Throughout this year children in Year 1 classes in Nechells and Aston schools have received a free book every month (10 books in total). These books were supplied by the Nechells POD CIC through the Bookshare project , funded by the Smurfit Kappa SSK Foundation.

On Thursday Year 1 attended a celebration at Heartlands Academy.

We heard how each school have incorporated the books into the children’s learning.

Mrs Webster told everyone our favourite book was Stickman.

We enjoyed learning all about Stickman and enjoyed the trip to Sutton Park trying to find Stickman.

We heard stories from the author Steve Smallmann who wrote one of the books we have been given, ‘Batmouse’

Steve Smallmann also illustrates books and he drew us a picture using our ideas.

For the last two weeks year 1 have been looking at instructions in literacy. It’s been a really enjoyable couple of weeks and we have had plenty of chances to carry out and write our own instructions. Some of the instructions we’ve looked at have included making sandwiches and inventing our own game. Check out the pictures below to see the fun we had!

This week in maths, we have been learning about measuring. We have been measuring in practical situations. We really enjoyed predicting if children were taller or shorter than a metre. We learnt how to read scales in divisions of ones, twos, fives and tens on the scale. Some children were even able to read a scale where not all numbers are given! Well done year 2!

In literacy Year 5 have been writing their own versions of Alice in Wonderland.

We took inspiration from The Arrival by Shaun Tan to write setting descriptions for our story.

We have written our best paragraph onto paper so we can create weird and wonderful stories using all of our ideas.

As part of our topic ‘Flow’ Year 3 visited Beacon Park, Lichfield.  We had a great day with Ruth the Ranger observing, sampling and measuring Leomonsley Brook.  After meeting Ruth, we split into three groups and started our activities.  Those of us with Wellies on were allowed into the brook to help Mrs Hall measure the width and depth of the brook, we had to convert the cm to metres too!  We then had to measure the temperature of the water and the last part was the most fun.  To measure how fast the brook was flowing we played the traditional game of Pooh Sticks with dog biscuits with a modern twist – scoring a goal between Mrs Hall’s two feet while she timed them to see how fast the dog biscuits took to travel down river.  Play was only interrupted once by the opposition when they sent in a rogue player; a black Labrador into the brook to paddle and retrieve a few of the stray dog biscuits.  Mrs Hall was unharmed just a bit wet around the edges.  We also measured how clean the water was, as this would tell us how well the plant would grow.  The more circles we could see at the bottom of the container, the cleaner the water was.

Next, we went pond dipping with Ruth to take samples of the different creatures living in the brook.  We managed to catch and observe; snails, caddis fly larvae, fresh water shrimp, tadpoles and water mites.  We dragged a net in the water and then emptied our nets into a tray, we then used an identification chart to help us identify the things we had caught.  It was great fun and really interested to see what lives below the surface of the water.

Miss Groom and here group looked at the trees along the river bank and identified them from our key.  There were eight different trees alongside the river. Why not ask Year 3 to see if they can name them?  We then observed the layout of the river and made a sketch of it.

A great day was had by all.

Sketching the layout of the brook.

This week Year 6 have continued with our Mexico themed topic and created our own Mexican Artwork and also our very own Mexican food. We began by creating our own interpretation of the Ancient Mexican Gods during an afternoon.

Later in the week we got started on our cooking session. We started off by creating a set of instructions on ‘How to create Guacamole, Salsa sauce, and Quesadilla’s’. Once we had created our instructions, we went on making our very own Mexican food. Take a look below at all the great fun we had.