23rd June 

We have had a very busy and hot week!

An absolutely amazing Sports Day thanks to Mr Moorcroft and Mrs Knight. Thanks to everyone who came to show their support! We think the children did amazingly!

I was also so impressed with those children who took part in Uplands got talent! Such talent and skills I haven’t seen before! Well done! 
Check out the photos below of the amazing teams! 
We then finished off the week with some much needed water play.
Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Langdon

Summer!

Pyjamarama Day!

We have been bananas in pyjamas today! We have created our own book covers and stories, read books in the playground (in the shade!), created finger puppets to create stories, and written comic book strips! 
Such fun for such a good cause. 
 

Summer 

5th - 9th June

Welcome back! We hope you had a lovely half term! 
This week we started learning about chronological reports and have been looking at various types about animals. Our model text is all about tigers! 
In history we have been learning all about a significant local person. Can you remember his name? 
The year ones have been working really hard on their phonic sounds and their blending of real words and alien words. This is in preparation for the Government Phonics screening tests next week. At the beginning of the week, Miss Bird sent home a phonics pack with all the phonics sounds the children should know very well, and some words to help practise on. 
Have a great weekend! 
Mrs Langdon

Summer Week 5

15th - 19th May

It has to be said how amazing the year 2s have been these last two days. They have sat both of their maths SATS papers and done them with such cool heads and steady nerves. I have been so impressed with them, and you should be so proud of how they have handled them too. 
Next week will be the two English reading papers, the first on Wednesday morning and the second on Thursday morning. So make sure we are having full delicious healthy breakfasts to keep us going! 
And well done to year one who have put up with a slightly unusual timetable. 
Have a lovely weekend in the sun, wear a hat and suntan lotion, drink lots of water and have a well earned rest. 
Mrs Langdon x

Summer Week 4 

8th - 12th May

Every Friday afternoon in Owls, some of the girls and boys open up a spa for their friends. Georgie, Aubrey, Lillie, Jayden, Emilia, Letty and Jasmine-Rose put chairs together, gather glasses of water and fruit and open up the spa for head, shoulder and face massages! They were very eager to put this on the blog and helped me to write it!
We’ve had a very spiritual few days of learning about the Puja Ceremony and Diwali. We have lit incense, sprayed water, watched how Rangoli is made and what it is used for, painted bindis on our heads and learnt all about the different deities Hindus worship. 
We also started making our own Kente Cloth and look forward to finishing it next week. 
 

Have a lovely restful weekend! 
Mrs Langdon 

Summer Week 2 

24th - 28th April

This week we have been learning about similes in English, locating Kenya in Geography, statistics and taking away in maths, looking into the art work of Edward Tingatinga, the art work of Abdoulaye Konaté and the different food groups and how they keep us healthy in PSHE. 

We had a great end to the week with a variety of fruits and making a fruit rainbow and fruit smiley face! 

Hope you all have a great bank holiday weekend! 

Mrs Langdon

Summer Week One

17th - 21st April

Welcome back Owls!

We hope you had a fun and restful time off. I have been so impressed with the energy and enthusiasm this week, everyone has been working so hard in every lesson. 
We had a good discussion about snacks, and the type of snacks that are good for us and help us to learn and grow. We made a chart and put items under “treat” and “healthy snack”. The children were very good at determining what foods fell under which category. We have all decided that chocolate, crisps and very sweet foods aren’t great to help us think and learn, but are great for an end of day or weekend treat.

The foods we decided that were good for snack time were fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, crackers/ rice cakes, cheese and yoghurts. I also reminded the children that the school also supplies lots of yummy fruit, so if it is hard to come by these items at home they can get them at school. 
 

We also had a big chat about reading at home. As you know, I have put into place a great incentive to get the children reading more at home. Some children have really taken to this challenge and have increased their daily reading hugely! I am so impressed. Lots of children have already taken home the prize! 
At the moment Year 1 are surpassing Year 2 by a mile with this challenge. So we had a big chat about how important reading at home is. Reading comes into every part of the school day, in maths, geography, science and P.E! I told the children how hard I found reading as a child, and that I was always the one having extra reading sessions, and I really didn’t like them. So I know it’s hard, but the more you read the easier it gets, the less you read, it will stay hard. So I challenge you all, especially my year twos, to pick up your book and read. Please do let me know if your book is not interesting for you and I will find another you like. 
Bravo, Owls for a great week back! Have a relaxing weekend and get your nose stuck in a book! 
Mrs Langdon x

Spring Week 4

20th - 24th March

This week we have all been working very hard again! The year 1s have been looking at fractions and the year 2s have been learning about time and money! We wrote up our own version of The Papaya That Spoke. We had many variations, from the Golden Strawberry That Spoke, to The Fire That Spoke! The whole class have been working so hard on their handwriting, finger spaces and full stops.

I was also so pleased to see and hear how our new reading challenge has really excited and engaged some of the children already.

**Remember, if you read four times in a week you get a gold star, and if you have three gold stars you get a prize!**

This morning we were treated to a visit from Anita from SCARF, who had a wonderful lesson with the children telling them all about the foods that help as grow strong and keep us happy and how our body works.

Our Sunflower seedlings are also starting to germinate which is very exciting!

Have a lovely weekend. 
Mrs Langdon

Spring

13th - 17th March

We have had such a busy week, especially as we weren’t here on Wednesday. 
Monday at Hawkwood was filled with wind, rain, lettuce, cows, hiking and round houses. The children were beautifully behaved, asked brilliant questions and really took an interest in the farm. We looked at different vegetables that had been harvested, and we got to try various types of lettuce straight from the ground in a polytunnel. We also got to meet some Hereford cows, feed them and give them a stroke! 
On Thursday we started our investigation in science, we planted 6 seeds each with a different way of growing. We also got to plant our very own seeds to watch them grow. Check them out in our window! 
We also had a visit from a Police Officer who talked to us about how to be safe, which adults can be trusted and what to do if a stranger approaches. Run, yell, tell! 
Have a lovely restful weekend everyone. 
Mrs Langdon

Spring Term 

6th - 10th March

This week we have been working on our Hockey skills in P.E and how to centre and balance ourselves in yoga. 
We have learnt actions for our English story, ‘The Papaya That Spoke’ - can you remember the actions and practise at home? Year 2s have been working hard at their fractions and year 1 have been working hard at partitioning.

In science we have started an investigation to see what happens if we take away one of the main things a plant needs. Next week we will be planting seeds and observing our experiment! 
On Thursday morning we were given the opportunity to vote in our classes about whether we would like a reading dog to visit our school. Can you guess how many voted for yes?
We are also very excited about our trip to Hawkwood on Monday! Wrap up warm! 

 

Monday 27th Feb to Friday 3rd March

We have had a great week back at school after half term. We have been painting canvases to brighten our hallways, we had a great breakfast on Wednesday morning reading some favourite books whilst eating croissants and melon and we finished off our week with an amazing live author workshop with Yasmeen Ismail for World Book Day! 
A brilliant start to the term! 

Spring Week 3

The highlight of this week for me was P.E, where the children have been learning country dancing. 
I was so impressed with them that I had to video the dance! Sadly I can’t upload videos to this website - but please ask me to have a watch if you would like!

This week we have also been learning about plants and the five things they need - can you remember them? 
We then planted our very own beans in clear bags and hung them on our window! (Check out the photos below)

- make sure to check on them when you come in and leave! 
we are having a big push on reading at the moment. Please do make sure school books are being read at least 4 times a week. And from next Friday I will be sending home spellings to be learnt for a test the following Friday.

If you are unsure how to practise spellings please do ask me as I know it can be a challenge! 
 

Have a lovely weekend everyone! 
Mrs Langdon 

Spring Week 2

We have really been enjoying getting stuck into our new topic and lessons this week. 
The year twos have been enjoying learning the 2 times table, and counting in 2s! Next week will be on the 10 and 5 times table! Year ones have been partitioning numbers using a part-part-whole model. Let’s see if they can tell you what that looks like! 
Their favourite parts of the week have been learning about the continents and our new artist and how he created paintings using fruit and vegetables! 
 

Everyone seems understandably exhausted by end of today. Have a restful weekend, and don’t forget to read your books! 
Mrs Langdon

Spring Week 1

Welcome back Owls! 
I have been so impressed with how well everyone has returned this week. The whole class have been full of beans, excited to work, enthusiastic about our new topic and looking like they’ve grown a foot. 
 

I hope everyone received their Knowledge Organisers this week. We are looking at growing food and plants and will be having a lot of fun planting our very own seeds and beans. We hope to turn a corner of our outside space into a spring meadow! 
We have also started learning country dancing in P.E! 
We are focussing on Community this term and how we can be a helpful part of our school and community. In PSHE we came up with some great ideas. Check out the photo below to see what we are focussing on. 
 

Have a lovely weekend everyone! 
Mrs Langdon 

End of Term

Congratulations for getting through the hardest term Owls! 
You were fantastic in the play - well done everyone! 
Have a wonderful Christmas break everyone! 
 

Autumn Week 14

This week has been go go go! We have spent lots of time recapping all the things we have learnt this term in maths, phonics and writing. Our brains have been jam packed with geography, science, history and music. 
But most of all we have begun to rehearse our Christmas production in the hall. Lots of work has gone into getting on and off stage, remembering when to say our lines, what our lines are, and also making sure we project our voices when we sing! 
Every single person has done superbly! We have been so impressed that they have all received a WOW card for their efforts. We had a big chat about what is the most important thing in our play, and that is to have fun! It doesn’t matter if we forget our lines or our moves, the teachers are there to help. It really is important that they enjoy it! 
We know it will be fantastic! 
 

We have also been having great fun with this weather, and especially on Christmas jumper day! 
Check out our photos of a brilliant silly and fun afternoon! 
 

The whole class have worked so hard this week, so much so they have been dropping like flies! By Friday we had 8 missing! Well done to all of you for being such champions. I think cosy blankets, feet up and some Christmas movies might be in order for this weekend. 
See you next week! 

Autumn Week 12

This week has flown by in Owls! We have been looking at the United Kingdom and the different countries and flags. 
We have been learning about poems, commas and adjectives. And we have been diving deep into addition and subtraction (year 1) and multiplication (year 2). 
Thank you so much for sending in all the loo rolls too! We had a great DT lesson turning them into Christmas decorations! Check out the results below! 
Yesterday was a particularly fun and different day as we had a zoom chat with a lady who works in a Synagogue. She talked to us all about the different Jewish festivals, the important prayers and the types of rooms in a Synagogue.

We all had a chat about learning to tie our own shoelaces - the teachers are spending a lot of time tying laces at the moment - maybe have a practise at home too! 

Well done for another spectacular week Owls! 

