Preschoolers “Keep on Walking” with Pete the Cat!

As part of their Fairy Tales topic, the whole class became confident participating in and leading a range of stories. The Talk4Writing, shown here, links actions with words to encourage active and expressive storytelling, even in some of our younger students. It also allows children to extend their speech by rehearsing a shared story.

Children interacted with stories in a variety of forms, from book-readings and drama performances to watching different versions of their favourite nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Throughout the topic preschool students were encouraged to re-create and adapt stories through play, puppetry and role-play.

Enjoy the class’ re-telling of Pete the Cat:I Love my White Shoes!

Kindergarten set out to measure dinosaurs!

k-dinosaurs-measuring-april-2015-6Have you ever wondered how tall a tyrannosaurus rex was? Or how long a long a brachiosaurus was from nose to tail? Well, you’re in luck – Kindergarten set out to find this out!

To visualise how big these incredible creatures were, the class set about measuring string that would show the height and length of each type of dinosaur. Then we attached helium balloons to the string so that we could imagine how long the dinosaurs’ necks were. The results were incredible!

 

 

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Talk4Writing: “The Day we made Muffins in Junior Kindergarten!”

Children in our JK class have been using Talk 4 Writing to share the fun activities taking place in their classroom. And what a lot of fun they’ve been having!
In JK, the shared text was a recount of an exciting morning of baking! As you can see from the video, pupils were excited to share the details of the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins that were made during Miss Lauren’s visit.
The structure of this recount modeled how to introduce an idea to a listener. It then moves on to sequence the memorable parts of the event, giving specific details where relevant or exciting.

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Talk4Writing: Storytellers, puppeteers and writers in Year 2!

Our Year 2 class have been busy inventing their own stories over the past month, thanks to their shared Talk 4 Writing text: “The Papaya that Spoke”.
Notice in the video how students learned and played with the original story with the use of actions, intonation and a home-made puppet show. All of this rehearsal enabled students in the class to explore the shared text and build confidence in retelling the complete story.
This confidence was essential for children to begin adapting the text for their own writing. By changing settings and characters, children were able to create an entirely new version of the story, complete with a surprise ending!  Click on ‘Read more’ to read some of the stories.

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Talk4Writing: Journeys to other Worlds in Year 4


Take a look at this fantastic Talk4Writing text from the Flamingo Class! As part of their World Exploration topic, students studied stories that take place in other worlds. They set about learning Where the Wild Things Are as a talking text. They were given simple visual prompts in the form of a story map and were challenged to create all the actions for their story independently.

Read on to read some Year 4 imaginary world stories that were inspired through this work.

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Talk4Writing: Kindergarten Instructional Text


“Have you ever wanted to know how to build a rocket?”

If your answer is “yes!” then you’re in luck! The Kindergarten class have been learning how to give clear instructions as part of their Destination Outer Space topic. Their Talk4Writing project focused on the proper way to introduce and organise their instructions.

Read on to see a couple of examples of the instructions that they wrote and to find out more about their next stage – adapting the text to ‘how to build a moon buggy’.

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Music in the Garden with the Kindergarten band!

k-garden-music-mar-2015 (1)Music was in the air last week as the Kindergarten class were inspired to form a whole-class band by a single student’s rat-tap-tapping!

After a busy morning play filled with running, climbing and hide-and-seek, children could be heard around the garden singing our popular “How green you are?” song. Suddenly, however, their singing was accompanied by improvised percussion from one student. Then two…and, well, the rest was a perfect lesson in how infectious music can be!

 

 

 

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Talk4Writing: Allow Year 5 to persuade you with “I have a Dream”

Talk4Writing isn’t only about storytelling. As our Year 5 students can demonstrate, this literacy technique is applicable across the curriculum for teaching language techniques in any written genre.

Year 5 students studied the “I have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. as part of their “Space and Segregation” topic. They were exploring persuasive writing in their literacy lessons and wanted to understand how this famous speech used powerful language and persuasive techniques to emphasize the aims of the Civil Rights protest of 1963. These techniques were then be adapted and re-invented by students in their own powerful, ‘I have a dream’ persuasive writing texts – read on to see some examples.

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Talk4Writing: Toddler Storytellers are Going on a Bear Hunt!

In Toddlers, the children learned a shortened version of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. Children explored the settings of the story through sensory activities and made visual prompts to help them recognise each part of the adventure. As you can see from the video, the combination of visual prompts and actions leads to powerful results in our pupil’s speech. Even at this early age children can sense the excitement and emotions of a story and can vocalise this in their own retelling. Their facial expressions, actions and body language tells just as much of the story as the emerging language that they share!

