Year 6 get better when they concentrate

In 6 Oak, we have begun to think of ways to celebrate our time in primary school.  One of the ways we will do this is through creating our own autobiographical portraits with drawings that remind us of our time at school and look forward into our aspirations for our futures. 

Concentration was extremely important when it came to sketching our portraits as we had to use mirrors to focus carefully on our features and take our time to create this artwork. Portraits can be tricky for an artist to create.

 

    

We learnt that with concentration and a positive outlook we could have a go at creating portraits to celebrate us and our time in primary school!

Year 5 Concentrate in everything they do

Concentration is a well practised skill in Year 5, in all subjects. Independently, the children need to make sure they ‘concentrate’ on their own work and apply the skills that they have been taught accurately and effectively. However, as we’ve been learning, concentration is not just a solo skill but must be used when working in a team too! The children discovered how they must ‘concentrate’ on what their team members suggest so they can discuss the best solution! 

           

Year 2 know concentration keeps them healthy

Mindful colouring

On our Healthy Me we were concentrating on calming and relaxing our minds to keep us healthy. 

We tried to really focus on our colouring, listening to calm music and breathing deeply helped us feel nice and relaxed. 

Painting/ Listening to our partners feelings 

We read the book, My Many Coloured Days by Dr. Seuss together and talked about how each colour made us feel. We concentrated on listening to our learning partners, showing them eye contact and taking turns.

 

After this, Fiona would say an emotion and we painted the colour that reminded us the most of it. For example when she said angry some of us painted red. 

 

We discovered that some people thought that blue was a calm colour whereas others thought that it was a sad colour. Some people thought red was an exciting colour but it made others think of being angry or upset. How do different colours make you feel? 

Yoga

We tried yoga to keep our bodies and minds healthy. We concentrated on our breathing and balance while practising each pose.

Year 4 concentrate on construction

In Geography, 4 Oak were set a challenge to ‘Build a tower sturdy enough to withstand an earthquake!’ We only had 15 minutes so we knew we would need to concentrate to be successful. Anna had made an earthquake table that would wobble and shake. The winning tower would stand upright for the longest time.   

     

We all worked together and concentrated by focusing on what we needed to do. We discussed our ideas, collected the appropriate resources and helped each other to build and attach the materials. We all really enjoyed the lesson and managed to complete our towers. We learnt that the shorter, broader towers stayed up the longest before they collapsed. The towers that were tall and thin fell almost immediately! 

Year 1 concentrate on counting

In 1 Oak we are really good at concentrating when it comes to our learning. We were working together with our learning partner in maths this week and we were comparing numbers by using the greater than and less than symbols. We used numbers to 100 earlier in the week and then we compared coins. Here we are comparing the coins and saying it's greater than or less than and then wrote it in our books.

          

For our Healthy Me day we were asking all our friends different questions to find out different things about each other.

Here you can see everyone's concentration while asking each other questions and writing our friends' names in the square.

We are also learning a song with our adult in the class Christina. The children showed great concentration while singing the song and remembering the lines to ‘Count on me’ by Bruno Mars.

Year 3 concentrate on their writing

In English before half-term, we concentrated really hard to create non-chronological reports. The process required lots of resilience. First we read some books all about rocks, and found out lots of fascinating facts about them. We then used all the facts we found out about rocks to create an organised and clear plan for our non-chronological report, with a range of sub-headings and paragraphs. 

After this, we concentrated really hard on the organisation of our plan, re-ordering facts and paragraphs around until we were completely happy with the layout. After this, we wrote a first draft of our non-chronological reports in our English books. We concentrated very hard whilst doing this. 

Next, we thoroughly edited our reports using green pen. We checked our spelling and grammar to ensure it was correct, and we checked our vocabulary and added in more interesting vocabulary to improve our writing. We also made our sentences more interesting and created complex sentences from simpler ones. This required a high level of concentration. 

Finally, we created our neat drafts. We used our neatest handwriting and focused incredibly well. We wrote all our different paragraphs and picked some pictures to go with each paragraph. We chose some captions to go with the pictures and some also included fact boxes. The paragraphs were stuck onto sugar paper to create lovely final drafts of our non-chronological reports. 

         Hidaayah                                                                               Tasnim

            

         Maryam                                                                                    Samiul

         

Reception concentrate on keeping safe

In Reception we have been really concentrating!  We have been working on our physical skills and having lots of fun balancing and jumping!  We have kept on trying and have been concentrating in order to learn new skills and try new and challenging movements.

    

For our Healthy Me Day we concentrated really well to cut different fruits and vegetables. At the end of the day we enjoyed tasting and trying new and healthy foods.