Autumn Week 11

We have had such a fun busy week! The most exciting part is that we have started our preparations for the Christmas Play! 
We have been practising our songs, dance moves and lines and really working hard on using expression on our faces and in our lines. 
We also had a great Geography lesson, locating where the UK is on a world map and memorised a little dance and rhyme to remember North, East, South and West. Can you remember it? 
Wishing you all a very restful weekend. Stay wrapped up! 
 

Mrs Langdon

Autumn Week 9

We have had a great week back after half term. Lots of lovely stories in from fun in the holiday! 
This week we have been learning a new story in English, The Magic Porridge Pot. We have learnt actions to go with the text and made a story map. 
In science we have been experimenting with which materials are the best for an umbrella to protect Oscar the owl. In history we talked about when and why the fire brigade first started. In computing we are about to start on a fun stop motion project. We have just started planning our story! 
Today we went to the SubRooms to listen to an author called Matt Goodfellow. He was very entertaining and got us all reciting poetry! 
It was great getting the chance to see you all on Wednesday and Thursday to catch up. Thanks so much for coming! 

Autumn Week 5 

This week has zoomed by with high energy P.E lessons, practising our hand eye coordination and balls skills! 
We have now written our own version of the Gingerbread Man story… can you remember which animals you used in your story? 
We have powered through our maths unit on geometry and all had great fun with 2D shapes. Can you remember which ones we have looked at? 
In R.E we learnt about a very special day in the Jewish faith called, Yom Kippur. This was celebrated on the 4th October this year! 
It has been a busy week! Now for some rest! 
 

Have a lovely weekend - and check out our P.E skills in the photos below!

Mrs Langdon

Autumn Week 4 

This week we have been diving deep into our feelings and who we should talk to if we are feeling low. We have had a closer look at materials in science to understand why glass makes the best window. We have gotten to understand the Shema prayer in R.E and why it is so important in Judaism. And we had a great discussion about online safety and how we should take care with the things we share on the internet. 
 

In maths we have come to the end of our Place Value unit and are excited to start on Geometry and looking at shapes! 
In English we have finished planning our own innovative story based on the Gingerbread Man and our now about to embark on writing our very own version. 
Phew! And after that we ended our week on some much needed zen yoga time. 
 

Have a lovely weekend everyone! 
Mrs Langdon and Miss Bird
 

Autumn Week 3
 

We’ve had a very busy week in Owls, from maths to History to English and to the Rainbow Fun Run! 
When I asked a few of the children what their favourite part of the week was I was told: 

“When we were colouring in and making our fire!” For our great fire of London project.

“This morning!” 
“Doing the actions for the Gingerbread man!”

“Science and doing our circles and making colours!” 

The Rainbow Run was super fun - the whole class were incredible sports, cheering each other on and keeping each other going. Some of the children volunteered to be Merlin helpers and walk/ run with a Merlins child. 
Such an incredible afternoon and high to end the week on. 
 

Check out our photos below!

Have a lovely weekend! 
Mrs Langdon 
 

End of 2021-2022 in Owls

From Mr Moorcroft, Miss Bird and Mrs Knight, we wanted to say what an amazing year it has been together. We have all had so much fun over the course of the year and we hope that everyone has a well deserved rest over the summer holidays and we look forward to seeing you all in September.
 

Thanks again 

Tuesday 26th April - Friday 6th May

In Owls, we have enjoyed coming back to school over the last two weeks. Since we have come back we have started our new topic which is called Uplands News and Journal. 

For English, both the year 1 and year 2 children have been planning and writing their own recounts of the Easter holidays. During the last two weeks all the children have found out what needs to be included in a recount and have been working hard to write their own. 

During our afternoon lessons, we have started learning about the different seasons and have created some wonderful art work that we have displayed in our class for one of our displays. We have learnt about which months Summer and Autumn are in as well as learning about the UK and the countries that are in the UK. For RE, we have been learning about Muslims and what they believe. 

Monday 28th March - Friday 1st April

What a crazy week with the weather last week but all the Owls worked incredibly hard throughout the week and they did a fantastic job in the music assembly on Tuesday. 

For both year 1 and year 2, we have started to plan and write some of our own adventure stories. We watched a video called Bubbles and then we were allowed to decided the next place in the story the character goes. The children have enjoyed having the freedom to think of and create their settings and characters. 

In maths, the year 2's have moved onto telling time which has been quite tricky and difficult but they have all done an amazing job at telling the time. The year 1's have been learning about position and direction which has been difficult to but they have been superb and they have learnt a song for their left and right. 

Enjoy your weekend and see you on Monday! 

 

Monday 21st - Friday 25th March

Monday 7th March - Friday 18th March

In Owls, it has been another busy and brilliant couple of weeks at school. We have been learning so much and have had a brilliant today for Red Nose Day. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing everyone in their costumes (even the teachers). 

In English, we have been writing about our very own superheroes that we designed and created in Art 2 weeks ago, so both year 1 and year 2 have been writing about their superhero and some other superheroes too. 
 

For maths, both year groups have moved onto some tricky fractions over the past two weeks but both sets of children have been giving it a really good go at understanding them and how we find them in different shapes. 
 

During our foundation subjects, we have made our recycling superheroes out of clay and have painted them - pictures below. As well as this we have been learning about different geographical features and the children know if it is a human or physical feature. In PE, we have continued with hockey which has been brilliant especially with the weather we had on Tuesday and Friday of this week. 
 

Below are some pictures of our superheroes and the children in their Red Nose Day costumes. 
 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you all next week.

Monday 28th February - Friday 4th March

This week has been an amazing week back after half term and we have been covering lots of the curriculum. As you can see below the year one children have written and performed their poems, the year two children have also written and performed their poems this week too. 

On Thursday, we had a wonderful day for World Book Day. It was so nice to see lots of parents in school for the reading breakfast and then later on that day we did a book scavenger hunt with partners and to complete the day we had a reading online from Catherine Rayner who is superb author and we joined in with her to draw some of the characters from her stories. 

In maths, both year groups have been learning about different areas. The year two children have moved onto some tricky fractions, learning about one third and two quarters and how to find the fraction from an amount and the year one children have been learning about addition techniques. 

For our topic, we have continued with superheroes and have created some fact files about Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Edith Cavell to help us write an short essay question next week. For Art, we finished off designing our recycling superheroes that we will make out of clay next week. Finally, to top it all off we have started hockey in PE which everyone has loved getting involved with and playing for the first time. 

We hope you all have a brilliant weekend and see you all on Monday.

Monday 28th February

Year 1 really enjoyed performing their brilliant rhyming poems this week. They thought carefully about the different animals they would like to see in their very own zoo!

24th January - 28th January 2022

It has been a while but we are back on the blog and since we have returned from the Christmas break we have been incredibly busy with all the hard work going on in Owls and we have welcomed Miss Bird into our class. All the children have loved having Miss Bird in the class. 

Since the beginning of Christmas we have been covering lots of work linked to our topic of Superheroes but this week we have been learning about Edith Cavell, recapping about Florence Nightingale and learning about the sacred objects within a church. Next week, we will create a poster about why Edith Cavell is famous and learn more about the human body. 

For our English, we have learnt the story of How Tortoise got his shell and we have begun our writing after making some changes to the story by altering the characters in the story and some of the places that they go during the story. Next week, we will finish off our story and work together to edit what we have written. 

All children that were in on Friday have been given their log in details for numbots which they can continue to use as much as possible during the week. 

Have a wonderful weekend and see you all on Monday!!!

Monday 15^th – Friday 19^th November

What an amazing week we had last week, it started off the best way possible with our class trip to Hawkwood, which everybody loved. As a class, we had so much fun up there, whether it be finding things on our scavenger hunt, finding things that match our colour wheel, creating dens or small tepees in the forest or matching the twigs we found to the name of the tree it came from.

Through the rest of the week, we started to learn the actions to our story in English and we were getting ready to change some of the characters in the story which we will write next week.

We finished the week with a brilliant Science day. To start with, we had to create our own volcanoes that we would later on in the day erupt with a special chemical reaction on the playground. In between this, we had so much fun with different types of bubbles that we blew or tried to catch on our fingers and we made a bubbles with a chemical reaction on our tables. Then finally, at the end of the school day we watched a Science show were a monster’s drink changed colour and Mr Moorcroft popped a special balloon in front of the whole school, which made a rather loud bang.

Monday 1st - Friday 12th November

It has been brilliant to have the children back in class over the last two, after well deserved rest of the half term. We have been working incredibly over the past two weeks within all areas of the curriculum.

For both, year 1 and year 2's they have had a challenging time in English, writing a list poem. We started the week looking at different poems and what features they have then we created some word banks and some rhyming words for our poems and then in this last week we have completed writing our list poems. 

In maths, the year 2's have been working on some challenging addition work and have been adding two two-digit numbers when you need to exchange. The year 1's have been working on hard on using numicon to show numbers all the way up to 100 this past week. 

We have continued with our story in guided reading this week, which is the day the crayon quits and we are all wondering who the next crayons are that we will read out. With Mrs Knight in PE, we had a really fun afternoon on Friday, as we ran some relay races. In RE, we have been learning about how different religions ask for forgiveness and have created some posters about this. 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you on Monday, ready for our school trip to Hawkwood.

Monday 18th - Friday 22nd October

It's been a busy week in Owls this week and I have been so proud of all of the children as they have worked so hard at the end of the half term. 

At the start of the week, both year 1 and 2 have been working hard on planning how to write instructions and then on Thursday as a class we made some carrot cake that led on from our story about the gigantic carrot. You can see some pictures below of the baking process and the end product as well. On Friday, we wrote out our instructions on how to make carrot.

Lastly, we gathered in the hall to see the amazing art work that been created by the other classes in school and it has been displayed around the hall at it all looks absolutely incredible. Have a look at some pictures below.

I hope you all have a restful and amazing half term and I will see you all in November. 

Monday 3rd - Friday 15th October

It has been another brilliant couple of weeks in Owls class. Last week, we completed our stories about the Tall Farmer and the Gigantic Carrot whilst in maths both the year 1 and 2 children were learning about shapes and how we define different shapes.

This week we have started to look at how to write instructions and came up with instructions cards for each other to follow in class and then at the end of the week we have been putting our creative heads on for Arts week. As a class, we have created an Owl, some bees, leaves and completed some self-portraits in the style of Picasso, that will all be displayed later on in the year throughout the school. There is a short video of the children saying what we have been creating and a snippet of some of the creations.

Have a relaxing weekend 

Mr Moorcroft

20th September - 1st October
 

It has been another brilliant week in Owls. We have been learning lots and myself and Mrs Knight have been so impressed with them all. In English, we have started to write our story about the Gigantic turnip after changing some of the key characters. Everyone has done so well with their independent writing. 

