Teversham CE VA Primary School

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Love

Hope

Perseverance

Courage

Forgiveness

Thankfulness

Truthfulness

“We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4 v 19.

Our hope is rooted in God’s love and inspires us to seek the best in ourselves and the world.

We learn from our mistakes and never give up.

We stand up for others and challenge ourselves, even when it might be difficult.

We know that “Every Day is a New Day” with everyone in our community.

Through thankfulness for our blessings, we find ways to serve others.

We understand the value of speaking the truth and exploring truths of life.

Sparrow Class

Welcome to Sparrow Class

Meet the team

Class teacher - Mrs S. Smith & Mrs Turner (Wed)

Teaching Assistants - Mrs C. Smith, Mrs Murphy, Miss Winter

Music - Mrs Taylor

Welcome to Sparrow Class.

On our website we will show you information of what we have been learning during our whole class carpet sessions, websites, links and information for you to support your child at home and photos of some of our independent learning during our busy learning time. More individual learning will be available through your child's private Tapestry account (set up by half term).

Our learning this week

Mama Panya's Pancakes

We have been reading the story of Mama Panya's Pancakes. We inferred from the illustrations on the front cover and created our own questions starting with who, what, why, when , how and what. We also discussed what the characters may be saying, thinking and feeling by writing in thought bubbles, speech bubbles and hearts for feelings.

We discussed the vocabulary of similar and different and thought about what the similarities and differences were with the setting of the story and other places in the world the different ways that the pancakes were being cooked to how we made ours. We discovered the story was set in Kenya and we found this on a globe and looked at how bug it was compared to Great Britain.

Pancake day

We learnt why we make pancakes on Shrove tuesday and what ingredients we would need to make them. We flipped our own pancakes in PE and chose our own toppings to eat our own, realising that everyone likes different things. We read Mr Wolf's pancake's and discussed the characters and the similarities of the story to The Little Red Hen.

E safety week

This week for e-safety week we have talked about what technology we use and what apps and programmes we like to watch. We read the story of Smartie the Penguin and found out how to keep ourselves safe on line. We learnt that we have to stop if we see something we don't understand, think before we click and then tell someone. (stop, think, tell). We then read the story of Chicken Clicking who didn't follow these rules and ended up buying things she shouldn't, seeing things online she shouldn't have and then meeting someone who wasn't who they said they were. It didn't end happily ever after. the children made posters to say 'Stop! Think before you click and tell someone' to help the chick in the future.

Our learning

Weighing for a purpose

This week we put our weighing skills into practice by making cakes. We used a recipe that had to balance the flour, sugar and butter against the egg. They were delicious!

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

We had a penguin delivered to our class room with a label saying 'help me!'. We decided that he must be lost so we made lots of 'Found' posters to put up around the school and then we had the book of Lost and Found delivered. We read the story and made a class story map and we learnt to tell the whole story using actions. We explored penguins, made penguin friends for our 'lost' penguin and made boats to try and get him back to the south pole. We also read 'Blue penguin by Peter Horacek. This led to us writing our own letters, making up stories and painting pictures. It led to a lot of discussion about being different and being friends with everyone.

The penguin then found his way back to the South Pole as his penguin friends came to get him and left us a thank you letter for looking after him so well.

Maths learning in Sparrow

Once upon a snowstorm

We have been reading Once upon a snowstorm. It is a wordless picture book so we have been thinking about the characters, setting, problem and resolution. We have thought about how the characters may feel and what it may feel like to be lost in a storm ourselves. We have also explored the animals in the story and then created our own snowy pictures by blending chalk on black paper and by using white paint inspired by Jackson Pollock.

This led us on to learning about Winter and enjoying a winter walk and noting the differences and similarities with Autumn finding out where in the world is snowy and icy and finding the South pole on maps. We also thought about what clothes we may wear and packed a suitcase for all the things that we would need to keep us warm in the snow!

Drama Workshop

Our busy learning

Chinese New year

Christmas Encounter Day

Today we had our RE Christmas encounter day. To start the day, we heard the story of Christmas from Al MacInnes from Hope Chapel. We then sung Christmas songs, sequenced the story, used puppets to tell the story, discussed the people in the story and thought about how they may have felt. We also made our own Christmas cards, drew the Nativity scene, made our own angels and re enacted the whole story in our costumes. After lunch we discussed birthdays and how Christmas is the birthday of Jesus and how we count down by using our advent calendars. We then discussed how we celebrate Christmas today, what our family traditions are and how these link with the real story of Christmas and why we have candles, stars, angels and give gifts at Christmas time.

