Today the whole of KS1 took part in an amazing Christmas performance called ‘The Big Little Nativity’. We have been working hard all week to learn our lines and have been rehearsing on the big stage! Everyone has such an important role to play form singing, dancing, acting and narrating. Well done KS1!
In our maths lesson we have been working very hard on our place value knowledge and multiplication skills. For place value we have been recapping how to partition numbers into tens and ones, developing our understanding of counting in 3s and working on comparing and ordering numbers within 100! During our multiplication lessons we have been chanting our times table facts and using visual such as arrays to answer trickier questions. Here are some examples of our amazing work:
Today we visited Bolton Schools ICT at Smithills High School to take part in a computing workshop! We started the morning by building different lego sets and programming them to light up, spin and move. We used key words such as event and sequence to help our learning:
After dinner we got to spend some time using the Lottie Bots. At school we use BeeBots in our Computer Science lessons so we all had lots of fun trying something new! We came up with our own algorithms and then created a sequence to make our Lottie Bots move in different directions, make sounds and flash in different colours:
This morning some of our adults came to join in with our art lesson. This half term we have ben focussing on our sketching and painting abilities as for our final piece we are going to be creating a piece of work on Oxford Grove. In Year 2 we love to paint and have been working really hard on understanding our primary and secondary colours. This morning we worked on mixing colours independently and applying them to a painting:
This morning we have been continuing our learning on the Christmas story. So far we have learnt what happened in the story and why it is so important to many people around the world. Today we are discussing the question ‘Was Jesus born where people expected?’. We thought about how the shepherds felt when they were visited by angels and when they visited Jesus. Here are some of our ideas:
This afternoon we went on a walk of our local area to visit the old Oxford Grove site. In our history lessons we have been learning about Oxford Groves past from when it was built in 1902 to the present day. Up until the year 2000 the school used to be on Oxford Grove which was just around the corner. We walked to the site and Mrs Hobin and Mrs Barnett gave us lots of interesting facts about what it was like to teach at the old school.
Can you tell me a fact about the old Oxford Grove?
This half term in our PE lessons we are going to be working on fitness and ball skills. So far this year we have done fundamentals and athletics which we all really enjoyed. We love to work on our balancing, sprinting and jumping skills.
As part of of our fitness topics we have been discussing how to keep our bodies fit and healthy and the impact that exercise has on our bodies. We came up with some different activities we could do at home or on the playground to get our bodies moving! This week we have been learning how to skip:
In our history lessons this half term our topic is called ‘What’s the Story of Oxford Grove?’. As part of this we will be learning all about Oxford Groves past including where the building used to be, how the school has changed and exploring a range of primary and secondary sources. We will be making timelines of the school all the way from 1902 when it was first built to the present day. Here is an amazing piece of work from one of our lessons:
This week is anti-bullying week. This years theme is ‘Power for Good’ where we are all encouraged to use our power to speak out against bullying, support others, and create a kinder environment.
In our PSHRE lessons we have been discussing what bullying is and what we could do to help someone who is being bullied. It is always important to remember that bullying happens several times on purpose -STOP.
STEP 1 Today in RE we have started our new topic all about Christianity. We learnt that Jesus is believed to be God in the flesh. We linked this to the idea of incarnation.
STEP 2 – Next, we looked at different images of Jesus in the stables and discussed what we could see. We could see Mary and Joseph looking at baby Jesus in the manger.
STEP 3 – Next, we began to read a version of the Christmas story from the beginners Bible. Christians believe that God came to Earth as Jesus to show Christians how to live.
Today we talked about Bonfire Night and the gunpowder plot! Here is what we found out:
We enjoyed watching a Horrible Histories video all about the gunpowder plot and talking about our experiences of Bonfire Night in class.
This afternoon, we watched the Google online safety assembly which gave us some key online safety reminders. These rules are important to follow at school and on our own devices at home.
Some of the key online safety reminders included:
– Do not believe everything you read online.
-Speak to a trusted adult if you experience problems online.
– We should only be playing age appropriate games.
– Keep accounts private.
Today we had our first smiley reward of the year! Our amazing sports coaches brought in a huge inflatable obstacle course. We took turns to work crawl, climb and jump our way through the obstacles. As part of this we had some races and worked on our team building skills during the relay race. It was so much fun!
October is Black History Month and in Year 2 we have been learning all about Rosa Parks and the incredible work she did to make the world a fairer place. One day on her way home from work Rosa refused to give up her seat and was arrested. This made people start to think about the rules and how they should be changed. At Oxford Grove we understand the importance of treating everyone equally and with respect.