In maths, the year ones have been learning about 1 more and 1 less from 0-20 and 2D shapes. The year twos have been working hard learning about 10 more than and 10 less than as well as using number lines to represent numbers and how to count along a number line to find a number. 

During our topic work, we have been learning about different habitats animals live in, how you can group animals such as vertebrates, invertebrates and by what animals eat. There are two videos of children talking about the different habitats we have learnt about too. Whilst in geography, we have learnt about where the North and South Pole and what the equator is. 

Have a brilliant weekend everyone and see you all on Monday. 

Monday 6th - Friday 17th September

Welcome to the first post on the Owls page for the year 2021-2022. It has been brilliant seeing all the year twos returning into Owls over the past two weeks and it has been just as amazing to welcome in the year ones as they moved up from merlins. 

We have had a busy couple of weeks settling into class but I have been so impressed with all the hard work that has gone on over the last couple of weeks. In English, we have been learning the story of the enormous turnip and learning the actions to go along with the story. On Friday of this week, we decided to change some of the story around to become story tellers so we can start writing our new story next week. 

In maths, both year groups have worked incredibly hard on place value and counting backwards and forwards from a range of numbers. 

For our topic, we have learnt about how different animals are grouped and how animals that have backbones are called vertebrates and animals without are called invertebrates. In the first week of term, we created our food cycle display which is up in the classroom now.

We were very pleased to have James Jeffries come into school this afternoon and as a class we went out together with the year threes and we did a fun run around the playground. Everyone loved it and we all came back into class very tired but with big smiles on our faces. 

Enjoy your weekend Owls and myself and Mrs Knight will see you on Monday. 

Last weeks of Owls 2020-2021

What an unfortunate way for us to end the year Owls. It has been an absolute pleasure to have taught you all over the last year even with all the interruptions that we've had. I was looking forward to having our first sports day together and celebrating on Wednesday the last day for the year 2's as you are all moving up to year 3 and into kestrels. I am so proud of all the hard work that all of you have put in over the last year as it has been another strange year but you have put in so much effort and changed so much from the start of the year and I am so proud of all the things you have achieved. I can't wait to see you all back in September (year 2's when you are year 3's and year 1's when you are year 2's) and I hope you all have the most amazing summer holidays.

Here are a few of the amazing things we have done over the last couple of weeks before the end of term too. We were very fortunate to have a circus skills company come in and teach us lots of amazing skills, we had our DT week where we made some tray bakes and created our own bags for the tray bakes to carried around in and we had James Jeffries come in and do some athletics activities with us too!

I will say it again but I hope you all have the most amazing summer and keep yourself safe! 

24th May - 18th June

Over the last few weeks we have been very busy in Owls and have had some fantastic days. On Monday 24th May we went on a school trip to Hawkwood college and we were able to use their outdoor classroom facilities. During the trip we had the chance to do a range of activities from a mini beast hunt, scavenger hunt, creating bug hotels, creating rainbows from colours found and leaf smashing. We all enjoyed it so much up there and had a fantastic day and loved the walk back through the field to school. 

Since we returned to school we have been planning and have started to write our recount of our trip to Hawkwood. In maths, we have recapped some of our previous learning. For the year 1's we have been recapping how to find halves and quarters of amounts and with the year 2's they have been recapping telling the time and drawing hands on a clock to show a certain time. 

For our topic this week, we have been looking at some local history in Stroud and looking at the changes that have happened on Stroud high street and how it has changed over the last 100 years. As always we have loved PE with Mrs Knight and we have continued to work on our ball skills with this weeks focus on bouncing a ball and choosing the right time to make a run with a ball.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the photos of our trip to Hawkwood. 

17th May 2021 - 21st May 2021

In Owls this week, we have had another brilliant week of learning from everyone and to top it off we have had everyone in this week so we were joint winners of the attendance cup this week with Merlins. 

In maths, the year 2's have moved onto working with position and direction. Year 1's have started again working on partitioning and finding addition facts. 

It has been a superb week in English for everyone as we have started writing our story about a Flamingo, Turtle and Stinging nettle and we have done a brilliant job of remembering the story and writing it independently. 

For our topic, we have looked at planning a report about habitats in Kenya and with Mrs Knight we have learnt some French words and we can say my name is and hello for different times in the morning. 

Enjoy your weekend. 

Over the past few weeks Owls have been incredibly busy learning a variety of things. For our English, we have written a set of instructions to make Coconut Ice which we also made in class. We enjoyed eating our Coconut Ice after making it. During the last couple of weeks we have learnt a new story about Cat, Bramble and Heron and we have created actions too, after learning the actions we moved onto the innovations stage and change some key aspects of the story. You can see a video of the class performing the actions and reading out the story with a little help from Mr Moorcroft.

During our topic, the class have been learning about Kenya and we know which continent it is in, the ocean it borders, some of the physical features and we know the capital. We have also learnt about the different animals that live in the desert, forest and savannah and we have created actions for these as well. 

Both year 1 and year 2 have been learning about measurements in maths. Year 2 have been concentrating on capacity and temperature over the last couple of weeks and year 1 have been concentrating on using non-standard and standard measures for both height and length. There are some pictures for you see what we have been up to. 

Have a lovely weekend and see you all on Monday

Monday 29th March - Thursday 1st April

In owls over the last couple of weeks we have been learning a new story called how the world was created. We have learnt actions to match the story and have been able to recall the story. This week after changing some key parts to the story we have written up our story this week and everyone did a brilliant job with theirs. 

For maths the year twos have been continuing to learning about fractions and have been able to find 1/4, 2,4 and 3/4 of a shape or objects. The year ones have started learning about multiplication and they have been able to make arrays and answer questions using arrays. 

During our afternoon lessons we have enjoyed learning about plants, the different oceans and continents of the world and we have learnt some catchy songs to help us remember the oceans and continents. 

Today we had some Easter fun and made some egg baskets and in the afternoon we went outside with the Merlins and enjoyed an Easter egg hunt and we found so much chocolate. 

Also today Noah came in after shaving his hair off to raise money for the school and we are so proud of what he is doing. 

I hope you all enjoy your Easter break and see you all in a couple of weeks to start the summer term. 

Monday - Friday 8th 12th March 

I will start by saying what a delight it was to see all the Owls returning to school on Monday and seeing how excited and happy they were to see each other after all the brilliant home learning that has been going on. We started off the morning with assembly with the merlins and then throughout the week we have been enjoying ourselves a lot. 
 

We have been doing some DT to create a lever to make a waving hand and we will continue next week on making a flower try to grow using lots of resources. Continuing with DT and art we have made some salt dough for our favourite food and we will paint those next week. 
 

We have learnt about the different continents around the world and made our display which will be posted next week. 
 

Enjoy your weekend and see you all next week.

Mr Moorcroft 

Wednesday 6th January 2021

Morning Owls

For any worksheets that are on google classroom, you can write down any answers onto a piece of paper and then upload to show you have completed that piece of work. I will then be able to mark it after I have received it. 

Thanks and stay safe 

Mr Moorcroft 

23^rd – 27^th November 2020

This week in Owls we have continued with our writing our own stories. We changed the characters in the story to Cassie the Cowgirl and the problem that they would encounter in later on in the story. We made a great start to writing them this week and will continue to write them next week too.

In maths, the year 1’s have been learning the addition facts and subtraction facts to make 7 whilst also learning how to partition the number 8 in different ways. The year 2’s have continued to learn about different ways to subtract and learning how to identify and describe cones and cylinders.

For Topic, we have continued our work in constructing our houses and we have tried to increase the strength of our houses using card, glue and paint. Next week, we will have a go at making our houses and making them look like houses during The Great Fire of London.

Our new vocab words this week were glamorous, fortune, pedigree and companion.

2nd - 13th November 2020

Over the course of the last two weeks in Owls we have been working incredibly as a class and been having so much fun too. 

For English, we have carried on with using our Monkey see, Monkey do stories that we wrote before half term. We have used our stories about the queen and the seagulls to write a diary as the seagulls. Everyone did a brilliant job of writing their diary and writing about how the seagull was feeling. 

In maths, we have covered a lot. The year 2's have been working on subtraction question that bridge ten and do not bridge ten whilst the year 1's have been learning about number line, patterns in number squares and counting forwards and backwards from any given number. 

We've had an exciting time in science this week where we have been experimenting about which materials and objects are waterproof and which ones we would like to use if it rained. Everyone was in their mixed groups and they had a chance to pour some water on different materials and see which ones turned out to be waterproof and which ones didn't. At the beginning we made our predictions on what we thought would happen and then finished off on Thursday writing up our results. 

On Friday everyone looked amazing in their non-school uniform clothes. Have a lovely weekend and see you all next week for some more brilliant learning. 

Our vocab words that we learnt this week were roaming, fuming, ecstatic and revolting

Mr Moorcroft 

Two of our Owls have made a video to tell you about some of the learning we have been doing this week and the whole class have practiced hard all week to learn our Monkey see, Monkey do so here is a video of the children reciting the story with actions to match. 

Thanks to Raffy and Phoebe King 

12th- 16th October 2020

On Monday we were amazed to find lots of hats in our classroom when we came in after break! 

We quickly realised that the hats were there to help us to tell the story, Monkey See Monkey Do. 

We wrote this story map together to help us learn the story.

5th - 9th October

This week in Owls we have been continuing with writing our own stories and we were able to finish the stories. After we finished our stories we had a go at marking each others work and checking together in small groups. We have also started to learn a poem as whole class too. 

For P.E we had our first ever lesson in hockey with the amazing Mrs Knight and we are looking forward to continuing with hockey next week as well. 

Both year 1 and year 2 have been learning about shapes and the different properties both 2D and 3D shapes have whilst learning about the names of the different shapes as well. 

In topic, we have been learning numbers 1 to 10 in French which we enjoyed a lot and had a fun time in the playground finding the numbers. 

Welcome back – 02/10/20

Welcome back to Owls class blog. Sorry for the late blog entry we have been having so much fun in Owls since returning back to class. Over the course of the last couple of weeks we have been preparing to write our own stories based on the Giraffe and the Piano and have started writing them this week which has been challenging and enjoyable.

In maths, we have learnt all about numbers, number bonds and counting forwards and backwards. As a class we have been practicing chanting in our 2’s, 5’s and 10’s which we have enjoyed.

During our afternoons, we have been learning about the Great Fire of London. The children have been loved learning about what happened and have thoroughly loved finding out about how different London was during the Great Fire of London. We burnt wood, plastic, straw and bricks to see which would be best for using if we were to build St Paul’s Cathedral again.

Tuesday 7th July 2020

Here are the maths and six in six sheets for today.

