Blackfell Primary School

Our First Week

Year 1 and 2 had a fantastic first week getting settled back into school life and learning our new routines. We spent lots of time getting to know each other, and have been focusing on building and maintaining positive relationships during our PSHE lessons. We are looking forward to an exciting year ahead!

PSHE: Building Relationships

Year 1 and 2 have been completing lots of PSHE activities around building relationships. We identified attributes we believe a good friend needs, we completed drama activities about friendship and what to do if a friendship breaks down, we wrote about ourselves and how we are all different from one another, and completed team building exercises to practise using good manners and being supportive friends to one another. 

Science: Material Hunt

In Science we have been learning about everyday materials and the difference between objects and the materials they are made from. We went on a hunt around school to see how many different materials we could find! We realised lots of objects in our school are made out of a range of materials and had lots of fun finding the different ones!

Handwashing - Year 1

Year 1 were visited by the school nursing team who delivered a lesson on the importance of handwashing. We learnt all about the germs that can live on our hands and why it's important to wash them away. Then we looked at when we must wash our hands and how to do this thoroughly.

Black History Month

The theme for this year's Black History Month is 'Reclaiming Narratives' and to celebrate, Year 1 and 2 have been looking at the life story of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. We looked at important events in his life, paintings he created, and the legacy he left. Year 1 then created some work in the style of Jean-Michel, and Year 2 wrote some short fact files about him. 

Anti-Bullying Week

This week, we have been celebrating Anti-Bullying Week in school. This year's theme was 'Choose Respect' so we spent time discussing what this word means, and how we can show others respect in our daily lives. We demonstrated our learning through art and created some fantastic pictures of us being respectful. Some of us chose to write a word that we felt represented respect. We also created a pair of odd socks to show that we are all different and unique, and that in school we celebrate this!

Making Christmas Cards

We have been working hard over the past couple of weeks making beautiful Christmas cards for our families. We tried really hard with our sewing skills and I'm sure you'll agree, they look fantastic!

A Visit from Santa

We had a special visitor in Year 1/2...SANTA! He arrived with a sack full of presents and gave us each some sweets to enjoy over Christmas. He told us all he was so proud of how good we have been, and that he will see us all on Christmas Eve! 

Letters from Santa

Year 1 and 2 had a wonderful surprise this morning when Mrs Reynolds arrived to our classroom with 2 envelopes addressed to us. When we opened them, we found 29 letters, one addressed to each of us, from Santa! We were so excited to read them and hear that we were all officially on the good list! 

History: Creating a Timeline

In our first History lesson, Year 1 and 2 have been creating a timeline to demonstrate what we already know about History. We created a whole class timeline, which will be displayed in our classroom, before creating our own in our books. Year 1 added the year they were born to their timeline, while Year 2 added everything they have learnt so far during History lessons last year, in Year 1. We will keep adding to our timeline throughout the year to demonstrate our new learning. 

PE: Teamwork

Year 1 and 2 have been working on their teamwork skills in PE and completed an activity all about communication in order to complete a challenge. We stood in a circle holding hands and were given 4 hoops. We had to pass the hoops around the circle without letting go of each other's hands. We did a fantastic job and were successful in getting each hoop around the circle and back to the start!

Computing: Internet Safety

Our focus in Computing has been internet safety and discussing what information we should and shouldn't share online. Within our lessons, we have discussed different examples of personal information and today we acted out scenarios where our peers asked us a range of questions. We had to think carefully about what was ok to answer and when we should say no!

RE: The Qur'an

In RE we have been learning about the Muslim Holy Book The Qur’an.  We have learnt about what it teaches Muslims, where it came from and the rules for using the Qur’an. In small groups, we performed a freeze frame that showed some of the rules and beliefs of Muslims such as there's only one god, they should pray 5 times a day, they should give to charity and they should look after their parents. We had lots of fun guessing what was being acted out!

