Playground stories

We have been thinking about stories that happen in familiar settings - places we see around us everyday. Our homes, the street, parks, shopping malls and our school are familiar settings. Familiar just means someone or something that we see a lot. Our bedrooms are very familiar to us - we wake up there every morning. And the school playground is familiar too, which is where we planned our story starters.

Here are some of our ideas for the start of a story in a familiar setting, which we turned into a comic with speech bubbles using the Strip Designer app on the iPad.

 

Measuring heart beats

Here are Group A counting their heart beats.

In science we have been learning about the human heart. We know that it is made of muscle and works hard all our lives! It's important to keep it healthy so it can pump blood full of oxygen to all the cells in our body.

When we measure our heart beat it is called a 'pulse.' It is measured in beats per minute. For our experiment we measured our pulse when sitting, walking and then after running around very fast. We found that when we ran fast our hearts beat faster. Why does the heart do that? What is happening when that happens?

Inside the Human Body

What's inside our bodies is quite a mystery. We have been looking at information on different organs, where they are and what they do. We then drew round the smallest students in the class - Pan, Pol, Gekim and Navin - and made internal organs with fact boxes to help us remember.

Identifying body parts

We've been learning all about the human body - the names of different parts and what they do! Here we are having fun labelling parts of the body. Can you remember where to find the wrist, ankle, thigh?

Make up your own myth story!

Here is our shadow puppet myth story but with no voices, just sound effects. Why not watch the video and try to speak over it with your own ideas and stories! This is called a 'voice over.'

Myths and Legends of the Oceans

My Amazing Brain 3

My Amazing Brain 2

My Amazing Brain 1

Charlie Myth Story

How much of the Charlie myth story can you remember? Watch the video and then stop it at each picture and tell the story in your own words. Learning this story will help your story writing.

My Amazing Brain

We've been practicing our speaking and listening skills by learning a poem called My Amazing Brain. Here is a video of us reading the poem for the first time.

Can You Tell the Time?

We've been learning how to tell the time in maths. We know the big hand counts the minutes and the small hand counts the hours. We know there are 60 minutes in an hour and we can tell the time on analogue and digital clocks. We can also tell the time using the English style of  'quarter past, half past and quarter to.'

Why not get even better at telling the time by playing these different time games? They are all good fun. Enjoy!

To play the games click here

Tudor Jousting Game

Rich Tudor people loved to watch the jousting competitions where brave knights tried to knock each other off their horses. Each knight had their own 'coat of arms' and knights who were good became very famous like pop stars today!

You have to be very quick to win the jousting game in the court of King Henry VIII. Try to go as fast as you can and get close to the target  to be one of the best knights.

Good luck! Let me know how well you did.

To play the game click here

Science Week Posters

For Science Week we learnt about 'adaptation' and how animals adapt to live in different habitats and environments. We looked at camels and polar bears to see how they have adapted to live in desert and artic habitats.

Then we designed our own creature using parts of different animals. We had to invent a new name, describe the animal's habitat and diet and also label each body part to explain what it did to help the animal 'adapt' to its environment.

The children had to make their own animal posters and there were gems for the best ones. The best new animal went to Gunn and Panna for the 'Foxybeebat.' The best information poster went to Pol and Pan for the 'Battle Scorpio' and the best presentation went to Marwin and Ong for their presentation on the 'Scorpio Tigerbat.'

All the children worked really hard and won a gem for their fantastic posters, well done!

Pol and Pan

Marwin and Ong

Gunn and Panna

Amy and Gekim

Poom and Idea

Tan and Plern

Ari

Navin and Fah

Frank and Preme

Kanoon and Noel

Petong and Phupah

Sound Experiments

Testing how to change volume and pitch using bottles filled with different amounts of water

We are learning how to be good scientists. We know that scientists ask questions about the world around them and then look for answers. To find answers they do tests, investigations and experiments. The results from their experiments help them find answers they can say are true. In our bottle experiment we found that the more water was in the bottle, the lower the pitch. A little water had a higher pitch. To change the volume we hit the bottles harder or softer.

Why not play this game which lets you experiment by playing different intruments and changing the pitch and volume.

Timelines

The Dragonfly group making a timeline.

We have been learning about history and timelines. They are a good way to learn how things have changed through history. There is a good animated timeline activity on the BBC website which shows you the history of the UK over the last 2,000 years. You can play it here.

But it does not have our theme area, The Tudors. To learn more about who the Tudors were you can read this website which has great information about life in England 500 years ago. Visit it here.

Make Your Wild Self!

We have had great fun making our 'wild selves' in class. We have been learning about "adaptation" how animals have different body parts to help them live in different habitats. This brilliant website lets you add different animal and insect body parts to make a whole new animal!

Why not let your family and friends have a go at making their wild self?

To visit the website click here

Persephone Myth - Freeze Frame

We had great fun freeze framing scenes from the Persephone myth which was told by the Ancient Greeks to explain why the plants and flowers die off in the autumn and winter and grow back in spring and summer.