This week in school we have been celebrating harvest festival. We have been collecting food to donate to those in need. The harvest festival celebrates the time after summer when farmers start to collect all of the lovely crops they have grown.
Thank you to everyone who contributed! Our School Council will be distributing the food on Friday to people who need it.
In our science lessons we have been learning about animals and their habitats. A very small habitat is called a micro-habitat.
This afternoon we each made our own bug hotel. We collected sticks, leaves, conkers, grass and stones and arranged them into different cardboard boxes. It was lots of fun and our bug hotel looks amazing! We will be checking these daily to see if any insects have come to stay!
Which animals do you think we will find?
Over the past 3 weeks in our maths lessons we have been focussing on place value. We have been:
Here is some of our amazing work!
Today we watched a Google assembly all about online safety. We learnt that everything we read online might not actually be true and how we can decided if something is real or pretend. We also learnt how to keep our online accounts safe by choosing strong passwords and not sharing our personal information with people we don’t know. Finally we discussed what we should if we are worried about something happening online.
Can you answer the following questions.
1. Is everything you see online true?
2. How can you keep yourself safe online?
3. Who could you speak to if you are worried about something?
Today, we began our topic all about Judaism in RE.
STEP 1 RRR – We first completed an RRR activity where we recapped where the place of worship is for Jewish people and the holy book from Year 1.
STEP 2– Next, we discussed that people from different worldviews have special belongings in their household to show their faith. We then investigated some Jewish artefacts found in homes and asked questions about them. Then, learnt how the different artefacts are used. We looked at a:
STEP 3 – After that, we looked more closely at the mezuzah which has an important prayer inside called the shema.
This afternoon was our Sports Afternoon! We had lots of fun taking part in different races with our friends. We completed the egg and spoon race, relay race, cone race and racket race and tried our very best to get first place!
This morning we had lots of fun making bruschetta! We learnt the importance of eating a balanced diet, we explored the different food groups and learnt all about where our food comes from. When making the bruschetta we used different cutting methods. We used the bridge method to carefully slice the tomato and the claw method to dice the onion. We mixed this together in a bowl and added it to our fresh bread. Finally we shredded some mozzarella cheese for on top. It looked very tasty!
This afternoon we had a very exciting visit from Classroom Kitchen who came into school as part of our D&T curriculum. They helped us to make some delicious pizzas and develop our cooking skills. We had to measure the ingredients, roll the dough, spread the sauce, slice the toppings and then put it all together before it went into the oven. Once it had cooked we got to give it a try!
For this year Work Related Learning we made delicious fruit kebabs! We started by choosing which order the fruits would go in and then drawing up a design. After washing our hands we carefully placed the fruit onto the sticks ready to sell!
We have had such a fantastic time in Year 1! We have learned so much and had so many amazing experiences and opportunities. We have enjoyed spending some time this week reflecting on our time in Year 1.
Now it is time for us to start Year 2! What are you excited about? What are you most looking forward to? What do you think you will learn about?
Today in our Computing lesson we have talked about privacy and security. We have talked about passwords and why we need them. We know that passwords are used to protect information, accounts and devices. We talked about examples of bad passwords (easy to guess) and good passwords (not easy to guess). We discussed the importance of not sharing our passwords, except with our trusted adults at home or at school who can help us to keep them safe.
Today in our Computing lesson we have looked at managing online information. We know that there are lots of different things online, including information, photos and videos. We know that we can see lots of things online including things we like and don’t like. We also know that some things online are not real or are a joke. We talked about how different people can find different things funny, so someone might enjoy a joke that another person doesn’t like.
We talked about how we can get help if we see things that makes us feel sad, uncomfortable, worried or frightened. We know that the best way to get help is to talk to our trusted adult straight away.
Today in our Computing lesson we have looked at copyright and ownership. We have discussed who different types of work belongs to, and looked at how we can identify who owns something. We know that we can create work both online and offline. We can name our work so that everyone knows who it belongs to. We talked about an important question – if we copy someone’s work and put our name on it, does it belong to us now?
Today in our Computing lesson, we have talked about what information technology is. We have talked about similarities and differences between different devices. We have talked about the different ways we can use different devices, and looked at which devices might connect to the internet. We have reviewed the rules for using the internet, including asking our adults at home for permission to go online and talking to our trusted adults about what things we are doing when we are online at home.