Monday 6th July 2020

Good morning Owls, I hope you all had another lovely, relaxing weekend. In have attached this week's timetable and here are the six in six sheet and maths sheet for today. Keep up the good work.

Friday 3rd July 

Here is today maths sheet and yesterdays maths sheet as well. Keep up the good work. 

Wednesday 1st July 2020

Here is the maths sheet for today. 

Tuesday 30th June 2020

Here is the maths sheet for today. 

Monday 29th June 2020

Good morning Owls, I hope you all had a nice relaxing and enjoyable weekend. Here is the maths sheet for today. 

Thursday 25th June 2020

Here are the maths sheets for today.

Wednesday 24th June 2020

Here are today's maths sheets.

Tuesday 23rd June 2020

Here are the maths sheets for today. Keep up the good work!

Monday 22nd June 2020

Good morning Owls, I hope you have all had a nice relaxing weekend this weekend. I have attached the maths sheets for Y1 and Y2. There is also the planning sheet for the English too.

Friday 19th June 2020

Good morning Owls, last day of the week so here are the last maths sheets for the week. Well done for all the hard work this week. Keep up it today and then you can have a nice, relaxing weekend. 

Mr Moorcroft

Thursday 18th June 2020

Morning Owls, here are the maths sheets for today. Keep up the good work!

Wednesday 17th June 2020

Here are the maths sheets for today. 

Tuesday 16th June 2020

I have attached the maths sheet for both years. There are two versions - one is a PDF and the other is a word document just in case anyone was having any issues opening the word documents. 

Keep being brilliant!!

Monday 15th June 2020

Good morning Owls, I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Here is the timetable and worksheets for this week and today. Keep up the good work and stay safe!

Mr Moorcroft

Friday 12th June 2020

Here are the final two maths sheets of the week. Keep going with all the hard work you are doing at home. I will post the timetable on the Owls page on Monday morning with any sheets needed too. 

Stay safe 

Mr Moorcroft

Thursday 11th June 2020

Here are today's maths sheet. Keep up the good work!!

Wednesday 10th June 2020

Morning Owls, I hope you have all had a brilliant week so far. Here are today's maths sheets. 

Tuesday 9th June 2020

Here are the maths sheets for today. 

Monday 8th June 2020

Good morning Owls,

I hope you have all had a lovely relaxing weekend. Here is the timetables for both the year 1's and year 2's. I have put today's maths sheet underneath for each year group as well. I will post the sheet each morning on here for you. Keep working hard at home, I am still so impressed with you all. Well done 

Mr Moorcroft

Monday 1st June 2020

Good afternoon,

I hope you have all had a nice relaxing break over the half term. Here are the slightly later than should be year 1 and year 2 maths sheets for the home learning this week. 

Hope you are all safe and well 

Mr Moorcroft

21st May 2020

I have attached the answers for the year 2 maths fluency questions below. Keep up the good work everyone. 

20th May 2020 - Quiz

Today we have our quiz at the normal time of 11:30. The quiz will have questions from our superhero and animal conservation topics so they might be a bit tricky but try your hardest. The pin for the quiz is 999724. 

Good luck to everyone. 

19th May 2020

Here are today's and Thursday's maths fluency sheets for Y2's. I will post the answers to these on Thursday. Complete 1 sheet today and the second on Thursday. 

18th May 2020

Good morning Owls, I hope you have had a nice relaxing weekend. Here are the suggested timetables for Y1 and Y2 but don't forget there are the enrichment activities underneath here so you can give some of those a try as well. We will have our quiz at the normal time on Wednesday this week. 

Hope you are all well and staying safe 

Mr Moorcroft

15th May 2020

Hi Owls!

I hope that you are all well. Next week you might like to have a rest from your usual timetable and try some of these fun enrichment activities. They are all about bubbles!

Start by watching Bubbles on Literacy Shed. https://www.literacyshed.com/bubbles.html 

1. This lovely story could inspire you to write your own story about a fantasy land. You could write about bubble land or an underwater world.

2. Could you design your own Bubble World? You could draw it, paint it, or make it from junk modelling!

3. Visit https://wonderfuldiy.com/fun-bubble-activities/ for lots of fabulous science experiments and creative ideas with bubbles.

Enjoy!

It was brilliant to speak to some of you on the phone this week and it has been another great week from you with the work you have been able to do at home. I am so impressed with all the work that you do so keep it up! Here is some of the work that has been done this week by some of you. 

Have a nice relaxing weekend and stay safe

Mr Moorcroft

Quizizz - Wednesday 13th May 2020

Today's quiz will be about countries flags and the seasons. The pin for today's quiz is 236575 and we will start the quiz at 11:30. Good luck to you all. 

Tuesday 12th May 2020

Hi Owls, 

I hope you all had a lovely relaxing weekend. Here is some of the work that people did over the course of last week and I have attached the maths sheets for year 2 at the bottom as well. We will have another quiz tomorrow at the normal time of 11:30 and this time I will make sure I start it at the right time. 

Stay safe 

Mr Moorcroft

Quizizz

Sorry it is late Owls. The pin code for the quiz is 545358. The quiz is on some of our special English words. The quiz will start at 11:45 as I have put the code on a little later that normal.

Mr Moorcroft

Monday 4th May 2020

Happy Star Wars day Owls, I hope you have all had a lovely, relaxing weekend. I have attached the suggested timetable for this week below for both year 1 and year 2. We will be having another quiz on Wednesday at 11:30 so make sure to have a look at the blog on Wednesday morning for the details. 

Stay safe 

Mr Moorcroft

Friday 1st May 2020

Hello Owls, I have received lots of pictures and spoken to lots of you (or your adults) this week so I know that you have been working really hard at home with your home learning. I am so impressed by everyone and the work that you have been doing so keep it up!! Here are some pictures of the work that some of you have been doing!! 

Stay safe and have a nice weekend! 

Mr Moorcroft

Wednesday 29th April 2020

Morning Owls,

This will be our last vocab words quiz as we have completed all of our vocab words. There will still be other quizzes that I will post on the blog though. The pin for this week's quiz is 746160 and you can join as normal by logging onto the website www.quizizz.com and entering the code in. I hope to see lots of you joining in today and good luck with the quiz. The quiz will start at 11:30. 

Mr Moorcroft 

Monday 27th April 2020

Good morning Owls,

I hope you have all had a lovely, relaxing weekend in the sunshine. I have attached a copy of the suggested timetable for both year 1 and year 2 for this week. I will be hosting another quiz on Wednesday so look out for the details on Wednesday morning. 

Mr Moorcroft 

Thursday 23rd April 2020

Here are the quiz details for our latest quiz. The quiz pin is 932606 and it is the same as normal when joining. You just need to go to the quizizz website and put in those details. One of our questions today needs you to type in an answer today. Good luck to all everyone joining in! 

Wednesday 22nd April 2020

Good morning Owls

I hope you are all safe and well!! Tomorrow we will have another one of our quizzes. This time it will be about some of our recent vocab words that we learnt before we started our learning at home. I will post the log in at 10 tomorrow morning and the quiz will start at the normal time of 11:30. Hope you all can join!!

Mr Moorcroft

Friday 17th April 2020

Good morning Owls, I hope you have had a safe and relaxing Easter holiday at home. I have attached a document with a suggested timetable of activities that is more structured than the weeks before the holidays. I will be starting our quizzes again soon so keep an eye out on here to see when they will be. 

Mr Moorcroft

Friday 3rd March 2020

Today's quiz pin is 500235 and this will be our last quiz before the Easter holidays so enjoy and stay safe! 

Thursday 2nd April 2020 - Quizizz

Hope everyone is well and staying safe at home. Tomorrow we will have another quiz on some more of our vocabulary words that we learnt near the beginning of the school year so they will be tricky again. The quiz will be at 11:30 again and I will post the pin on here nice and early tomorrow morning so you can all join in. 

Mr Moorcroft

Class quizizz - Tuesday 31st March 20202

It has been great to see so many children joining in with the quizzes I have been setting but I realise that sometimes you miss out on them because you are already doing something else at home. I have decided to set up a class page for us where I am able to set quizzes for you. I will continue to do live quizzes throughout the week but this gives everyone a chance to complete the quizzes. 

The link below should allow you to join the class group, you need to add your email so you can get a notification when a quiz has been set. Once you have joined I will host a quiz that day and then set it for everyone just in case you missed it or you want to have another go at it. 

Here is the link https://quizizz.com/join?class=Z891532

Hope everyone is okay and staying safe 

Mr Moorcroft

Quizizz - Tuesday 31st March 2020

The pin for the quiz today is 721557. Remember to go to www.quizizz.com and type in our pin to join in. The questions are about some of our vocab words so take your time and read each answer as some are a bit tricky. Good luck to all getting involved!

Monday 30th March 2020

Hope you have had all had a nice relaxing weekend. It was great to receive all of your home learning that you did last week so make sure to keep it up this week. Don't forget to keep sending them in. 

I will be running another quiz tomorrow at 11:30. This time our quiz is going to be on some of our vocabulary words, some of them might be from the start of the year so they will be tricky so make sure you take your time. I will post the pin on here tomorrow at 10:30. 

Have a brilliant Monday everyone.

Mr Moorcroft

Quizizz - 27th March 2020

Good morning everyone

Today we are going to have another quiz on quizizz. Today's quiz will start at 11:30 and it will be on the things we have been learning during topic over the last 2 terms. The pin for the quiz is 993601. You can join in with the quiz by going onto www.quizizz.com and putting in our pin. The quiz will start at 11:30 so make sure have joined before then. 

Good luck to you all and stay safe!

Mr Moorcroft

Quizizz

For those that would like to join in with the quiz today. We will be playing at 11 o'clock, you need to log in to www.quizizz.com and click join game. The pin for our quiz is 845183. The children need to put in their names so we can see who we're playing with. Good luck!!

Quizizz and David Walliams 

Good evening Owls, 

Tomorrow will be our first quiz and the details for the quiz will be on here tomorrow. It would be wonderful if we could have all of you playing at the same time - you will be able to see each others score while you play too. 

As well as this David Walliams is releasing a free audio story for kids to listen to at 11am every day. This can be a great opportunity to have a break for home learning to put your feet up and listen to his wonderful tales. 

https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/elevenses/ 

Don't forget to keep in touch by sending your home learning to the class email address - owls@uplands.gloucs.sch.uk

Monday 23rd March

Good afternoon Owls,

I hope everyone is keeping safe at home. It is has been our first day in class with only a few children and we have been carrying on with some of our learning so we hope you have to. The children in class have been wondering how their friends have been getting on so remember if you want to talk to your friends you can ask your parents/carer to email or Facetime them. 

