Elm Class

Our No Plan Day was all about optical illusions. We researched about them and found out that an optical illusion is something that can play a trick on your mind. 

Optical illusions teach us how our eyes and brain work together to see. You live in a three-dimensional world, so your brain gets clues about depth, shading, lighting, and position to help you interpret what you see.

We looked and drew some of our own optical illusions. We then looked at patterns called Tessellations. We investigated these and MC Escher who created them. They are patterns that are created by shapes that have no gaps or overlap. We had great fun creating our own optical illusions!

This afternoon Elm class welcomed their grown ups to the first Mundford Junction of the year. We spoke through our Science learning from the day and then took part in an activity to do with The Phases of the Moon using Oreos! 

Wednesday 25th September – No Plan Day

Elm class had their first no plan day of the year and decided to research toy making! We researched and gathered information on our favourite toys and games and created fact files. We then in the afternoon created our own board games, card games, paper crafts and toys! We used a variety of skills such as origami.

This afternoon Elm welcomed their grown ups to join them in an afternoon of Maths! Miss Spearpoint spoke through some reasoning problems with everyone and spoke about how to break the question down by looking for the key features. Everyone then had a go at some reasoning questions, logical problems and times tables challenges!

Nature Explorers,

Today Elm class had a No Plan day all about Nature. We researched and created posters on the explorer and biologist Charles Darwin. We looked at his life, what he discovered and why he was so famous. We then went on a scavenger hunt and looked for edible plants on the school grounds. Finally we then spent the last part of the afternoon planning, designing and building bug hotels.

Wednesday 27th March 2024

For our SAW day, we looked at Changes and Properties of Materials. We had a focus on looking at the environment of the Ocean and how different materials can affect our ecosystem. We started off by trying to filter out materials from water. In the Art section, we looked at ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’ by Japanese artist Hokusai. We used paper to create different shades of blues to recreate this picture. We then discussed the problem of ‘Microplastics’ and created a double page spread about why they are a problem. 

On Wednesday 14th Elm had a No Plan Day on Survival Skills. We spent the day discussing what we need to survive if we became lost in the woods. We decided that building a shelter, finding food, a safe water source and making a fire were the most important things! We created dens in small groups, made a ‘bow drill’, a tool to make a fire without matches or a lighter. We then spoke about the ‘fire triangle’, ate s’mores and drank hot chocolate.

On Wednesday 31st January, we completed a SAW day on Materials and their Properties with a focus on Ice! 

We created a Winter scene picture using paint and tissue paper. 

We wrote a descriptive piece of writing from a scene from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe where the character Lucy sees Narnia for the first time. She enters into a Winter Wonderland, so we imagined we were her and used adjectives, noun phrases and adverbial phrases to help us. 

For the Science part of our day we made ice cream in a bag! We used salt to reduce the freezing point of the ice which helped to freeze the cream in the bag. 

Today we went for a walk around the village to practice our Map Skills. We plotted the different buildings and features we saw around the village. We created a key and map symbols to show what features were on our route that we walked.

On Wednesday in Science we began our new topic Properties and Changes of Materials. We had different materials in bags and used adjectives to describe how they felt through the bag. Once we found out what the materials were, we then tested the flexibility, permeability, hardness, magnetism and transparency. We worked together to understand materials and what makes them unique. 

Elm class took part in their Mundford Junction with a focus on reading and doing some Christmas Crafts! Miss Spearpoint spoke to parent about the importance of reading at home and rather than just listening to their children read talk to them about the content of what they are reading. She challenged the grown ups to take some cards home with some ideas on to help Elm class with their comprehension skills! 

We then made some straw stars, pipe cleaner reindeers and Christmas Tree pop-out cards.