A new class and a new term.  Our learners have been working hard and settling into school life. As part of what we were learning we read the wonderful book. 'Alma and the Worry Stone' by Sara Townsend. We looked at how coming back to school with a new class and all the changes can be difficult. We decided to make some worry stones so that we all can use these when we feel anxious. We made some lovely stones which we cannot wait to use in our class. 

We begun our theme of 'Colours of Life' by joining lots of learners from around the UK looking at respect and diversity with Picture News.  Picture News supports our learners in encountering and considering the key issues of the day in a planned and age-appropriate way. It also supports their developing understanding of Protected Characteristics and the UN Rights of the Child. We explored diversity and what our school community looks like. 

In talking partners and as a class we came up with all the vocabulary we could think of that represents respect, diversity and differences. We then decided to use these to create a display of colours of life and what it means to us. 

Our first question has been 'Why is it important to treat everyone with respect?'  We have explored what respect means and in drama we have been looking at showing respect to each other.  We are beginning to work together and tink of others. 

In Science and technology we have been looking at light. As part of this we have explored how shadow puppets work. We decided to design and make our own. We had to decide what they would look like, thinking about how it is about the outline of the shape not the details. 

We have been working together to create our own collaborative database. We looked at fields, field types and the information we wanted to collect. We then created our database together and then filled the records with our information.  We are now ready to interrogate the data and find out all our similarities and differences.

We have been working together showing respect and looking at how we can listen to each other. In drama we have looked at instructions and how we have to listen to be able to understand the task. We are working hard and getting better at following instructions.

We have been looking at how we can work on our place value and number facts. As part of this we have created our own maths games using excel and formulas so that we can use it as a handy tool in our mathematics lessons. We learnt all about cells, formulas and how to create sheets. 

As part of our drama sessions we have been looking at characters and how we can express their feelings. We have been working on how  we can convey our feelings through our movements and our expressions.

We have been very fortunate as part of our project we had the pleasure of meeting  Rooco Dean. Rocco is the author of a number of books about football and we enjoyed asking him lots of questions about being an author and his passion for football. We learnt a great deal and it has inspired some of us to write more.

As part of our work on looking at different people and how we can all achieve, we had the pleasure of meeting Jamie Thie. Jamie was a runner himself who later turned to coaching. He exaplained how he achieved his goals and how important it was to work hard. He showed us equipment he uses and training gear. The learners all asked lots of interesting questions. We found out about King Georges Running track and how international athletes use it as it is one of the top tracks in the country. We were amazed as this is our local track. 

We have been looking at feelings and exploring all the colours. We have looked at how feelings affect us and how we can deal with those. As part of this we have been looing at 'Inside out' the film. We have created lots of descriptive writing in literacy and have explored the colour wheel. To end our exploration we got to watch 'Inside Out' together. We had lots of treats as we wtached the film and enjoyed the film.

As part of Black History Month we explored the book,  'Little People Big Dreams Michael Jordan' by Maria Vegara. We loved finding out about Michael Jordan. We found out so much about him, his career and his work after sports. He was extremely inspirational. We created interactive information texts based on what we found out. We also presented this information in a special assembly which was lovely to share. 

On Monday 11th November at 11am we took part in our Remembrance service. We were fortunate to have the Mid Rhondda British Royal Legion join us for such a moving serive. We explored the text 'Where the Poppies Now Grow' by Hillary Robinson. It was a very interesting text that got us all thinking. We created 2=page spreads of what we found out and explored all the symbolism.

We had a very special assembly that kick started our exploration into Racism and its affect on society. We looked at what this means and how we can help to arradicate this in our society. We created some awesome posters to share our thoughts and feelings regarding racism. 

We had an action packed day where we went to the VUE in Merthyr Tydfil tp wtach the film. 'Harold and the Purple Crayon'. This film explores how inside his book, adventurous Harold can make anything come to life simply by drawing it. After he grows up and draws himself off the book's pages and into the physical world, he soon learns his trusty crayon can set off more hilarious hijinks than he thought possible. However, when the power of unlimited imagination falls into the wrong hands, it will take all of his creativity to save both the real world and his own. We loved watching this. In class we are looking at the book 'Journey' by Aaron Becker and some of us made the connection between the purple and red crayon.