On Wednesday, we are going to be trialing a quiz on a website called quizizz. The quiz will have questions from our topic called Animal Conservation. We will be playing in school so it would be great if you could play at home as well - if you want to play then you will need to go onto the quizizz website and join our game. I will be putting up the log in details on the day so make sure you keep checking the blog. 

Don't forget to email with any questions or to show me the work you have completed at home at - owls@uplands.gloucs.sch.uk

Stay safe everyone,

Mr Moorcroft

Monday 20^th – Friday 24^th January

It has been another exciting week in Owls!

We have continued with our story in English this week, we have completed them now and the stories are brilliant. The year ones have been using their adjectives to describe the characters and the year twos have been using expanded noun phrases to give more description to their stories.

In maths, the year ones have been working on adding and subtracting numbers up to 20 using different methods to help them. Year twos have been learning about arrays and groups of, to help them with multiplications and have used their two times tables facts too.

After learning about Florence Nightingale, we have learnt about two other nurses called Mary Seacole and Edith Cavell and why they were famous. In pairs we created a poster on the iPads about Edith Cavell. We have also started completing our essay question on why these three women are famous.

With Mrs Knight we have thoroughly enjoyed creating some new dance moves to add to our superhero dance that we have learnt.

On Friday, we had a special visitor to school in the form of Nick Jardine who brought an ambulance into school and everyone in Owls had the chance to look inside the ambulance and learn a little about what Nick does as a paramedic.

Monday 13^th – Friday 17^th January

After reading Traction Man in English over the last two weeks we have started writing our own superhero stories this week. After planning them on Tuesday we have written our beginning and build-up of the story and we will finish them next week.

In maths, both year one and two have been continuing to learn about time with year ones telling and drawing times at o’clock and half past while year twos have learnt about quarter to, quarter past and times at 5 minute intervals.

With Miss Clark the Owls have learnt who Florence Nightingale was and why she is such an important person. We learnt about the differences between nursing now and when she was alive and we created a timeline about her life.

In computing we learnt what an algorithm is and using what we learnt we followed an algorithm with the help of our partner.

6^th – 10^th January

Happy new year!

Welcome back to the Owls blog. During the first week back at school after the holidays we have started to learn about our new topic this term which is Superheroes. As a class we made two school children by gluing tissue paper to human body cut outs so we can label them for our display board in the classroom. Have a look next time you are in our class.

In maths, the year ones have been learning about time and year twos have been learning about the inverse and how it can help us to check our answers.

Enjoy your weekend!

Monday 18th - Friday 29th November 

Over the last two weeks the owls have been working hard in all subjects whilst having lots of fun as well. We have covered lots of different things in our English, maths and topic. 

Last week in English, the Owls finished off their poems about the sea that they had planned the week before and during this week they have been learning about how to write a non-chronological report. They have researched the animal that they are going to write about and next week they will write up the report on their chosen animal. 

In maths, both the year 1’s and year 2’s have been working on addition and subtraction. The year 1’s have been finding and writing numbers that go up past 100 and down through 100 as well. The year 2’s have been finding out how subtraction isn’t commutative and how to subtract ones from two-digit numbers. 

For our topic, we have been learning about different habitats. The habitats that we have learnt about are the desert habitat and forest habitat. We have thoroughly learning our new actions to remember the habitats and on Thursday we had the chance to make a forest habitat. 

Tuesday 5^th November – Friday 15^th November

Over the last two weeks the Owls have been working incredibly hard after coming back after half term.

For maths, both the year 1’s and year 2’s have moved onto addition and subtraction. The year 1’s have worked hard on identifying numbers that are one more or less than a given number and they have been working hard on learning number bonds within 10 and 20. They have also been working on taking away numbers from 10 and 20 too.

The year 2’s have been working hard to use their addition and subtraction facts to find addition and subtraction facts within 100. They have also learnt to add ones and tens to two-digit numbers.

In English, we have been reading some poems about the sea and water and we have created a rhyming bank of words for the seaside.

For topic, all the Owls were out into pairs or threes and they chose a design for a bird feeder and on Friday they were able to make and put up their bird feeders in the playground.

Monday 21^st – Friday 25^th October

This week in the Owls we have been very busy as always. In maths, we have continued to learn about 3D shapes. The year twos have been learning about different faces on 3D shapes and the amount of vertices and edges 3D shapes have. The year ones have been recapping how to represent numbers in different ways such as pictures and objects.

In English we completed writing our letters. The letters we wrote were to ourselves, we pretended to be the Ipads and pens in the class and we complained about the way they have been treated. Everyone did a fantastic job.

For the last two days of the week, we have spent our time learning about bullying and the different types of bullying there are. We also looked at how to stay safe when we go online and what we need to do if we are being bullied or we come across something online that we shouldn’t be on. All children were put into groups and they have made a short video on one of things that we learnt over the two days.

Monday 7^th – Friday 18^th October

Over the last two weeks we have been very busy. In English, we have started to look at letters and how we can write a letter. We have been reading ‘The day the crayons quit’ to help us. Before we started learning about how to write a letter, we wrote a set of instructions on how to pot a plant. We have put the plants we potted just outside our classroom to see how much they grow.

In maths, both year one and year two have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes. We have enjoyed creating some actions to help us remember what 3D shapes have. The shapes we have been learning about are spheres, cubes, cuboids and pyramids.

For our topic, we have learnt about which animals live in tundra and grassland habitats. We started to learn about the effects of climate change and we started an experiment using ice to help us understand the effects.

Monday 23^rd September – Friday 4^th October

Owls have had a very busy two weeks in class. In English, we had the chance to finish off our amazing alien stories and this week we have started to learn about instructions. We have been using our bossy verbs and exclamation marks to write some instructions. On Thursday, we used some instructions to help us make some pirate hats.

In maths the year ones have been counting in 2’s and 5’s. They have also started to recognise 2D and 3D shapes. They have become especially good at recognising rectangles and squares. The year twos have also been counting on in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, they have been counting on and backwards with those numbers.

For Art, we have been looking at the jungle painting by Henri Rosseau. Last week we water washed our backgrounds and this week we have added our trees, bushes and branches and next week we can’t wait to draw the tiger hiding in the jungle.

Over the last two weeks we have been learning to say different animals in French. We have learnt how to say dog, cat, snake, horse, pig and duck. We have begun to start learning ‘Old Macdonald had a farm too’. We have enjoyed learning these animals and have started saying hello and goodbye too.

Monday 16^th – Friday 20^th September

This week in Owls it has been an amazing and we’ve had so much fun. Everyone has worked so hard and Mr Moorcroft and Mrs Knight are proud of all of them.

After finishing our Art last week, we had the chance to peel our animals off our Art work and see the animal silhouettes we created. Lots of different animal silhouettes were created.

For English, we have been reading Beegu all week long and have been learning to put the story in order. Everyone has created their own alien and we have just finished planning our own alien story so we are ready to start writing our story next week.

In maths, the year 1’s have been learning to write numbers to 100 in numerals and use pictures to show numbers. The year 2’s have been learning to plot numbers on a number line and to understand if numbers are greater than, less than or equal to each other.

We finished reading ‘The Giraffe the Pelly and Me’, we really enjoyed this book so we have decided to read another Roald Dahl book called ‘Minpins’. We have started it and can’t wait to carry on reading it next week.

In topic, we learnt about the different types of animals and how we group them. We also learnt what food animals eat and what they called when they eat that type of food.

Because we worked so hard this week we had an amazing time in Golden time. We had a class disco in the nest with everyone and even Mr Moorcroft had a boogie with us. We were using lego to make models, making models out of different materials, colouring, using a football board game and many more exciting things.

We can’t wait for another brilliant week next week!

Monday 9^th – Friday 13^th

We have had another exciting week in Owls. We continued learning more about out topic and in particular we started to learn about food chains and animals that are vertebrate and invertebrate. Following on with the theme of animals in Art we created some silhouette painting of animals of our choice. We cut out the animal then stuck it down and painted around the animal to create a background that matches the animal’s habitat.

 In English, we were writing a recount about the things that we did over the summer holidays.

In Maths, the year 2’s have learning about place value, the value of each digit in a two-digit number and reading and writing numbers to 100. While the year 1’s have learning about how to read and write numbers to 20 in numerals and words.

With Mrs Knight in PE, we had a great time in the playground playing different types of games.

We measured our heads, feet, hands and height this week too and we have stored away our sheets in a time capsule and at the end of the year we will open this up and measure ourselves again to see how much we have grown!

Wednesday 4^th – 6^th September

Welcome to the first blog of the school year! We have had a brilliant first week back. The year ones have loved meeting their new classmates and over the course of the week we have been finding out about what they have been up to over the holidays.

On the first day back, we decided our class rules that we are going to follow throughout the year and we signed these with our finger or thumb prints. It has been displayed up in the class above the school’s golden rules. In the afternoon, we learnt what a good friend is and how we should treat each other. We met Oscar the Owl as well, who will be taken home each week with someone from the class and they show everyone on Monday what they have been up to with Oscar the Owl.

On Thursday, we found out what our Topic is going to be for this term (Animal Conservation – Creating an Animal Sanctuary) and we then made the animals that are going to be displayed in and around our classroom. Later that day, we learnt about how to use the internet safely when we are at home or at school.

On Friday, we played some classroom bingo about our classmates and learnt more about Mr Moorcroft and Mrs Knight.

Throughout the week we have been enjoying our new class book – The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me.

Week Beginning 3rd June

What a fun first week back! On Thursday we all went to Cotswold Wildlife Park to look at African animals. It was lovely to be able to talk about the animals and their habitats whilst actually looking at them. The children made lots of really interesting observations and had lots of questions to ask. 

After our arrival and time to do some exploring of savannah based animals, all of Owls split into two groups and had a talk with a park keeper in the walled garden. We learned a lot about how different animals have adapted and changed to suit the different environments that they live in. Our favourite fact of the day was that a sloth's hair grows down so that rain will run off of it. This means that if you turned one upside down its hair would stick straight up! Lunchtime was a real success as the children had a chance to play in the adventure playground. Some even plucked up the courage to go down a very, very steep slide!

The rest of the afternoon was spent looking at desert and forest animals before we all came back, tired but happy! 

Week Beginning 13th May 2019

Linking to our topic on Kenya we have been looking at percussion instruments used in Africa. The children are now excellent at keeping a steady beat, using the phrase, 'let's all play our drum.'

We have been looking at different habitats across Africa and can talk about the features of the Savannah, deserts and forests. We have particularly enjoyed listening to rain forest sounds and have been inspired to create our own rain sticks.

