What happens where the sea meets the shore?

19th April 2024Rebecca Kendrew-Jones

We’ve had a great first week back hooking into our summer term expedition titled ‘What happens where the sea meets the shore?’.

We have been reading Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae and learning some really interesting facts about lot of different sea creatures. Did you know that an octopus has three hearts and blue blood? The children in Class Two do!

This stimulated lots of exciting discussions about how we could immerse our classroom to represent out new expedition. The children chose to make an octopus along with lots of other sea creatures! Beautiful work Class Two!

We are Sea Explorers!

18th April 2024Sarah Winkley

As our hook week has rolled out, Nursery have had lots of fun exploring and immersing themselves in all things lurking beneath the surface of the sea, underpinned by our hook text, “Commotion in the Ocean” By Giles Andreas. The children have searched around Nursery for clues of what they may find in the sea? They have learned about how these sea creatures survive and their anatomical features such as; gills, scales, fins and flippers.

The children then created fabulous sea creatures of their own using various craft materials, mediums and techniques. These include jiggling Jellyfish, Octopuses and shimmering Fishes – just look at our beautiful work!

Finally the children have worked hard on beginning to understand and explore our guiding question for our new exciting summer expedition “What happens when the sea meets the shore?”

As part of our Thoughtful Thursday Crew the children used their own experiences to draw pictures of what they recall visually about the seaside and talked about, What does the sand feel like? How does it look on the beach? Their ideas were collected in crews to form spider diagrams.

We then practically explored how the sand and water make the shore by creating sensory sea bottles using sand and blue coloured water. The children were thrilled to experiment and see how the sand and water mixed and then settled separately, creating their own beach in a bottle. It was a fabulous experience for all.

Stained glass windows

17th April 2024Emma Powell

We have shown amazing determination and perseverance in Year One whilst creating our stained glass windows. We are really proud of our hard work and how well we drew lines and coloured in staying inside the lines. We think they will look beautiful in our classroom.

Meet the Author

16th April 2024Claire Goodyer

Key Stage One had an exciting visit from the author Phil Sheppard this morning. He told us all about his love of stories, books and reading as a child and how he became an author. He introduced us to his non fiction books all about Doncaster and shared some of his stories with us before holding a book signing. We’re looking forward to sharing some of our own work with him at the end of our expedition.

Crafty Afternoon

15th April 2024Laura Parsons

We took our inspiration from Doncaster Minister and had a go at recreating our own stained glass windows. We also wondered where we belong in the world so we used maps to create circular diagrams to show.

We think they look great – what do you think?

RE Recap

15th April 2024Laura Parsons

We spent some time this morning working collaboratively to sort religious symbols, places of worship and special books into which religion they belong to. We had to do lots of talking and listening but together we all succeeded.

Hook Week expert

15th April 2024Laura Parsons

Geoff came in and spoke to us about aerial images and how they can help us learn more about the world around us. He shared with us some images of Norton and we had a great time locating familiar landmarks. Geoff is coming back during our Geography case study to send the drone up and take some new aerial photographs with us.

We wonder how aerial images will help us in our expedition?

Key Stage 1 Crew Challenge

28th March 2024Claire Goodyer

Our KS1 crews took part in a Humpty Dumpty crew challenge to mark our Norton Campus science week. We investigated materials to see which one would make the best jacket to protect Humpty Dumpty when he fell from the wall. After investigating the materials we voted for the ones we thought would offer the most protection. We also discussed how we could make the test fair and made predictions for the results.

Hoppy Easter!

28th March 2024Elouise Chadwick

Wishing you all a ‘Hoppy Easter’…

We had a very special visitor today… Easter Bunny dropped off a chocolate egg for us to take home! It was very exciting…

Finding the magic in science…

27th March 2024Elouise Chadwick

This week in reception the children have been scientists. We have been learning about how things grow and how we care for plants. We planted our very own cress seeds. It’s been great watching them grow…

We wanted to find out about how plants absorb water. We carried out the ‘celery colour change’ experiment. We discovered that tiny tubes transport the water and it moves up into the celery.

Finally we investigated things that change state. We made predictions about things that melt and things that won’t melt. The children enjoyed passing around the ice and feeling it changing state. The excitement continues tomorrow when we will be melting chocolate and making something yummy!