Friday 21st January 2022 | Dulwich Wood Primary School

Learning Journey – ‘Surroundings’

A snapshot of our week:

Reception: On Monday, we discovered someone had left a mysterious parcel with a note. It was special paintbrush and the note said it was magic, and that it could only be used to help the poor. After this, we started reading ‘The Magic Paintbrush’ by Julia Donaldson. We have had some interesting discussions around the things that we need and the things we just want, and this lead to the children thinking what they could paint with this magic paintbrush. In maths, we have been looking at the composition of 5, exploring the different bonds and then representing them on a five-frame.

Year 1: We’ve really enjoyed learning about the weather in geography. In groups, we are measuring the rainfall, wind and temperature each day, and we’re looking forward to sharing our findings next week. In literacy, we used our empathy goggles to think about how Sofia, the character in our story, was feeling at different points in the story, and used drama by making ‘freeze frames’ to represent her emotions. We’re becoming much more confident with remembering our number bonds to twenty in maths, and have just begun to subtract within the teen numbers too!

Year 2: What a busy week we had! In Literacy, we have been exploring the book “The Great Fire of London”, discovering how life was in 1666, and using our making links tool to compare it to modern London. We travelled back in time twice, first to offer Londoners advice on how to prevent another fire from happening, and secondly to imagine what people saw, heard, felt and smelled during the Great Fire. In Art, we have been so excited about building Tudor Houses with the boxes we brought from home. In Maths, we have continued to use our multiplication skills to build the 2’s, 5’s and 10’s times tables. We have used different strategies to help us develop a better understanding, such as arrays and number lines. We are also getting very confident in applying the commutative law of multiplication. Parents, it would be great if you could challenge your child and ask them to recite the 2’s, 5.s and 10’s times tables to you. We pretended to be a seed, and in Science, we had a dramatic enactment of the life cycle of a plant, using a torch as the Sun. The funniest part about it was using the water spray to represent water. We had such great fun! We have also been keeping an eye on our seeds and bulbs, watching them as they grow.

Year 3: We are really loving our book, The Tin Forest. The children have wowed us with their descriptive language! We want to build our own forest so please keep sending in junk which we can use for our models. We are continuing our journey through rainforests of the world our task this week was to be weather forecasters! We have linked all of this to Science and set up an investigation into how water is transported up the stem of a plant, as well as planting our own plants ready to experiment with and learn more about. The children have really persevered in their Maths this week and worked super hard, learning to master division and division with remainders!

Year 4: We have finished our book, Until I Met Dudely, our last activity was to write formal explanations of how various objects and inventions work. We had particular fun describing the inner workings of an electric pencil sharpener. In maths, we have finished our work on multiplication and moved on to division, making links between division and our times tables. In history we are learning about Anglo-Saxons, describing the push and pull factors for why they left their homelands to settle in Britain. The most fun we had this week was in Science, where we built electrical circuits that could power a light bulb. At first, we investigated how we could light a bulb using only a battery and a piece of tin foil! We then used wires and added a switch to our circuits, drawing diagrams of each new circuit we made. One member of Year 4, Nate, even figured out how to include a pair of scissors to his circuit using his knowledge of conductors and insulators!

Year 5: This week we have really enjoyed writing and acting in role as characters from our book ‘High Rise Mystery’, there has been some especially good ‘George’ impersonations, when children used colloquialisms just like him! In Geography, we explored latitude and longitude lines and located countries and cities of the world on maps. The best way to remember which line is which is: LAtitude are the Lines that run Around the world and LOngitude are the Lines that run Over the world! We had a very special visitor (Amandine’s Dad who is a secondary science teacher!) join us during our Science lesson this week, he taught us all about Non-Newtonian fluids and how they behave at times like a solid and at times like a liquid! In PSHE we got to write our action plans, we are thinking about community and what we can actually do to make a difference. Some children in KS2 took part in an inter schools tag rugby competition, well done to both teams, they achieved 3^rd and 4^th place.

Year 6: This week we continued to learn about WWII, using our empathy goggles to learn about the great rescue of Dunkirk. We studied various primary sources and made inferences based on what we already know. In Literacy we looked at the events detailed by Anne Frank from another perspective – her father Otto. We explored his thoughts and feelings after returning home from Auschwitz hoping for his family to return, only to discover he was the only one left. The children really put themselves in Otto’s position to try to express the heart ache he must have been feeling after not only losing his family, but discovering that he didn’t know his daughter as well as he thought. Talking about ‘hearts’ 6B went to Dulwich Prep for a special Science lesson where they dissected things including an animal’s heart! It is 6A’s turn next week.

Star Pupils this week

Year 1: Anaya & Coco

Year 2: Indigo & Thomas

Year 3: Brandon & Teddy

Year 4: Nate & Fatima

Year 5: Seren & Aysha

Year 6: George & Neli

Acorn Awards

Green Acorn Awards – 75 points!

Reception: Sopphire, Sophia, Yabrill, Oliver, Kaddy, Taha, Clara, Malachi, Jahzion, Curtis, Oshae, Max, Shaunnelle, Esme, Ava, Emma, Teddy, Nathan, Beatrix, Harlyn,

Bronze Acorn Awards – 150 points!

Year 1: Abdulmuizz, Darren, Vida, Godson, Alex, Massa, Constance, Shayann, Noah, Zoe,

Year 2: Mikel, Alexis, Wren, Annalise, Beatrice, Habibah, Harold, Luna, Indigo, Arlen, Kiyana, Sofia, Juno, Amber, Harrison, Kate, Kelly, Hector, Carlota, Ivy, Ayla, Aidan, Bryanna, Zash, Mary Rose. Madina, Latifah

Year 3: Jason, Ohemaa, Amber, Mylah, Yasmina, Precious, Margot, Mia, Woody, Arlen, Charlotte, Rudy, Kelechi, Maya, Margot R, Mathis, Teddy

Year 4: Scarlett, Dino, Greta H, Joey

Year 5: Frank, Ceyla, Hayley, Destiny, Braedon, Elissa, Dario