Week Beginning 6th May 2019

When the sun is shining what better thing to do than explore shape outside! Making shapes is a lot more challenging when you have to ensure that the length of the sides is the same to make a regular shape. This lead to some fantastic discussions about regular and irregular shapes and really helped us think about the properties of 2D shape.

Week Beginning 22nd April 2018

We are all very excited to be back at school for Term 5. This term we will be learning all about Kenya. To start our topic off we will be reading books about a lady called Wangari Maathai. She worked hard in Kenya to protect forests and helped the women of Africa plant over 35 million trees! We will also be learning about different geographical features of Kenya and different habitats. We are planning to arrange a trip to a place where we could see some of these animals, so watch this space! 

Week Beginning 18th March 2019

This week we went to visit Folly Acres. After a very long walk up a very steep hill on a very cold and windy day we were delighted to be greeted with cups of hot chocolate and biscuits!

This gave us the energy to split into two groups. Group One had the important role of looking after the chickens. This involved feeding the chickens, collecting eggs, petting the chickens and adding extra straw to their house. 

Group Two had to plant sunflower and bean seeds in their hot chocolate cups and plant a row of potatoes. We are hoping to visit Folly Acres later in the year to dig up our potatoes and bring them home to cook and eat. The groups then swapped and completed the opposite task. 

Finally we all walked back down the hill and into school. We would like to say a huge thanks to Lizzie and Dan for making us so welcome and for planning such an exciting morning for us.

Week Beginning 28th January 2019

We have been exploring collage in art and have created some lovely pictures of animals from the different continents that we have been exploring. We used tissue paper and looked carefully at the colours and patterns of the animals we were re-creating. 

Week Beginning 21st January 2019

We are continuing to learn about the world's oceans and continents. We have used maps to track the journey of the snail and the whale (from our literacy text The Snail and the Whale) and believe that they traveled from England to Antarctica, Hawaii, The Shetland Isles and then back to England. We have decided to write diaries about the snail's adventures and will write newspaper reports next week instead. Our focus has been using adjectives and expanded noun phrases to describe the different places that the characters visit. 

This week has been a very musical week. We are obsessed with the Five Oceans Song ( look it up on YouTube!) as it is unbearably catchy but also brilliant in teaching us about the different oceans of the world. We have also been playing the ocarina and are working hard to play Happy Birthday.

Week Beginning 14th January 2019

This week we have used salt dough to create our favourite food. We have used different modelling and painting techniques in order to make them look as realistic as possible.  In geography we have been finding out about the different continents and oceans in our world and have used maps to find them. Our literacy text is The Snail and the Whale which is a lovely story about a snail who hitches a ride on the tail of a whale all over the world. We will be linking this story to our own discoveries about the continents and oceans. We plan to write a newspaper report about the snail's adventures next week.

In PE the children have started country dancing. They are doing a magnificent job and Mrs Knight is already very impressed with how quickly they are learning the different dances. 

Week Beginning 7th January

We are all very excited to be starting our new topic, 'From Plant to Plate'. To help us get thinking about where our food comes from we have been looking at the packaging on our food and finding the different countries that food is produced on, on maps. We have also enjoyed looking at these countries on Google Earth.

In English this week we have been watching a video explaining how marmalade is made. We have discovered that oranges are grown in hot countries such as Spain and are brought to England to be made into marmalade in factories. We have used this information to write our own reports. Our favourite marmalade story is that marmalade was invented in 1700 in Dundee when a ship carrying oranges from Spain had to stop due to a storm. A lady called Mrs Keiller made 'orange jam' from the rotting fruit by adding sugar to it. 

Week Beginning 10th December

Our Christmas adverts are finally being completed! Here are a few more for you to watch.

Week Beginning 3rd December

This week we have been watching different Christmas adverts and planning our own versions. We have spotted that most of the adverts include a journey that results in the solving of a problem. Our absolute favourite was one called The Longest Journey which features a snowman going shopping for the lady snowman who he loves!

We have started by choosing different Christmas characters and planning where their journeys will be. We hope to film these next week and add them to the blog.

Week Beginning 26th November 2018

This week we have been writing our own versions of a story based on the lovely animation Mon Ami Le Robot. The children have used a range of adjectives to describe their underwater world and have ensured that they have a clear beginning, middle and end to their stories. We are all working hard to ensure that our sentences are properly punctuated and some of us are beginning to use exclamation marks and speech marks.

We have also made some beautiful Christmas tree decorations which are currently displayed on our tree in St Laurence Church, Stroud as part of the Christmas Tree Festival. The tree will remain there until Sunday 9th December, so please visit the church and take a look.

Week beginning 19.11.18

This week we have been investigating how light travels. We have discovered that some material blocks light. These materials are called opaque. Materials that let light travel through a bit are translucent and things that light can easily pass through are called transparent. We can see easily through transparent things like windows and glasses.Later this week we plan to sort different materials according to whether they are transparent, translucent or opaque.

Week Beginning 12.11.18

On Wednesday this week Owls Class went to Stratford Park with Merlins Class. At the park we took part in different activities to do with autumn. We each had a colour chart that we had to match with the different plants in the park. We were amazed at the many different coloured leaves that we were able to find! After our snack we collected leaves and tried to make beautiful patterns with them in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. Owls class will be writing autumn poems at the end of this week so we also brought back a huge selection of leaves for inspiration.

Week Beginning 29th October

We had a very exciting start back to school with a visit from Ian McGuire from Wild Owl. He has two pet owls (a barn owl and a tawny owl) and had lots of information to share with us about owls. We can now name the five main species of owl found in the United Kingdom and understand how owls are able to fly silently!

Monday 1st October - Friday 5th October

For the past two weeks the children have been working in teams to create Tudor style buildings. On Monday we set up our own version of Pudding Lane and then used red paint to represent the flames leaping from building to building. In a matter of minutes our houses were all destroyed and we talked about how this made us feel. 

Although we were sad to see our hard work go up 'in flames' we now have looks of amazing words to describe our feelings. These will be used in the diaries that we are also writing this week.

Tuesday 4th September- Friday 21st September 2018

Well, what a fantastic start to the school year we have had in Owls Class! In order to start our topic on The Great Fire of London with a bang we lit a small fire in our garden. This gave us a wonderful opportunity to really explore what fire is like and to collect describing words that will support our writing later in the term. 

      Taking part in lots of drama activities and using our  imaginations has enabled us to really understand what it felt like to be alive during the Great Fire of London. We have also sequenced the events of the Great Fire and have learned about Samuel Pepys and his diary.

This is what Sir Kenelme wrote in his book, which is called "The Closet of Sir Kenelme Digby Opened". 

"Take one pound of very fine flower, and put to it half a pound of sugar. Add one pound of currants well washed. When your flower is well mixed with the sugar and currants, you must put in it a half a pound of melted butter, three spoonfuls of milk, with the yolks of three new-laid eggs beat with it, some nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack.

"When you have mixed your paste well, you must put it in a dish by the fire, till it be warm.

"Then make them up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes. Bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards sprinkle them with sugar.

"The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin; of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet."

As well as making the cakes, we have enjoyed working out what the original recipe says. 'Sack' is actually Maderia wine, so we didn't include that in our cakes! 

We started work on finding out about Uplands - both local history and geography too.  We completed a traffic survey at the front of school, using our data handling skills to collect data in a tally chart.  The children enjoyed choosing their own categories of vehicle and spotting the traffic going past on Thompson Road.

Finally, we had a fantastic walk around Uplands on Friday morning looking at all the different houses.  We spotted the different types of housing we had talked about in class and were able to talk about how they were different to each other.  The children enjoyed pointing out their own houses and we even saw some parents out in the garden!  We also noticed the differences between the older and newer houses in Uplands, which is something we will look further into during our history lessons.  Thank you so much to everyone who has sent in photographs and information about their own houses - this will be used in school next week and will really bring the subject alive for the children.

As a bonus, we also had chance to walk through the co-housing and we were given a brief guided tour by a resident.  It was incredibly peaceful because they were no cars and we learnt that all the houses were made from wood and designed to be eco-friendly, which the children found fascinating.

Mon 4th - Friday 8th July

This week the children have really got in to our weather topic.  They finished off their wind socks which we then took outside to measure the wind speed and direction - they decided that there was a light North Easterly breeze!  They also finished their weather vanes which you probably saw outside this week and which the children have designed and made themselves.  They are fully working although I'm not sure they would last very long outside in all weathers!  We have now bought our own weather vane, thermometer and wind sock for the class so that we can continue measuring the weather each day over the summer term.

We have also been using the ipads in school this week to program our own animations about the seasons.  The children used an app called Scratch Jr which allows them to input commands to make different characters move around the screen.  They can also add text and sound.  They did a fantastic job and were really good at just trying things out and learning from their mistakes which is often the best way to learn when using new technology.

Please take a look at the 'Wonderful Writing Wall' blog where I have added some of the Owls stories about 'The Bog Baby'.  Please leave the children a comment too if you have chance! Thank you.

Mon 13th - Fri 25th May

We have been really busy over the last couple of weeks.  We have continued learning about the weather during our topic work where we have researched weather vanes and designed our own based on what we found out.  We learnt that they needed to be strong and waterproof to be left out in all weathers!  We are going to each be making a weather station to use across the term for measuring weather on a daily basis.  It will consist of a rain gauge, wind sock and weather vane and we will also use the class thermometer each day to compare the temperature. This week we started to put together some of the pieces and they are going to make the classroom look very colourful!

In English, the Year 1 children worked on their sentence writing by creating a treasure hunt out in the playground for the year 2 children to complete.  They decided where to hide the clues, thought about prepositions and adjectives and then wrote questions for each clue so that they could practise adding a question mark at the end of a sentence.  The year 2 children had a great time running around the playground looking for the treasure.

In PSHE we have continued our work on managing emotions and the children wrote and performed short plays about how best to manage anger and frustration, thinking about the reasons why they might feel that way and how best to deal with the situation.  They all did a fantastic job and we performed out on the stage in the outdoor area.

Have a fantastic half term and we will see you back in June!

Mon 7th - Friday 11th May

This week we learnt about the weather for our topic 'Uplands News and Journal'.  We kicked off by going outside one of the beautiful sunny afternoon and sitting down to enjoy the feel of the sunshine.  We talked about how we could use our 5 senses to explore different kinds of weather and also thought about what we associate with different weathers e.g. sunshine and beaches, snow and Christmas.  The children came up with some fantastic ideas and I'm sure they are going to really enjoy finding out even more during our science this term.

I have attached a copy of this term's year 2 homework which started this week.  The children should have come home on Friday with a new homework book and the list of homework's stuck inside the front cover.  As always they can choose which order to do the homework's in as long as one is handed in each week and the first one will be due this coming Friday.

