1 Maple Enjoying learning

We have been super lucky to have had good weather the last couple of weeks. This has allowed us to take advantage of learning outdoors. We have done lots of exploring and super detective work. We have enjoyed discovering more about a snail habitat using a hands-on approach.

                   

First we explored the garden on the North Site. We collected lots of different plants, stones and sticks to create our habitat. We found that the species of snails we had were pond snails which meant they also needed water. After some research we found that they need calcium for their shells to grow strong just like our bones! We used crushed eggshells for the calcium. We named our snails ‘Speedy and Gonzales’ and watched them enjoy their new home for a week. During this time we discovered that they didn’t enjoy loud sounds, so we had to be super quiet to watch them come out of their shells. 

               

After a week we decided it was now best to return our snails to their normal habitat and we did this by releasing them into the pond in our Woodlands area. After saying our goodbyes, we had an explore around to see if we could find any garden snails that live on land. We had super scientists in our class that also searched under logs for other minibeasts and found some fox burrows as well.              

            Oscar’s super detective work found three!

           

Year 6 Super Science and Art

The art of patience and observations which our Year 1's demonstrated in the woodlands is developed throughout a Stepney Park pupil's schooling.  

In Science, Year 6 dissected the flowers of tulips so that we could see all the parts.clearly. We then learnt about the function of each part.

We were amazed that once the seeds were formed, the petals and stamen fall off and the wall of the carpel swells up to make the fruit. Most of us hadn’t realised that fruit starts off as part of a flower!

      

We then did some observational paintings of different fruits. Here are a few examples of what we painted.  You can see how we carefully mixed colours.  We hope you like them.  We really enjoyed doing them.

    

 

You can see how the Year 6's have developed such great skills when you see the Year 3's also developing their observation skills in art...

   

We make sure to develop skills across the year groups so that pupils become confident and successful in their learning. 

Year 3 - Enjoying learning

Year 3 has been doing lots of exciting learning.  We have been creating our own fossils using bread and gummy bears. We trapped our gummy bears in layers of bread, just like animals got trapped on the ocean floor and then put them under lots of pressure to recreate real-life fossils.

  

                   We worked in partnership to recreate fossils.

In both English and Science we have been discovering lots about rocks; how they are made and all the different types of rocks there are in the world. We have even been on rock hunts around the school to see if we can find any that we recognise.

        

We have been working hard to improve our sentences to help our writing and we have really enjoyed building boring sentences and improving them with wondrous words. 

Reception Rubbish Hunt!

We have been learning about how to care for our environment and the birds and animals who live there.

Just like the other year groups, we use the Woodlands to learn and explore outside.

We noticed that there was lots of litter in our Woodlands and we decided to clean it up. We collected two big bags of rubbish.

We worked together, enjoying hunting around the woodlands

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Year 5 develop their emotions

This week in Year 5, we have been really enjoying our learning and accessing our broad and balanced curriculum. In our RE lesson, we looked at the role of music across different religions. Music is often used to portray different feelings and emotions.

  

We then had the opportunity to create our own piece of music in groups to reflect a particular emotion. We performed our piece to the class whilst they made guesses to identify which emotion was being portrayed in the music.

     

We collaborated, took turns and listened to each other carefully.

Nursery watch and wait!

Observation and music skills are developing from Nursery at Stepney Park.  Over the last few weeks Nursery have been looking at the changes to our caterpillars. We watched them grow bigger and bigger, made their cocoons and waited patiently for them to hatch out of their cocoons. This week four of our caterpillars emerged from their cocoons.

We used different shapes and coloured paints to print  symmetrical patterns onto to the wings on our butterflies.      

Finally, we released the four butterflies into our garden after singing some songs to them in our butterfly concert.

Year 2 Enjoy a Challenge!

2 Maple have been using their growth mindset to solve challenges in maths. Our learning partners help us when we find things tricky and sometimes it helps to solve problems together. 

   

We also have been trying our new things to help our learning. In English some of us recorded our sentences using sound boxes. We could hear them back and use them to remember the sentence we wanted to write.