Hades, Lord of the Underworld, grabs Persephone and takes her to the Land of the Dead. He wants her to be his wife.

Demeter, mother of Persephone, is very sad and asks Zeus. The King of the Gods, for help.

Zeus tells Demeter that he will use his powers to find her daughter.

Persephone has eaten six seeds which means she must stay in the Underworld for six months of the year.

For the other six months, Persephone goes back to her mother and together they make the trees, plants and flowers grow.

Myths, Legends and Traditional Stories

We have started to read and learn about different myths and legends from around the world. We have learnt that myths are very old stories that people told to help them understand the world around them.

There were no movies or computers a long time ago so myth and legend stories were a way to have fun and teach children about the world.

To read lots of different myths and legends from around the world, click on this link to go to a great website.

Which myth or legend did you like the best? You could tell me which one you liked and why you liked it by making a comment!

Explain a Life Cycle

We've been learning about minibeast life cycles and looking at dragonflies, butterflies and frogs. We had to put together sentence openers like "first, next, then, after that and finally" with parts of sentences about life cycles. Then we learnt them off by heart and presented them to the whole class as a way to explain the lifecycle of a butterfly. Here are videos of the Beetles and Grasshopper groups who did the best presentations. Well done to everyone for learning your explanation sentences!

Information Writing

We've been busy this semester learning all about how to write and present information. We have learnt that it is important to use facts and not your own opinions and that information writing has special features such as diagrams, headings and wow fact boxes.

We have made some of our own information posters about our chosen minibeasts. All the children made a great effort - well done! Here are some that are on display outside our classroom.

Idea's poster had a great diagram and lots of facts.

Amy's poster was about hornets, which we saw on our minibeast hunt.

Fah's poster had great 'wow' fact.

Our School Trip

Here are some photographs from our trip to Khao Kheow Zoo. Can you remember when and where they were taken?

Using iPads in the Classroom

We are very lucky in Year 3/1 because we have been given a set of six iPad minis to help us learn in the classroom. The iPads are part of a study into how tablet computers can be used for teaching and learning. 

So far we have used an app called Educreations which records you as you talk and explain things. This is good for improving our speaking. The children have also been very excited about making their own iBook about bees using an app called Book Creator.  They have made a book cover, taken photographs and imported them into their books, written and formatted text, embedded sound recordings they did onto a page and also embedded video recordings they made of fact sentences.

The children have been very quick to learn lots of new skills. Well done and watch this space!

Spider TV

We have been practicing speaking our fact sentences about minibeasts. Here we spoke to the video camera for the first time and watched them to see where we could be better next time. We noticed that we often forgot to say the 's' at the end of spiders and also that we pronounced the Thai 'er' sound and not the English 'er' sound at the end of words. It was a good way for us to learn about speaking English and also help us remember minibeast facts. Here is a short clip by the grasshopper and dragonfly groups who remembered their facts the best. Well done to everyone for being brave enough to get up and speak to the camera - it's not easy!

Learning About Symmetry

We have been learning about symmetry in class. We have learnt that symmetry can be found all around us. We were given a challenge to find out which capital letters of the alphabet have symmetry and which don't using a 'hit and miss' thinking map. We used mirrors to help us check. Some letters were quite difficult! Can you think of letters which have more than one line of symmetry?

Why not play a game to test how good you are at symmetry? Click on this link to play a game which asks do these shapes, pictures and letters have symmetry (are symmetrical) or no symmetry (not symmetrical.)

All About Bees Homework

Next week we are learning all about bees for our final week of information writing. Click on the link below to go to a webquest featuring a video and information about bees. Watch the video and click on the questions next to the video. Can you answer them? Then explore the other websites for amazing facts and information about bees.

To go to the webquest click here.

I look forward to talking to you all about bees on Monday ^___^

Wow Fact Competition!

What facts make you go wow! Look in information books or go on the internet with your parents to find amazing facts about minibeasts and you could win 5 gems. Choose your best wow fact and write it in the comments box below. Only write one wow fact please and remember to add you name. I'll choose the best wow fact and name the winner on Friday. Happy fact hunting!

Can You Classify?

We have been learning how to classify minibeasts. Classify means to put things into groups. We can use a tree map to help us classify. Here we see the Dragonfly group (Fah, Idea, Ong and Phupah) who made an excellent branching tree map that helped them classify nine different minibeasts correctly.

Fah's Information Book

Fah has made an excellent ant information book at home using the computer. Her book is full of interesting facts and pictures. She has also used paragraphs and different headings. Well done Fah - have three gems for such good work!

Classify Minibeasts Game

We have been learning to classify minibeasts. Here is a great game which uses a bee flying around a tree map to classify different minibeasts. Be sure to get a good look at each minibeast when deciding 'yes' and 'no'.

To play the game click here

Number bonds

In maths we have been learning about number bonds to 10, 20 and 100. Learning number bonds helps us answer maths questions.

Click here to play a game of number bonds to 20. If you get it right the mummy starts to dance! (This is a Flash game so will not work on an iPad)