We have really enjoyed our music this half term! We have been learning about texture, which means ‘layers of sound in music’.
We have learned a song called The Clock Song, where we have enjoyed using a range of different instruments to create texture as we sing and play together.
Wow! What an amazing afternoon we have had! We really enjoyed our fantastic time on the climbing wall!
We worked so hard and kept trying out best to see if we could climb higher and higher. We used lots of resilience and we all kept smiling and enjoying ourselves.
We were so proud that our whole class filled the front of their smiley cards to achieve this reward. Well done, Year 1!
Today we have enjoyed watching a live streamed assembly from Google all about online wellbeing! We talked about how we can look after our wellbeing online in lots of different ways. We also know that we can look after ourselves by not being online too much and enjoying other activities too, such as going to the park, playing with our friends and reading.
Thank you to our Digital Leader for supporting us with this assembly!
In Year 1, we love applying our knowledge, especially in maths! This week, we have been developing our understanding of measuring in centimetres using a ruler. We were set a challenge to measure five different classroom objects and then put them in the right order, from shortest to longest. We worked in pairs to measure and helped check that our partners were measuring accurately. We wrote the measurements onto post it notes to help us remember them. Then we looked carefully at the numbers so we could put them in the right order. Well done everyone on your fantastic teamwork!
Today we have had so much fun today planting some seeds!
First we each planted a pot of mung bean seeds. These are going to grow into beansprouts! We wrote instructions as we completed each step.
We also worked in groups to plant some calendula flower seeds. We are going to have a competition between our tables to see which plants grow the tallest or have the most flowers!
Today we have enjoyed our second drumming workshop with Mr Bamford! We did RRR of our drumming learning from last week, including copying rhythms and controlling volume.
We also worked on learning an African song. We worked on improving our call and response songs.
We absolutely love reading in Year 1! We change our reading books every week, and we really enjoy reading the blurb on the back first and making predictions about what will happen in the stories or what information we will find in non-fiction.
We also love reading together in our class. Books by our class author Julia Donaldson or our class poet Giles Andreae are some of our absolute favourites. We also love books connected to our learning. We have recently read ‘Lost and Found’, which is set in the South Pole and we are learning about this in Geography. We have also read ‘Growing Plants’, a non-fiction book all about how plants grow, which we are learning about in Science.
What is your favourite book and why do you like it?
Today we have had a fantastic afternoon enjoying improving our drumming skills!
We worked with Mr Bamford who taught us to play the djembe drums in Reception. He helped us to improve our knowledge even further today!
We enjoyed exploring volume and tempo. We played some copying rhythms and worked on keeping a steady beat. We also took part in some call and response rhythms – we are excellent at these! Mr Bamford is incredibly impressed with how good we are at playing the djembe drums!
Well done on your amazing music skills, Year 1!
Today we have enjoyed a fantastic maths workshop all about shape!
First we met Trevi who told us all about the treasure island with a scary monster! We worked in groups to RRR our knowledge of 2D shapes and created some beautiful shape pictures.
Then we used clues about the island monster to talk about the shape of its body parts. We looked at different pictures of animals and talked about the shape of their body parts, and compared these to the monster.
Finally, we used our 2D shapes to create a picture of what we thought the monster looked like.
Over this term, we are going to be learning so many exciting things in Year 1!
In Geography, we will be learning about hot and cold places in the world, including the North Pole, South Pole and the equator.
In Computing, we will be learning more Computer Science and how to control sprites on a computer screen.
In Science, we will be learning about different types of plants and how they grow. We are looking forward to planting our own seeds!
In RE, we are learning about what it means to belong to a community, especially a faith community. We will be bringing together our knowledge of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
In PSHRE, we are looking at different relationships, such as how to be a good friend and what different families look like.
We are so excited to be starting our Summer term learning!
We have really enjoyed our Design and Technology learning this week!
First, we learned to thread a needle – this was harder than we thought it would be! Then we worked on tying a knot in our thread. We really enjoyed practising this skill and getting really good at it!
Finally, we put these two skills together to work on sewing a running stitch. We worked hard and used our growth mindset skills to help us keep resilient as we found this very challenging! In the end, we were so proud of how hard we had worked and what we had achieved.
Well done everyone on improving your sewing skills!
This week, we have worked hard in our art lessons to follow our own designs and create our own crowns for His Majesty King Charles III!
We designed repeating patterns using shapes and colours and cut these out of card. Our repeating patterns were created along the bottom of our crowns. Then we used lots of different materials to create colourful overlapping collages on the tops of our crowns.
