Welcome to Denmark class! We are a Specialist Resource Base (SRB) providing specialist teaching for children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). We work very closely with our speech therapy colleagues. Places at our SRB are allocated by the Local Authority.
Mrs King and Mrs Harding are our teachers. Ms Wilson and Miss Slaney are our teaching assistants.
Our class is supported by an NHS speech therapist at various times across the week.
We had lots of fun in the rain at Forest Schools this week! We enjoyed exploring the area and seeing out different it feels in different weather. The children enjoyed exploring the mud kitchen area and enjoyed creating picture menus and creating wonderful dishes and drinks for the adults! The children also expressed an interested in making dens with various ropes, twigs and tarps, as well as pond dipping to see if they could spot any frogs. With Jules Jackdaw, our forest school lead, the children had fun using the various tools to create different vehicles. Lots of children wanted to build cars and boats out of branches, sticks and wheels. It is so lovely to see their creativity flourish in our outdoor area.
We have had a wonderful start to the year exploring what we know about ‘place value’. We began by working as a team to sort objects by different categories and counting how many were in each set. We used our ‘comparison’ vocabulary to make observations about the different sets. We reminded ourselves how to count objects and actions accurately. We have also been practicing to read numbers as words and making amounts using a variety of equipment. We explored numicon, base ten and bead strings to create amounts.
Today, we went to Gressenhall for our ‘Once Upon a Time’ trip. We had so much fun! Some fairytale items had been stolen from the museum by the Wicked Witch and it was our job to find them! Along the way, we met Griselda (Cinderella’s older sister) who had us doing work on the farm, which included watering, digging up potatoes and doing the washing. We then helped Cinderella with her dusting and found her missing coins. We loved our tractor ride round the farm before lunch! We met a huge Suffolk horse and even saw black turkey chicks! After lunch, we searched for some missing items in the village shop before helping Jack to climb the beanstalk and find the golden egg! We finished up by making potions with the Wicked Witch. Thankfully, we managed to get all the fairytale items returned to the museum. Our imaginations were buzzing today! We had a super time!
We were delighted to be invited to join in with a ‘karate taster session’. We had lots of fun learning about different stances and moves.
As part of our art module this term, the children have been investigating ‘3D art’. We began by looking at pebbles and their properties, before seeing if we can build 3D sculptures with them. We soon discovered that flat, smooth pebbles were the best for building. We then investigated clay and its properties by seeing how it can be manipulated in different ways. We then created 8 different sized pebbles each, making sure we smoothed them out and squashed then to get a flatter shape. We learnt that pebbles aren’t always one colour, so we used a terracotta clay to add embellishments using a ‘slip’. We cannot wait for our pebbles to dry out so that we can create 3D sculptures with them.
The class were so excited to stumble across a shipwreck in our outdoor classroom! Amongst the broken boat, the children spotted lots of different objects and items. One by one the children took it in turns to talk about what they could see and collected the item. Back in the classroom, we made a list of all these curiosities and discovered that they made a poem! The poem is called ’10 things found in a shipwrecked sailor’s pocket’ by Ian McMillan. We will be using this poem as our model text and we will be innovating our own version based on the things we may find in a fairytale land!
In English, we have been learning about information reports – what they are and why we might use them. As part of our innovation stage, we had a visit from the Ted the office dog so we can write an information report on dogs. Beforehand we thought about some questions we could ask the owner such as where does it live and what does it eat. The children drew symbols to represent the pieces of information they learned. Next week, the children will use these symbols to help them make substitutions to our class text map, before writing their own versions.
As part of science week, we welcomed a scientist to our class to talk about ‘Mary Anning – The Lady of Paleontology’. She demonstrated how fossils are made by using clay to imprint into and plaster of Paris to create a ‘cast’. She then took us on an immersive drama adventure to tell the story of the ‘life of Mary Anning’. It was a great workshop and a lovely way for the children to revise what they have been learning about in history – lives of significant individuals.
What fun we have had in Forest School this week!
We had lots of fun with Jules Jackdaw exploring different habitats and what might be living there. We also spent time creating safe bug traps. We created a jam jar trap and managed to catch a centipede! The frogs in our pond have been very busy and lively these last few days. We even managed to hold a few and look at them up close.
In science today we learnt about how to stay healthy and how we need water, exercise, a balanced diet and good hygiene to remain healthy.
We talked about foods having different jobs and that some foods help us with our health, some foods give us energy and other foods help us grow. We sorted a selection of different foods into these three groups and then planned our own balanced snack using at least one food from each group. Once the children had planned their snack they demonstrated good hygiene by washing their hands and then prepared and ate their snacks.
