Over the last six weeks, Year 1 has been exploring MindUP, as part of our PSHCE (Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education) programme. MindUP teaches children the link between their brain and their behaviour and learning.

We’ve had a lot of fun exploring the three different parts of our brain. One helps us make good choices (Prefrontal Cortex). One helps protect us from danger (Amygdala). One saves our memories and learning (Hippocampus). Click on the poster to learn more about these.

The children, in particular, have liked learning about the ‘police dog’ that lives in our Amygdala and protects us when we are feeling super mad, frustrated, sad or scared. The children acted out the three choices (Fight, Flee or Freeze) we can make when our brain isn’t able to make mindful choices.

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As part of our new Y2 Minibeast topic, we have looked at many books by acclaimed and beloved author and illustrator, Eric Carle. For those of you who haven’t heard of him, his best known work is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Did you know that he has also illustrated more than seventy books, most of which he wrote himself?

Mrs. Rachel’s has an extensive collection so we have been fortunate to be able to read many of his books. Some of them fit perfectly with our topic include The Grouchy Ladybug, The Very Quiet Cricket and The Very Busy Spider.

After A LOT of reading, we discovered that quite a few of Carle’s books don’t have blurbs (a short description of a book appearing on the back cover).  This is something that we look at every time we read a new book, so we took it upon ourselves to write some for him.

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In Year 5 we have been looking at poetry and, in particular, performance poetry; how we create poems and what makes a poem particularly good to perform. We read and analysed a wide variety of performance poetry together.

Using inspiration from these, as well as events that happened that week such as Remembrance Day, the children were given free choice to create their own poem. The range of topics and the powerful way the children manipulated their language, whether it be humour, sadness or beauty, was truly impressive.  What has astounded me is just how poetic Year 5 are and how fantastic their imagery and wordplay is. Take a look yourself!

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As part of our TCI studies this term, Year 6 has been investigating coral reefs.  Our classroom based learning was bought to life with a field trip to snorkel on TCI’s very own amazing reef system.

We were very fortunate to have Lynne (Big Blue representative) visit our school earlier in the term, to provide us with an array of information linked to our very own coral reef here in the TCI. Lynne presented an excellent lecture explaining the formation of our reef; their importance to the overall ecology of our planet and the fascinating living creatures that can be found residing within them.

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After a fantastic first term in Y2, Osprey class decided it would be a great opportunity to show off all their hard work to their parents.

After many weeks learning about ourselves and completing tasks individually, in small groups and as a whole class it was time to celebrate how much we had achieved since September.

Some of the things we have enjoyed:

• Creating a self portrait (see previous Y2 Blog)
• Naming and labelling the continents and oceans that surround us and where we were born
• Story telling about our homes
• Learning ‘how to fill a bucket’ (why not read Have you filled a bucket today? by Carol McCloud and you’ll know what we’re talking about!)
• And many many other things!

So our parents came along for an open house and we think they thoroughly enjoyed looking through our books, at our work on display and seeing exactly what we had been up to in Y2. We look forward to welcoming them again soon!

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Earlier you read some of Year 3’s wonderful ‘Rock Poems’. However, we have not only been rock poets, we have been doing all sorts of other amazing things in relation to our topic on rocks.

Check out our photos to see our rock research, which led to our rock presentations and our rock collages, which led to our rock paintings. We also did some rock experiments, which led us to discover which rocks were the most porous and which rocks were stronger than others.

Plus watch and listen carefully to our ‘Rocks Rock’ information talking text that we created together as a class. Creating and learning this helped us to use good choices of vocabulary when writing our own information texts. Rocktastic! Well done Year 3!

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