The term we are exploring artists’ work & linking it to Black History Month. Today we started portraits of Basquiat after conversations about what they liked and didn’t like about his art style, and tried to emulate the chaos in his linework & colour, alongside his emphasis on skeletons. P3 ❤️’d it!

Lovely snippets of our first week back: trialling regulation tools and selecting 5 to keep as reminders in the calm corner, exploring Alma Thomas’ artwork for Black History Month, messages of ‘I love you classroom’ left for me to see & one boy bringing my favourite pokemon to keep on my desk! 🫶🏻🫶🏻

We had a tricky word disco today … 🪩 When the song stopped (which of course was k-pop demon hunters), we had to write the different tricky words around the room as many times as we could. This was such a fun way to do our retrieval practice today!!

Followed up our IDL with outdoor learning in maths. We have spent term 1 exploring place value and the children were challenged to think about what resources best reflect ones, tens and hundreds. They had to roll and build a number and then use the sticks to compare if it was greater or less than 🤓🌳

Friday in P3 🚀 As part of our IDL space topic we have explored changes within technology & what we notice looks different between rocket ships of the past and present. The children on Tuesday had to decide where their ‘rocket ship for the future’ would travel to & design it fit for purpose 🚀

Forest School 🌳 Very lucky today to learn alongside my class today, as I asked to observe our school’s outdoor learning lead deliver a forest school session. It was wonderful to see a whole other side to my learners and how they made that woodland their own. We had kitchens, shelters, zip lines … 🌳

A special day meeting my first class … 💛 We read ‘feel-o-saur’ and then created our own dinosaurs to explore feelings that might be in the room about going into P3, having a new teacher and changes to their class list 🦖🦕

A couple more! Love the ‘we need cups that we can swim in’ slogan and imagery!! 🏊🏼‍♀️

Finished off our protest art with the P5 selecting an issue they’re passionate about, designing and creating their art with lots of promoting to think about the features we’ve explored over the sequence. From global issues, to the size of the cups in the dinner hall (which most learners chose!)🪧

P5’s first go at reflecting on their learning task, by thinking about their feelings associated with each step and annotating it with the skills, strategies or thoughts they had along the way. Lots of modelling and explicit discussion on skills up to this moment: excited to see how they develop!

Breaking down the features of protest art: exploring symbolism, slogans, colour, typography, humour and image. This week the class will start to design their art 🪧. Just need to source a lot of cardboard for them to then make it 😄

Completed the final two tasks for the PSEA during week three of Tis3. P5 really enjoyed going outdoors in the lovely sunshine to create models of the human skeleton using resources found on our playground (with some chalk to help us out) 🩻☀️ .

Snippets from Tis3 and our protest art topic. I'm so impressed by the maturity shown in discussing these issues, the value of protest art & the many questions pouring from them about those in power, whose voices are heard and the potential impact 🪧📣

Wonderful trip to the Botanical Gardens with this lovely bunch ☀️🌷…

fun from the final few days in P3: outdoor spelling, sharing the yoga sequences created last week in PE, making informative posters about forces, dots and dice game to practice subtraction skills & talking about and translating birthdays in French 🇫🇷 Two school trips squeezed in also! 😯

A wonderful start to the final week with P3: started our morning with a trip to a Fischy Music concert & had a lovely afternoon bringing our symmetry learning into an art lesson 🦋

Organised a morning of World Book Day fun for P3 … ideas inspired by wishes from the children themselves 💭📚 Proud of my last minute hungry caterpillar hat 🐛

outdoor learning for symmetry 🦋 … first time taking learning outdoors

Today P3 were ‘hired’ to test new race cars for Formula 1: exploring air resistance by considering how cars can have more or less air resistance acting on them. They weren’t too pleased to hear F1 weren’t actually paying them though!! ‘Pit stop … tyre check!’ is our fave new attention grabber now 🏎️🏁

trying to ‘task don’t ask’ as much as possible this placement. Used a prompt from Nrich in our plenary today & very impressed by what the openness of the task can allow for learner response 👏🏼. Happy to see some lines of symmetry included also!

Loving symmetry so far! Child-led & collaborative learning this morning to create their own symmetrical patterns. Learner choice meant we had flowers, dresses, animals, robots and more !! First time 'co-constructing' success criteria too & very pleased with their ideas 💡

Pokemon-themed scavenger hunt for my get to know me lesson … 🤓

Back to P1 this afternoon for a Christmas party 🎄

Today two child created a ‘magic Christmas machine’, where the elves shoot out the bauble that can help someone feel in the green zone (being happy or calm) again, or give them sparkles when worried … over the moon to see our exploration of feelings in HWB coming through play with a festive twist🎄

final day of week 5 … a week of finishing up electricity, introducing zones of regulation for health and well-being & small group phonics games ✏️

Starting to fill the classroom with opportunities to explore what emotions look like and how they make us feel… more to come over the next few days as we start the last sequence I’ll teach in P1 ✏️

third sequence complete 🔌💡! It has been such a joy to see the children work collaboratively to create this poster by bringing together all their learning from the last week. Added bonus that they’ve all told me how much they loved learning science with me (me too, team 🫶🏻) Superstars 💫🌟

Halfway through our science sequence on electricity and the class (and I) are loving every minute of this topic 💡🔋🔌 From sorting electrical items into hoops on Monday to exploring electricity in our daily lives today. Moving onto being safe and then making a poster of our learning to finish it off⚡️

Feeling joyful 🐻🌟 In P1 we have been exploring We’re Going on a Bear Hunt within my literacy sequence. Big win happened in play: we had just retold the story, exploring each obstacle in detail & using BSL, when later the P1s want to show me the ‘new obstacle’ tree house the family must hide in🐻

Happy Halloween from P1 🎃👻 It was lovely to see the child take the task of printing a pumpkin and opening conversations up to its emotions or showing the things they enjoy doing. We had surprised, sad, angry, worried pumpkins alongside pumpkins that are excited to have money and play games 🎃

Maybe taking my 6 year old role too seriously in the Storyline workshop for Pluriliteracies today 😋 …

I was bad for book shopping excuses before the pgde, but now it’s sooo much worse…all I want to do is look through the beautiful picture books available in Toppings. Spotted ‘What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking’ from the Well-being workshop last Thursday - keen to get this one day 📔✨

protecting space & time for myself on the pgde journey this morning with a Saturday yoga class I haven’t been able to attend the last few weeks: bucket is full! added bonus of some play-pedagogy assignment success 📝🧘🏻‍♀️🌟

Always a good time during Science workshops with group two 🫶🏻🐌👩🏻‍🔬

#UoEPGDEp Bucket School was the best way to end Week 4 & I’m glad to see my bucket has further sustainable uses on the way home 😋 (even if I was asked am I trick or treating🎃)

I’m continuously inspired by the creativity & insight of group two 🫶🏻✨ this is awesome!!

💭 lots about material & textiles today, through the lens of sustainability, social justice & technologies. This morning considering how we can explore alternative consumption (moving away from throwaway culture to explore other options) and this afternoon working collaborative to weave a bag! 👏🏼👏🏼

#RMEdrift #uoepgdep

Inspiring trip to the National Gallery last Friday: leaving us with so much to think about when exploring art in the classroom 🖼️💭