Walkwise

This half term, Year 1 and 2 have been working with ‘Walkwise’. They have been teaching us about road safety, and how to protect ourselves when we are playing outdoors. We learnt all about the Green Cross Code which is ‘Stop, Look, Listen, Think’, and put this into practise when we went for some walks around the local area. We discussed the types of crossings we have on roads, and how to ensure we cross the road safely, listening especially carefully for ‘sneaky traffic’ such as electric cars and emergency vehicles. We also learnt about the importance of safety when we are riding bikes and scooters, such as ensuring we wear helmets and reflective clothing, and stay away from busy roads or areas such as driveways where cars may be present. We learnt how hazardous being a pedestrian can be, but we now know how to adapt our behaviour and keep ourselves safe!

PSHCE - Understanding Allergies

In PSHCE. we discussed what allergies were, what people can be allergic to and what reactions they might have. As a class, we looked at some different allergens you might find in food and guessed which foods would possibly contain them.  Then we looked at food packaging to identify what allergens the food contained. We considered what would happen if we were with someone having an allergic reaction and how we should remain calm and get help.

Christmas Dinner

We enjoyed a delicious Christmas dinner and a special visitor popped in to see us...Santa!

Letters to Santa

This half term, in Literacy, Year 1 and 2 have been focussing their writing around Christmas and writing letters to Santa Claus. We completed our letters by writing them up neatly, and then we took a walk to the post box and posted our letters to the North Pole. Fingers crossed we will get a reply!

Year 1 Literacy: Drama

Our first Literacy unit this year is focused on the story, 'William's Winter Nap,' by Linda Ashman. To help us remember the story and order the key events, Year 1 completed a drama activity where they acted out key parts of the story in the correct order. 

Disco

Year 1 and 2 had a fantastic time at the disco! We did lots of dancing, enjoyed some food, and some of us even won prizes for our fantastic dance moves. 

World Mental Health Day

To celebrate World Mental Health Day, we completed some activities to support our wellbeing. We discussed the importance of trying to switch our brains off when we have had a bad day or something is worrying us, and we need to relax. We then completed a yoga activity, and a craft activity. 

Science: Opaque, Translucent and Transparent Materials

As we develop our understanding of different materials and their properties, we have been comparing and sorting them based on whether they are opaque, translucent or transparent. We started by looking at what each word meant and making a prediction about which material we thought would block the most light. We noticed some materials could be opaque, transparent or translucent depending on how the material was made into an object. 

DT - Investigating stable structures

Our new unit of DT is all about ‘structures’ and creating our own stable structure. We began the lesson by discussing new vocabulary including the words, ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’. We then split into pairs and took a walk around the classroom and the outdoor area to identify natural and man-made structures, documenting our findings on a whiteboard. When we returned to class, we shared some of these. We then moved on to exploring stability. To do this, we conducted an experiment using 3D shapes. We placed a shape on a stiff piece of card and then slowly lifted the card. We used a ruler to measure how many cms we could lift the card before the shape became unstable. We then documented our findings in a table. We found that the bigger the surface area of the shape, the more stable it was. Shapes such as the pyramid and cuboid were more stable than a sphere or a cylinder, as they have flat sides rather than round sides. We then moved on to our main task, which was to investigate baby bear’s chairs. You looked closely at each of the features of the chairs and considered their shape. We thought about what 3D shape they are, how many legs they have and what we had learned about this during our experiment earlier in the lesson. We then recorded our thoughts using the word bank or writing block below each chair. We decided the best chair for baby bear was the wooden stool as it is stable due to the pyramid shaped legs, low to the ground, has multiple legs, and is strong.

DT: Building Baby Bear's Chair

In DT, we have been building chairs for Baby Bear using paper and tape. We had to use our knowledge from previous DT lessons to make them stable and strong, and thought hard about which shape would be best to use. We decided on a cylinder as we know that is a strong, stiff 3D shape. We worked really hard on our models and they look fantastic!

Christmas Party

Year 1 and 2 had a fantastic Christmas party. We did lots of dancing, and played party games including corners, musical statues, pass the parcel, and a balloon game. We also had a dance competition and showed off our best moves to the Cha Cha Slide! We had a brilliant time and lots of fun celebrating Christmas with our friends.