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Kindergarten will Remember, Remember the 5th November!

k-bonfire-night-nov-2014 (11)The week following Halloween was an exciting and busy one in the Gecko Classroom! Children learned about and prepared to participate in the school’s Bonfire Night celebrations on Wednesday 5th November.

As part of our topic Why are we all so different? we have been taking all opportunities to find out about and enjoy different festivals and celebrations from around the world. Learning about the history and the present day traditions of Guy Fawkes Night led to many questions and gave us lots to explore!

Children learned about safety around a bonfire and created firework art from glitter paints. As part of our Shapes project in maths we all tried to re-create firework displays by combining colour and shape.   As the children created their work, they explained what they were imagining and thinking about.

Please click on ‘read more’ to see photos of our fireworks and Guy Fawkes masks.

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Talk, Talk, Talk go the Kindergarten Storytellers


We’re all storytellers in Gecko Class now!

As part of our topic Why are we all so different? we have been thinking about the houses we live in and all the people who live there with us. As part of the project, we learned to re-tell the story of the Three Little Pigs and their very different houses.

Having spent the week learning to tell an extended version of The Three Little Pigs, we decided to capture our story on film to share with the world. I think you’ll agree, the class are doing a great job!

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Learning All About Our Bodies in Kindergarten!

k-Book-Writing-3-sept-2014In Kindergarten class, we have been exploring our bodies this month to find out how and why we’re so different to each other! From measuring our height and collecting information about hair and eye colours in school, we’ve been busy thinking about how different our bodies look.

Read more to see more photographs of us learning…

 

 

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Year 4 Ancient Roman Architecture Treasure Hunt

Flamingo Class set out this week to see if it was possible to find evidence of the Ancient Roman’s influence on Provo. It’s amazing to think that the Romans can still have an affect our daily lives, 2000 years later and half-way across the globe! Our discoveries were quite surprising…you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d actually gone to Rome!

Afterwards, students were treated to a Roman Banquet at Pizza Pizza, consisting of pizza (possibly a Roman invention – Romans certainly ate panis focaccia, a bread with toppings added) Caesar salad (named after Rome’s most famous ruler) and red/white grape juice (even though Romans would have insisted on wine). After seeing our fantastic photo gallery, you’ll understand how we worked up such an appetite!

Stepping back in time with Flamingo Class!

yr4-timelines-march-2014 (7)Year 4 were busy creating an enormous timeline of the world’s greatest civilisations today. And wow – what a task it was!

Going back over 5000 years, we plotted 14 major civilisations who have left their mark on world history forever. Whether you want to date the Egyptian Pyramids, climb atop a Mayan temple or sail on a Viking longship – the Flamingo Class timeline will tell you when to set your time machine for!

The project marks the beginning of our new topic on Discovering Ancient Rome where we will be uncovering the amazing history of the period and region. Through archaeology and research, we hope to discover what the Romans did that makes them so important nearly 2000 years later!

Come by Flamingo Class over the coming months to share in our amazing discoveries!

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Maths Week gets off to a fast start in Flamingo Class!

Improving our times tables has been the new craze in Year 4 this week. Students were challenged to learn their multiplication facts off by heart, so that they can apply this knowledge throughout their maths work.

To test their knowledge under pressure, teams were asked to complete a follow-on game. Each card has a question printed on it and children searched the remaining cards to find the matching answer. It sounds so easy…until you set 3 teams against each other and the correct answer is hidden in a HUGE pile of cards!

As you will see, the results were fun, excitement and some great mental maths!

Don’t panic! Year 4 Doctors are on the scene!

yr-4-hospital-trip-feb-2014 (1)Tuesday was an exciting morning in Flamingo Class as we all set out to visit the Cheshire Hall Medical Center to find out about how bones can be fixed by the orthopedic doctors and nurses at the hospital!

It was another morning packed full of information and learning related to our topic on Moving and Growing.

Our expert guides, Nurses Sharon and Gemma, passed on their knowledge of the skeletal and muscular systems. They explained how these worked together together to help us move and demonstrated how, if damaged, both can be fixed by doctors.

 

 

 

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Flamingo Class have a cracking time with Dr Craig!

yr-4-chiropractor-feb-2014-(2)Dr Craig Zavitz joined us in Flamingo Class today to help us understand our topic on the human skeleton in more detail. His expertise in the spine, neck and nervous system was tested to breaking point by our inquisitive Year 4 students!

Children were taught how to maintain a healthy spine by lifting safely, exercising and stretching. We also learned how chiropractors use their knowledge of the skeletal and nervous systems to help heal injuries and soreness caused by blockages to the delicate spinal cord.

We acted out the functions of the spine in order to understand how messages travel from the brain to every part of our bodies. This demonstration also helped us to understand how misalignment’s in the spine can block the sending and receiving of messages up and down the spinal cord.