Mon 30th April - Friday 4th May

This week the children have started their art for the term, they began by drawing pieces of fruit in the classroom to learn about colour, lines and shading then they went out in to the playground to take pictures of different man-made and natural objects which they then carefully sketched inside.  We are building up to a picture of the countryside which will be part of our topic all about Stroud.

The children have been busy sharpening up their calculation skills in maths; adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.  They are starting to become really fluent now.

Finally, we have been thinking about managing emotions in PSHE and how we can spot how other people are feeling.  We started by naming different emotions and discussing how they show on people's faces and in their body language.  Can you tell which emotions the children are portraying in the photos below?

Have a fantastic bank holiday weekend and enjoy the sunshine - see you on Tuesday!

Welcome Back!

I can't believe we are in the summer term already!  The children seem to have had a great rest over Easter and are raring to go back in school.  We have had an exciting start to the term with swimming lessons beginning straight away and the wonderful Country Dance Festival at Stratford Park last Thursday.  We have been so impressed with how the children have approached swimming lessons so far.  It is a long walk down to the leisure centre and they have to be incredibly independent with getting themselves changed and staying organised in the changing rooms and so far they have really surpassed our expectations.  They have all been keen to get in the pool and I'm sure they will make excellent progress over the term.  

Thank you so much to all of you who came to the Country Dance Festival, we really appreciate your support and it meant so much to the children.  The best moments of the night were seeing the massive smiles as they galloped past with their adult in tow!  I cannot stress enough how proud we were of them on the night, they have put in a huge amount of work alongside Mrs Knight in PE lessons last term and it is a lot for them to remember and some of the dances are really complicated!  I even had a teacher come over from another school to compliment them on their energy and skill!  They really were fantastic - well done everyone!

Cotswold Wildlife Park

Apologies for the delay, but I wanted to share some photos from our trip to Cotswold Wildlife Park at the end of last term.  It was a fantastic day and we got to see a whole range of animals.  The best thing about this particular park is how up close and personal you can get to some really fantastic beasts!   The giraffes and the wolves were a real highlight and it is also very special to see a lion so close up - hopefully it is something the children will always remember.

Mon 12th - Friday 16th March

In maths this week the children have all tackled fractions - looking at how to find 1/2 1/4 1/3 and much more!  They did a whole range of activities and have done a great job with this tricky subject!  In English we began our stories based around 'Giraffes Can't Dance'.  They came up with Bunnies who can't hop, puppies who can't play the drums and even a crocodile who can't eat meat!  As always, please feel free to come in and see any of their writing after school whenever you are free - the children love to share their stories with you!

In topic the children have listened to the orchestral music for 'Peter and the Wolf' with Mrs Wride and will be composing their own animal based music next week.  They have also created their very own animal sculptures in art with Mrs Wride based on the work of artist Alberto Giacometti. 

Mon 5th - Fri 9th March

In maths this week the children in both Year 1 and 2 have really nailed multiplication!  They have drawn arrays to help them find the answers and also used their times tables knowledge as well.  The Year 2 children have started 'Magic Maths' where they do a daily 4 minute session of both multiplying and dividing - if you have chance to ask them about it please do and any time you get to test them on their 2, 5 and 10 times table will really make a difference.

In English we wrote a recount of our wonderful Harry Potter day including all the snow excitement!  We then read the book 'Giraffes Can't Dance' and the year 1 children acted out some of the story which you can see in the photos below.  This coming week we will begin writing our own version of this story with an animal of our choosing!

Mon 19th - Fri 23rd February

We have been very lucky this week to welcome into class Mr Moorcroft, a student teacher from the University of Bath who is completing his placement in Owls for the next 8 weeks - no doubt you will have heard about him already from the children but please do come and say hello if you get the chance.  

In English the children have written their stories based on 'The Bog Baby' which we had read together.  They have done such an incredible job and some of the creatures they created were so imaginative, I thoroughly enjoyed reading them all.

In maths, as you can see from the photos below, we have started to tackle multiplication!  The year 2 children will be starting rainbow maths this week to help them practise their 2, 5 and 10 times tables - ask them to share with you what they know and practise any chance you get as this is a really important skill as the children get older.

In our 'Jaws, Paws and Claws' topic we have moved on to finding out about the 5 senses.  The children completed a scavenger hunt where they had to use their senses to identify different objects around the school - inside and out!  They had a lot of fun and will now use this knowledge to write an information text on the subject.

Mon 5th - Friday 9th February

Please see the whole school blog this week for photographs and news from our 'When I Grow Up' week.

Monday 22nd - Friday 26th

This week we have continued to find out about the human body with a particular focus on faces.  We thought about how faces can be different to each other and made a collage of different facial features.  We then did some research on body parts which we will continue next week in order to write an information text about the human body.  Thank you to all the children who have bought in books from home too - they are very useful!

In maths the Year 1 children have continued learning about subtracting and counting backwards.  If you have chance at home to count backwards from 100, maybe in the car or at tea time, then the children will really benefit - it is as important a skill as counting forwards!  In year 2 the children have been tackling missing number problems - a really tricky task which they have been working hard on.  I have been really impressed with their perseverance and positive learning attitudes!

In English we have had great fun reading 'The Bog Baby' by Jeanne Willis.  The children first described The Bog Baby and then created their own woodland creatures - you may have seen their first draft pictures which I sent home.  They have now written a description of their creature and will use this to develop a story next week.  Do ask them about their creature as they are really enthusiastic and I'm sure their writing will be fantastic as a result.  I will share some of the creatures with you next week.

I have also included some photos below of the children enjoying a fun game in phonics as I thought you might like to see the smiles on their faces as they learn their sounds!

Monday 15th - Friday 19th

This week the children have continued their work on body parts.  We sang along with and danced to 'The Body Parts Song' and played Simon Says to help us identify different, more unusual parts of the human body.  We then thought about what we use each body part for and the children were particularly good at thinking about the number of body parts involved in simple everyday tasks such as writing your name or riding a bike.  They had to justify their choices and came up with some ideas that even I hadn't thought of.

In maths Year 1 finished off their work on addition and Year 2 have become really fluent with subtracting 2 digit numbers.  In English, the children completed their writing about sharks and lions - some of which will be on display in the classroom soon.

In PE, the children have started learning some dances in preparation for the country dance festival in April.  They have done so well so far, working together and having to remember a huge amount of moves.  They have to keep it up for a 3 minute song too so lots of energy burnt off!  As you can see from their smiling faces, they are having a lot of fun!

Don't forget - Jungle Agility started this week - your first challenge card was attached to Friday's newsletter and our focus this week is on BALANCE.  If you have lost your card, you can find them all on our new Jungle Agility blog page.

Monday 8th - Friday 12th January

The Owls class have come back to school raring to go and have already been working incredibly hard this term.  We have started our new topic 'Jaws, Claws, Paws!' by beginning to find out about the human body and it's different parts.  We went out in to the playground to draw around each other and label our body parts - ask the children if they can remember where their forehead, heel or torso are?!  

In English, the children researched lions and sharks and then used the information they gathered to write reports and descriptions of these fierce animals.  Did you know lions sleep for up to 21 hours a day!? or that sharks don't blink?!

In maths, we have been working particularly hard.  The year 1 children have spent a long time on adding and getting this important skill right and the year 2 children have become really confident with both adding and subtracting 2 digit numbers.

Monday 27th - Friday 1st

In the last week before Christmas arrives at Uplands, we have been busy in Owls with a lot of learning! In English, the children followed up their visit by Mr Jardine and his ambulance by writing a recount.  In maths, we continued our work on adding - speeding up our mental addition by spotting near doubles and number bonds in year 2.  In art, the children are working on a painting with Mrs Walker which will be finished next week ready for Christmas!  As you can see, they had great fun getting messy and created some beautiful backgrounds.  Finally, we followed up our work on creating maps by learning how to use a compass and finding out where North, East, South and West are.  What a busy week!

Please can I remind everyone about our snack policy in Owls, ready for the new term.  The children are allowed to bring in any type of fruit or vegetable, cheese or yogurt (in a squeezy container of some kind to prevent mess!) and also dry rice crackers with no added extras!  They are also allowed fruit snacks e.g. YoYo bars, as long as the ingredients are 100% fruit.  If you are not sure about anything, please do ask any of us.

The children are really excited about starting the Christmas play and practising our 'festive' dance!  Thank you in advance for your help with costumes, as always, any questions please do ask.  I think I can hear jingle bells in the distance...

Monday 20th - Friday 24th November

This week we had a go at map-making as part of the geography element of our topic.  Super Cat had set us a challenge to hide some treasure from his enemy - Big Dog!  We talked about how modern maps are created using satellite navigation and then walked around the playground imagining what it would look like from space so that we could make our own maps of the school to help out Super Cat.  The children did a really good job thinking about the different shapes they needed to include on their plan and also labeling the different areas carefully.  

Following our science experiment, where we found out which material would make the best waterproof cape for Super Cat, this week the children designed a logo and had chance to make a cape!  They enjoyed going outside and trying them out in the playground!  A lovely end to our science investigation.

Monday 13th - Friday 17th November

This week in maths we have started to practice our addition skills.  The year 1 children have focused on learning their number bonds to 10 off by heart - if you test them at home they should be able to respond quickly now! The year 2 children have been practicing different strategies for adding quickly in their heads.  For example by spotting number bonds, using near doubles or by jumping to the next ten - this has really helped them to speed up their mental addition.

On Thursday, we were very lucky to be visited by Nick Jardine with his ambulance!  The children were able to climb inside, look at all the equipment and even hear the siren working!  They were particularly impressed by the magic step on the side and the sheer number of sick bowls on board!  Next week, they will be writing a text based on their experience and seeing it first-hand will really set them up for some fantastic writing I'm sure.

Monday 6th Nov - Friday 10th Nov

Last week the children took part in anti-bullying week alongside the rest of the school.  Thank you so much to all the parents who came along on Wednesday afternoon to see what we had been finding out about.  We talked about bullying and being kind to each other in school and also found out how we can keep ourselves safe when we are playing or working on the computer.  As you can see from the photos, the children particularly enjoyed acting out a story about bullying called 'Chrysanthemum' by Kevin Henkes.

On Wednesday, we braved the cold and went to the park with Merlins class. It was the Merlin children's very first outing from school and the Year 2s were fantastic - holding their hands and showing them how to behave whilst we were walking on the pavement, we were very proud of them.  When we got back to school, we looked at all the interesting leaves and other Autumn items we had gathered, sorting them by colour and shape and then using them to create some lovely art for display in the classroom.

Monday 30th Oct - Friday 3rd Nov

We have had another lovely week in the Owls and the children returned to school after half term raring to go!  We have been joined in class by Miss Sampson who is helping out on Mon - Wed in Owls until Christmas.  However, Miss Francis and Mrs Knight will still be there everyday across the week.  

