Diamond

Welcome to Diamond Class!

Let me introduce you to Diamond Class…  I am Jenny the class teacher, Tracey is our TA2 and we have Elaine, Jodi and Mandy as teaching assistants.  The pupils in Diamond class are:  Aaron, Huma, Alex, Cameron, Aseeb, Sahir, Angel and Tyler.

Summer 2

This half term our topic focus is Different Places, Different Lives. The

children will experience and participate in activities that will allow them to 

investigate another countries culture for example, art, music, climate,

costume, religion, food, animals, dance and geographical location. Diamond class will be focusing on Australia, Africa and China throughout the half term. 

In Literacy we are using books that are connected to topic where possible. Two books we will focus on are Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French and We All Went on Safari: A Counting Journey through Tanzania by Laurie Krebs & Julia Cairns.

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Diary of a Wombat

A wombat’s work is never done…

Take a trip with a wombat, and discover the ins and outs of her day in this modern classic Australian picture book. There are holes to be dug and territory to be defended – and don’t forget all the eating and sleeping that needs to be squeezed in too! Amazon link

We all went on Safari

Join Arusha, Mosi, Tumpe and their Maasai friends as they set out on a counting journey through the grasslands of Tanzania. Along the way, the children encounter all sorts of animals including elephants, lions and monkeys, while counting from one to ten in both English and Swahili. The lively, rhyming text is accompanied by an illustrated guide to counting in Swahili, a map, notes about each of the animals and interesting facts about Tanzania and the Maasai people. amazon link

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Summer 1

This half term our topic is New Life which focuses on plants and animals.  In class we will be growing and taking care of different plants, so we can investigate what they need in order to grow. We will also be walking around the local area to see what types of plants and trees grow near Richmond Hill school. 

To link with growing plants our Literacy book this half term is Jack and the Beanstalk by Nick Sharratt and Stephen Tucker. 

Description of the book from Amazon - As Jack scurried down the beanstalk, The hen squawked anxiously, "If that giant gets his hands on us, He'll eat us for his tea!" The story of Jack and the Beanstalk, retold in irreverent, playful rhyme that's perfect for reading aloud. With flaps and pop-up surprises on every spread.

We will be trying to link our Numeracy areas with the story as much as possible over the half term.  So watch our class page and see how we get on.

Spring 2

Our topic this half term is ‘Treasure Island’ and our art and science will be focused around pirates, boats, treasure and life under the sea. We made ourselves into pirates using Swash Buckle CBeebies online. You can try it here www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/swashbuckle-online

Literacy

The first book we will be working on is Barry the Fish with Fingers. In the story fish come from all over the ocean to see Puffy the Puffer Fish's amazing bubbles. Big bubbles, small bubbles, square bubbles ...they've never seen anything quite so amazing that is until Barry arrives on the scene. Barry is a fish with fingers and he's going to put them to good use. The fish are amazed. Life under the sea will never be the same again ...

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Spring 1

In topic the children enjoyed making their own money containers from paper mache and then painting them.

The children enjoyed reading The Very Busy Spider and have produced some wonderful work linked to the book.  To start with we focused on becoming familiar with the story and its characters.  Our main activities were creative and the children used threading with wool across paper plates to make webs and spiders from polystyrene balls and pipe cleaners.  Colourful spiders were made from play dough and straws and we linked in the nursery rhyme Incy Wincy Spider and the class made spiders and drainpipes

As the children became familiar with the story they focused on their speaking and listening skills by taking over the retelling and reading of the book each session, supported by story sticks and sentence strips.  Our main activities had children identifying and writing animal names from the book, tracing webs and writing spider poems. 

The final piece of work was a giant class retelling of the story, which hangs across our classroom wall.  Children had a page of the book each to retell in their own way and then created the section of web using glitter, from that part of the story.

After this we focused on non-fiction information books about spiders.The children learnt about the body parts of a spider and labelled a diagram.  As a class we created an information tree with everything they had learned about spiders and used this to write information sheets.

The final book we focused on was ‘Ketchup on your cornflakes?’ by Nick Sharratt, which linked into our Cafes topic.  It is split-page book that invites children to laugh at the fantastic and weird food concoctions they can create.

The children were given their own blank split page book.  They created their own pages using symbols, writing and pictures.  Below are some examples of the interesting food concoctions they came up with!!!