We all really enjoyed this learning and worked hard on different skills such as cutting and keeping our art within the lines. Well done, Year 1T!
As we will be starting our new Geography topic this week, we are revisiting, recapping and remembering our first Geography topic!
First, we learned about our local area. We did some fieldwork by enjoying a lovely walk along Shepherd Cross Street! We had a fantastic time looking at all the different human and physical features along the way.
Back in school, we created maps of what we had seen. We started to learn the compass points and used these to help us talk about the positions and directions of the human and physical features that we saw.
After that, we learned about the country where we live – the United Kingdom! Can you remember any facts about our local area or about the United Kingdom?
In Year 1, we love to do PE!
We know that keeping our bodies moving is good for both our physical and our mental health – being active is one of our five ways to wellbeing!
In PE this half term, we are enjoying learning different net and wall games. We are learning to develop racket and ball skills, including hitting a ball with a racket and sending it over a net to an opponent. We have lots of fun with these games!
We are also enjoying yoga. We are looking at how yoga links with mindfulness, and exploring different poses. We are developing our balance and flexibility, and looking at how we can create a yoga flow with a partner.
Today we have enjoyed taking part in our latest Smiley Reward! We were so proud to have filled our smiley cards to be able to attend this excellent workshop. We learned all about how to do first aid!
We learned that if somebody has a minor injury, we need to stay calm, relax and treat the injury. We looked inside a first aid kit to see what equipment was inside. We talked about bandages and what they are used for. We looked at how to put someone in the recovery position.
We talked about emergency numbers such as 999 for an ambulance, fire brigade or the police. We also know that 111 is the number for non-emergency advice from the NHS.
We learned so much – what an amazing afternoon!
We have had such an amazing day at Bolton Schools ICT! We took part in lots of different fun technology activities all based on our key Computer Science word ‘algorithm’. Our activities were:
* moving BeeBot around different mats
* moving GlowBots around a track
* moving remote control cars and cats around tracks
* following a partner’s algorithm to draw a monster
* following a partner’s algorithm to design different shapes
* following the teacher’s algorithm to create a ‘litter picker’
We did lots of RRR of our Computer Science work from Autumn term. We know that we especially have to use our excellent listening skills to follow algorithms properly – just like a computer does!
This morning we listened to a workshop all about how to keep ourselves safe online.
We talked about games online and what we like to play. We know that some games have different age ratings, and this means that we can only play games that we are old enough to play. We know that we need to talk to our adults at home about what we do online, and we shouldn’t hide what we are doing from our adults.
It is important that we are near our adults when we are online so that we can tell them or show them anything that makes us feel sad, scared or uncomfortable. If we ever feel worried about anything we see or hear online, we should always tell a trusted adult at home or at school.
We LOVE Science in Year 1!
We have just finished our current topic, which was about animals. We are now moving onto our new learning in Science, which is about plants. However, we always do lots of RRR (revisit, recap and remember) about the learning we have completed in Science over the year and last year too!
What can you remember about materials, Year 1?
Our musician of the month is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! We have enjoyed listening to his music over the last few weeks – we especially enjoy the pieces with a fast tempo! We know that his music can sounds like different emotions and we have enjoyed talking about these in class.
We have also learned some facts about Mozart – did you know he was a music genius who could play the piano and compose his own music at the age of 5? He also wrote over 600 pieces of music altogether!
Thanks to our music ambassador who helped us learn about Mozart!
Today we have performed our Year 1 assembly! Our theme was all about our learning in PSHRE, especially looking at mental health and wellbeing. We know that mental health means ‘a positive or negative state of mind’. We talked about all of the amazing things we do at school to support our wellbeing, such as our smiley rewards, workshops, yoga in PE and all of the staff that help and support us in lots of different ways. We really enjoyed singing our song ‘What I Am’ all about being special and unique!
Thank you to all of our families who were able to be there! Some comments from our families:
Wow! Year 1T have had such a brilliant day at the Walker Art Gallery!
First we enjoyed a workshop in the Big Art room, which is specially designed for young children just like us! We used the arts and crafts area to create our own people using different materials to collage. We also explored the other play areas in the room – we particularly liked the dressing up area! Finally, we enjoyed a special art scavenger hunt around the room, finding different pieces of art.
After dinner, we explored the art gallery! We found a room with lots of amazing portraits of kings and queens from the past, just like our learning in History. We really enjoyed using our sketching skills to recreate these portraits.