'The Secret Birthday Message' by Eric Carle

We have been reading 'The Secret Birthday Message' this week. This led us to follow the secret message through the garden to find the treasure. Sparrow class were then inspired to leave their own secret messages and maps for their friends to find. We then received a party invitation so we wrote lists for the party, made party hats, counted out the correct items for the party, made birthday cards for the 4 party and made cakes! We then enjoyed our party on children on need day playing lots of party games and enjoying our cakes! What a lot of writing we have done this week!

Our busy learning

Fireworks pictures

The children enjoyed sharing their experiences of fireworks so we decided to make our own fireworks pictures. The children decided that black paper would be better to show the night sky and used their scissor skills to cut into the cardboard tubes to print the paint. The children poured and mixed the paint independently and chose the colours that they wanted for their pictures. They also decided that they needed a bit of sparkle to them so they added some glitter!

Remembrance Day

Sparrow Class enjoyed the Inspire Prayer space by GenR8.

Diwali

Colour mixing and exploring pumpkins

Pumpkin soup

Our busy learning

The Number of the week - 1

We have been learning about the number 1. We have learnt that the number one is all on its own, it comes at the beginning of our counting, watched the numberblocks episode, counted out one item, represented number 1 in different ways, created a 'number 1 museum' of 1 objects, found number 1 in our environments and written the number. We have also learnt that a circle has 1 side. We explored Kandinsky's circles and saw that there were 1 of lots of different colours in 1 box. We then recreated Kansinskys circles by creating circles with pens, paint and cutting. This helped our fine motor strength, creativity, curves to help with writing letters and understanding of 1 !

Our first PE lesson

We enjoyed our first PE lesson. We did very well at getting changed by ourselves and wearing our PE kit. We learnt the rules of how to stay safe in the hall. We played the traffic lights game to jog, walk and stop around the hall when we heard green, amber and red, when we warmed up. We explored the effect of exercise on our bodies and could feel our hearts beating louder and faster.

WE enjoyed exploring different animals of the jungle and thinking about how they would move. We practised slithering, crawling, stomping, skipping, jumping and pronking as crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, monkeys and antelopes. We were brae to show our movements to our friends too.

We discussed the importance of cooling down and spent some time laying, relaxing and having some time for mindfulness to get our heart rates down.

Phonics

We have started our Phase 2 phonics. We are playing games, building words and practising our sounds wherever we are!

Shapes

We have been exploring shapes in Sparrow class. We have talked about the name of the shapes and discussed their properties. We have sung songs about shapes, found shapes in the environment, sorted shapes, counted the sides and corners of each shape, played musical shapes game and made games with shapes! For our home learning we went on a shape hunt to see to find out that shapes are everywhere!

The Message Centre

In Sparrow class we are encouraging the children to make all sorts of marks and for them to have meaning. This is the first stage of writing and its important that the children have a purpose to their writing and can see that other people value it.
We don't have a writing table in our class but we have a 'message centre'. This has all sorts of paper and a range of pens, pencils, chalk etc. The children are encouraged to write 'messages' with symbols or letters that they have formed and leave them for others to find, The joy the children get when they find the message and wonder who it may be from or wonder what the message may mean has inspired the other children to write messages for others to find.
Once we are learning more sounds in our phonics sessions then the symbols will develop into graphemes (letters) and then into words.....but the excitement of the messaging and the finding of the messages still inspires them!

Harvest Festival

We have been learning about Harvest this week and how we say thank you. During our church service we said thank you to the birds like sparrows by making bird feeders and thank you for the flowers by planting some daffodils ready for Spring. We enjoyed our visit to the Church and even made a Harvest loaf to take with us. We enjoyed mixing, kneading and baking the bread - just like in our story of 'The Little Red Hen'

The Little Red Hen learning in Literacy

This week we have been learning the story of 'The Little Red Hen'. We have discussed the characters, explored adjectives to describe them and role played the story with puppets, masks and small world. We can now retell the story in our own words using our class story map.

Anti bullying week

We have read the story of 'Monty the Manatee' as part of anti-bullying week. We discussed how its okay to be different and how we could be a good friend. We made a very long kindness chain for everytime someone in Sparrow was kind and we learnt what to do if somebody did something we didn't like - 'Stop it, I don't like it!' and 'tell, tell, tell'. Please see our anti-bullying board in the corridor for more photos of what the rest of the school got up to during this week.

We also made up a song to the tune of 'Hickory Dickory Dock', with actions, which we sang in our first Family assembly:

We are a friendly class,

We play, we share, we care,

We have kind words, kind hands, kind feet,

We are a friendly class.

Our whole class artwork

Making playdough

Daily finger gym to get our fingers and hands strong, ready for writing

Playing in the rain

To explore our school we went on a hunt for the 'Everywhere bear' that had escaped from our Curiosity cube and gone on an adventure. How many places in the school do you recognise?