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Cooperation is the name of the game:

yr4-collaborative-towers-jan-2014-9Our PSHE curriculum got off to a fun, yet challenging, start this term as Flamingo Class explored the idea of cooperation.What does it really mean to cooperate? How good are we at cooperating? What other skills do we need to cooperate effectively? All of these questions, and more, became the topic of discussion during some quite amazing challenges.

 

 

 

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Amazing Animators Release Workout Video!

Provo Primary’s Amazing Animators have created a workout video – just in case you feel like some exercise after Thanksgiving or during the upcoming holiday season!

This video was created using a technique called retro-scoping, where a video clip is broken down into frames and traced by hand. Each of the individual frames was then photographed and re-animated using MovieMaker.

We hope you enjoy our latest video!

Preparing for Bonfire Night in Flamingo Class

yr-4-guy-fawkes-nov-2013 (6) Wow! The 5th November was a busy day in Year 4!

Any passers by would have heard discussions and debates spilling from the classroom walls. As part of our new class topic, Let’s Celebrate, we were preparing to take part in the School Council’s Bonfire Night party in real style.

In our Design and Technology project children were challenged to work collaboratively to create a Guy for the bonfire. To make the challenge especially difficult, our Guy had to sewed together and had to be wearing traditional Stewart costume! Having planned how they would build their Guy, the class were given some final pieces of advice from Year 5 students who completed the challenge last year. This advice proved vital, as it allowed groups to get off to a flying start with their construction. It took all morning to build each section of our rather fine Guy Fawkes!

 

 

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Author visit inspires Flamingo Class to write!

yr-4-autor-visit-oct-2013-1

In our literacy project this half term, pupils in Flamingo Class are becoming authors of their own! We are planning, researching, writing, editing, formatting and publishing our own stories! Phew – it’s going to be a busy few weeks!

Thanks to Mrs B, our young authors now understand how important it is to spend time planning and inventing characters, thinking about the setting and plot and to always look for ways to improve our writing. Most importantly, however, she reminded us that we should enjoy and love to write!

Keep your eyes peeled for the newest adventure stories coming out of Flamingo Class!

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Provo Primary Golf Club a Smash Ht!

golf-club-oct-2013 During September and October the Provo Primary Golf Club was in full swing! Eight pupils were welcomed by our friends at Provo Golf Club for a fantastic five-week golf clinic that aimed to help them with all parts of their game. From chipping contests to putting challenges, longest drive competitions and straight shooting matches, our Golf Club had it all!

Children were able to learn the basics of the game on the beautiful practice greens and driving range, and were even able to get out onto the course to test their long game on a real fairway.

In our final session children used their new-found skills in a hotly-contested competition. Pupils realised that a smooth swing is only part of the recipe needed for a good golf game! In our “Cool as a Cucumber” challenge, children learned that a calm and focused mind was just as important as the club in their hands.

A huge congratulations goes out to all of our young golfers, as well as an even bigger thank you for our enthusiastic parent volunteers.  And finally a  giant thank you to Dave Douglas and the Provo Golf Club.

We hope to swing back into action in the summer! FORE!

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Amazing Animators Flippin’ Brilliant Creations

We hope you enjoy these flip animations that were created by our talented animators in our ‘Amazing Animation’ Club.

Flamingo Class’ Marvellous Mural!

yr-4-america-09-09-13Four days into the start of term and the Flamingo Class have been busy starting their first topic of the new school year!

Children spent the morning thinking hard about everything they knew about “The Birth of America.” We discovered that the children already knew some pretty amazing facts about the history of the United States! Did you know that President Obama is the 44th President of the USA, but only the 43rd person to do the job?! President Grover Cleveland counts as 2 presidents but only one person!

As we were talking and thinking about America, the children were set the challenge of creating a huge class mural that will form the backdrop for our display this term. Children had to cooperate in order to create this amazing collage of the Stars and Stripes flag. Groups organised themselves into tearers, pasters and stickers in order to work effectively together in such a small space.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the result is pretty amazing!

We all look forward to sharing all of our fantastic learning with you. Call by the Flamingo Class to see how things develop!
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Year 4 Set Out to Find the Balance between Conservation & Tourism!

yr-4-nwpoint-trip-june-2013-18How can we build resorts that attract tourists without destroying our island’s natural environments? Can we protect our stunning National Parks from damage while encouraging people to visit and enjoy them? Finally, is it even possible to enjoy watching wildlife without making them feel threatened in their natural habitats?

Flamingo Class took the trip to Northwest Point last week to learn about the difficult balance between conservation and tourism. And what a trip it was!

 

 

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