This week in maths we have been working on counting in different ways - some of us counted to 100, some counted in 2s, 5s,10s and 3s and some of us found out about the pattern of odd and even numbers.

In art, we worked with Mrs Walker on our cutting and sticking skills in order to create a collage.  The children had to really concentrate to make sure their cutting was accurate and they are improving all the time with practice.  If you have chance at home, using scissors is a great way to strengthen their fingers and work on their fine-motor skills.

Monday 9th - Friday 13th

This week we welcomed a visitor into Owls class. PCSO Underwood came to talk to us about crossing the road safely. We went outside in small groups and put our knowledge to the test! She taught us the importance of making sure we stop, look and listen every time we cross the road.  It was great to see some of the children applying this knowledge on the way to the field for football club on Wednesday. Next week we will be making our own books to share with Merlins to help them cross the road safely too.

In art, the children have been looking at pop art with Mrs Walker. They created their own designs in polystyrene and then printed with them - creating some fantastic results.

Monday 2nd - Friday 6th October

Another wonderful week in the Owls - we are really settling in now and getting used to all the new routines and expectations.  In English, we have read the 'Supertato' series of books.  The children have really loved the stories and we were inspired to write a set of instructions for 'How to trap the Evil Pea...'  We made evil peas out of plasticine and then trapped them in jelly - just like the end of the story!  As you can see the children had a lot of fun watching the jelly change from a solid to a liquid.  

In PE we were learning different ways to travel across the floor, including galloping, side-stepping and hopping! We also worked on our balance by trying to keep beanbags on our heads whilst completing different tasks - very difficult indeed but lots of fun!

Finally, in maths we have been using the 'numicon' pieces to help us find out about all sorts of new concepts, including more than and less than.  The children were also challenged to create a superhero city scape using this fantastic resource.  They had to count the windows and make sure it all added up to the total they were given.  They worked well together and grew in confidence as the task progressed.

Mon 11th - Fri 22nd Sept

Mrs Wride has had a fantastic two weeks in Owls and the children have been really busy.  They found out all about the superhero 'Big Brave Bill' created by folk singer Kate Rusby.  He comes from Barnsley and likes Yorkshire tea!  The children went outside and made their own 'Big Brave Bill' drawings out on the playground in chalk and then they all enjoyed some tea and biscuits to finish off the week!

Welcome Back Owls! 

Calling all superheroes! We have had a super first week back in Owls class. We have practiced our hero handwriting, who knew there was a superhero for every letter of the alphabet! Marvelous maths challenged our brains, especially when the evil teacher came along and muddled up our numbers, we worked as a team to put them back in order. Our art work was spectacular and we had a brilliant time getting to know each other during golden time.

Miss W-S and Mrs Knight are really impressed and can't wait to see how our super learning powers grow over the term. 

Week beginning 16th July 2017

Hello everybody.

We have had a fantastic final week!  We had lots of fun playing at the park.  We played rounders and some of the children scored a rounder first time! After that, we had a fantastic water fight and everybody got soaked.  All the children loved it and so did the grown ups.  Mr Lucas very much enjoyed squirting everybody with the super soaker.  On Wednesday, we made pizzas.  It was really great learning how to make the dough from scratch using Miss Dempster's recipe.  At the end of the week, we brought in our own toys and games to share with each other.  We also got to go and play with the Merlins.  

It has been a fantastic year and all the children have achieved so much.  It is all made possible by the support we get from all of you so thank you. We hope you all have a fantastic summer holiday. 

Miss Dermody and Miss Dempster 

Week beginning 9th July 2017

Hello everybody!

On Monday, a dance lady came in to teach us dances and we made big Kenyan animals using different materials.  It was really fun! 

On Tuesday, Miss Dermody did beading and someone came in and did felting. 

On Wednesday, we went to the CINEMA to see Despicable me 3!

On Thursday, we met our new teachers. 

On Friday, we did some drama and finishes our photography collages. 

Have a nice weekend. 

Eleanor

A message from Miss Dermody and Miss Dempster.

Next week, we will be doing lots of fun activities to celebrate the end of term.  On Tuesday, we will walk up to the park and spend the morning there.  Please could you ensure your child has got a snack and water bottle that they can take with them.  If necessary, please apply sun cream before school. 

On Thursday, the children are allowed to bring in one of their toys from home! 

Thank you for all your support. 

Week beginning 2nd June 2017

This week we have done lots of DT.  We used a range of materials to design and make printing blocks which we then used to print on to paper and fabric.  We took our inspiration from a Kenyan artist and used the colours of the Kenyan flag to make our prints.  On Wednesday, we had sports day.  We all had a great time and the Leopards in the class were very pleased to have won.  We finished off the week with a fashion show to display all of our fabulous work.  All in all it has been a great week!  

Just a reminder about our trip to the cinema on Wednesday.  If you have not yet signed the permission slip then please could you do so by Monday. 

Thanks for all your support. 

Miss Dermody and Miss Dempster. 

Week beginning 26th June 2017

At the beginning of the week, we planned and carried out a science investigation about habitats.  We made choice chambers out of a cardboard box and went to look for woodlice to see if they would choose either the dark/dry, dark/wet, light/dry or light/wet corner. We wrote down our predictions and then we looked in our boxes to see where the woodlice chose to go. After, we wrote up our conclusion. 

We used a program called Scratch on the iPads to learn about coding. We had to create a safari scene using different animals. We had to create a code to make the different characters move.

At the end of the week we dug up our potatoes and did some cooking. We made a Kenyan dish called Irio. It took ages. Afterwards we ate the food. Some people didn't want to try it but when they did, they loved it. Only two people didn't like it. 

Hope we you have a great weekend. 

Izzy

Some children attended a writing workshop with Miss Dempster this week.  Here are some of their amazing poems:

I Saw a Monster

I saw a friendly monster as cheerful as can be

He was laughing with glee

I saw a brave monster as strong as can be

He wanted to save the princess so she could be free

I saw monster as sad as could be

He was lost all alone and he wanted his mummy

I saw a monster he said for goodness sake

Bake me a cake!

I saw a monster she was the best of them all

She didn’t break a monster law

She didn’t crawl, she didn’t fall, she didn’t play ball

She was the best of them all!

By Maisie

Sea Monster

I am a sea monster, a waving, snaking sea monster as blue as the foaming waves.

Thrashing, crashing, flying, smashing. Leaping through watery caves.

I am a sea monster, a swirling, curling sea monster loving the autumn breeze.

Swooping into the distance. Moving, wriggling, being careful not to freeze.

I am a sea monster, a whirling, twirling sea monster flicking up water.

Diving, creeping, snaking for I am the Sea King’s daughter

In sunset sinking away.

By Isabelle

Under the shimmering, turquoise sea

Under the sea there could be:

An old wooden shipwreck sitting at the bottom on the sea.

A turtle’s dangerous tooth and a ripped message hidden in a bottle.

A treasure chest’s lock sparkling like silver.

A bobbing clown fish as orange as the sun and a smooth shiny seahorse weaving through seaweed.

A string of bright green seaweed swaying in the water and a shiny, light blue fish left in a coral reef.

What else could be under the sea?

By Eleanor

Day Dreamer

I saw a monster, a sunny, yellow monster, gliding in the water like me,

And it said, “ello little monster are you good or bad?”

“Right now,” I replied, “I’m incredibly sad!”

But then it kept on gliding, it kept on slither sliding and it called,

“When you’re in the ocean you do need suntan lotion!”

“But I do not have any. I don’t even have a plan!”

So it faded away for the rest of the day and I kept on going for my five metre badge!

By Jemima

Week beginning 18th June 2017

This week we had a brilliant trip to Bristol Zoo.  At Bristol Zoo, we saw some meerkats, lions, flamingos, dinosaurs and ducks.  The dinosaurs weren't real although they did roar!  When we had our lunch a duck ate half of my sandwich!  At lunchtime, Miss Dempster and her son George turned up.  He is really cute!  We got all wet when we went in the water park.  It was really fun because it was a really hot day. 

In our English lessons we wrote recounts about out trip.  Some of them are up in the classroom on display.

In genius hour we explored how things fly and made awesome paper aeroplanes.

By Bel

Week beginning 12th June 2017

This week we cracked a code for finding Miss Dempster's Lego cards. Mrs Moore was the thief. How fun it was! 

On Thursday, the Year 2s  got into partners and made posters about Kenya. 

We made some special cards. Everybody made different cards. 

On Friday we did lots of repeated patterns. We made them out of Lego, boxes and we even drew them. 

By Maya

Message from Miss Dermody and Miss Dempster

On Monday, we will be going on our trip to Bristol Zoo. Please apply sun cream before school. Children will need a hat, lots of water and a snack. It's forecast to be a scorcher! They will also need a rucksack to carry their lunch in. 

Thanks for all your support. 

Week beginning 5th May 2017

Hello everybody, 

On Monday, we had a visit from a tortoise. It was very funny. 

On Tuesday, we wrote instructions about how to care for a tortoise. It was quite fun. 

On Wednesday, we did doubling and halving. It was hard. 

On Thursday, we researched lots of things about Kenya. It was fun!

Nancy

A message from Miss Dermody and Miss Dempster

If children have not brought back their slips for the Bristol Zoo trip, please could they remember to bring them on Monday. 

Thanks

Week beginning 22nd May 2017

Hello everybody,

This week we were doing our 'We love maths' books. They are fun, awesome and brilliant for new learners. On Tuesday, we went swimming. How hot it was! We also did lots of work on shape. 

On Friday, we did golden time. Lots of people did IPads and some did colouring. What fun we had! 

I hope everybody has a brilliant half term filled with loveliness and enjoyment. 

Jemima 

Week beginning 15th May 2017

Hello everybody,

On Monday we had a reading day where we dressed up as are favourite book characters. Miss Dempster dressed up as Gerald the giraffe and Miss Dermody dressed up as Big the kangoroo. We had breakfast with the parents and we made potatoes look like book characters out of school for everyone to see.

On Tuesday we wrote a book review for Giraffes Can’t Dance and went swimming in the afternoon.

Today we played fun, exiting and extremely cool games including rob the nest and we typed up are animal riddles.

Have a lovely weekend, Eleanor.

Week beginning 8th May 2017

Hello everybody. 

This week we've been doing some riddles about animals.  We've also been learning about habitats and doing some gardening. It has been very fun. Surprisingly, we all finished our animal models.  It was the best week yet. What wonderful models we made!

We made African masks with Mrs Walker and we've been doing some hard maths and English.  On Friday in maths, we worked on telling the time.  

Have a good weekend. 

Maya