Learning Journey – ‘Foundations’

A snapshot of our week: As part of our ‘Foundations’ Learning Journey we have been thinking about how our school values form the foundations of our school and how those values are what Dulwich Wood is built upon. We have had great fun choosing our favourite school value, get your child to tell you theirs and why it’s their favourite. Lots of children think our school values should be home values too! Or do you have your own family values?  

Reception: We have been discussing some of the things we need to do to be strong, healthy and to grow properly. The children have been amazing at using their asking questions tool, which has led us to investigate how healthy habits help our bodies. For example, we explored how exercise changes the way our hearts beat; we made an experiment with some pepper and soap to illustrate why we need to wash our hands carefully to get rid of the germs; and we also did an experiment where we soaked some eggs in water, orange juice and Coca-Cola for a couple of days to see what happened to the eggshells, as they’re made out calcium, just like our teeth! 

Year 1: We have certainly been using our Dulwich Wood Learning Toolkits this week! When writing our own stories based around ‘Stanley’s Stick’, our imagining tool was super useful to help us think about all of the different things our objects can transform into, we made sure we managed our distractions while we were writing, and it was very important for us to persevere and correct our mistakes with blue pen. It certainly made our teachers very proud of us. Not We used our making links tool when we realised that half was the same as sharing between two! In history, we examined lots of toys from the Victorian era, and we ended our toys topic by sorting toys from different periods of history and using our reasoning tool to explain how we knew which era they were from. Thank you to those parents that uploaded the interviews between your children and their grandparents talking about their favourite toys onto tapestry. By collaborating in this way, we were all able to learn from each other.

Year 2: We have been using our planning tool in Literacy, to help us organize the information from our research on local landmarks (Dulwich Wood Primary School, St. Stephen’s Church, Kingswood House and Sydenham Hill Station) into fact files, to create our own fiction book. We even created a glossary, making use of key words from our own writing in order to make it easier for the reader to understand the facts. In Maths, we have been revisiting the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), using different strategies and also the inverse operation, to find missing numbers in number sentences. Please, can you challenge us to recall the 2’s, 5’s, 10’s and 3’s time tables.

Year 3: We have had a very exciting week discovering all there is to know about volcanoes! The children have maximised their use of their asking questions tool and come up with some great avenues that we are going to explore together. We have also been using our making links tool to connect our book ‘Escape from Pompeii’ with our Geography topic on volcanoes and our Science topic on Forces, of which Friction (the force which causes volcanoes to erupt) is a part! We will be collating all of our research into a volcano fact file which the children will produce themselves during our computing lesson.

Year 4: In Literacy, we have been using our imagining tools to write in the role of Gulliver. We imagined what life was like for him in ‘giant land’ and used abstract nouns to describe how he felt. We wrote diaries to log and record all the events that took place, including being nearly eaten by enormous rats! We are totally loving the home learning projects children are bringing in of their Islands, so many imaginative and whacky ideas, thank you to all the Parents who have supported their children and got involved with this project. In Maths, we continued to build on our knowledge of decimals learning how to; write, make a whole and divide by 100 by using our understanding of place value, we were able to explain how the digits move and the value of them. It was great applying our reasoning tool to explain our answers. We have been studying states of matter in science, we investigated all things relating to gases and their properties. We explained why gases are important and how they are used. On the playground we carried out an experiment to see if gases have mass. We found out that if you record the weight of a fizzy bottle of drink and then release the gas (carbon dioxide) by shaking the bottle the weight of the bottle decreases. We compared gases such as helium which is lighter than air and carbon dioxide which is heavier!

Year 5: We have spent time using our planning tool to summarise and plan the story of Odd and the Frost Giants and have been retelling our own versions from the main character’s perspective. We have started a new topic in maths, exploring angles and measuring them in degrees. In science, the children have continued to explore electrical circuits and have been identifying insulators and conductors of electrical currents in everyday items. We have studied maps of Europe and world maps to identify the main routes taken by the Vikings to reach new lands. We also thought about how we would like to celebrate the Queens Platinum Jubilee and wrote to the School Council with our ideas. We had some great ones like ’hunt the corgi’ and ‘pin the crown on the Queen’. We asked lots of the adults who work in the school what they thought about the Queen, her role, how it’s changed and what they think of the monarchy. We linked the lesson to British and Values and had some very interesting discussions. 

Year 6 have worked incredibly hard this week and have completed their end of year assessments (SATs) with flare. We are very proud of all of all Y6 who have been masters at using their managing distractions, making links and perseverance tools. They have been revising tirelessly all week, preparing for the showcase of their learning. As we near the end of the week, we will be celebrating with a trip to the cinema to watch our favourite film ‘Encanto’, a well-deserved treat. Next week we will be starting our new text ‘Children of the Benin Kingdom’ which links to our learning journey ‘Foundations’. We will also be looking into the history of Benin as well as it’s geography. School Council have collated all the Jubilee celebration ideas and will be taking about what is planned in Monday’s Assembly.

Star Pupils this week

Reception: Nathan, Ava, Savannah & Polina

Year 1: Derin, Beau, Noah & Ariah 

Year 2: Digby, Harry, Artem & Madina

Acorn Awards

Bronze Acorn Awards – 150 points!

Reception A: Oshae, Esme, Sopphire, Sophia, Beatrix

Reception B: Cassius

1A: Anaya

 

Silver Acorn Awards – 250 points!

1A: Maysa, Derin, Darren, Lilibeth, Aylla, Abdulmuizz, Vida, Godson, Alice, Lisa, Jacob, Claire, Shayaan, Ellar, Alex, Massa & Constance

1B: Zoe & Leah

2A: Mikel, Digby, Wren, Beatrice, Asya, Luna & Eira

Friends of Dulwich Wood: if you would like to be on the mailing list to hear about Friends of Dulwich Wood events, or are not sure if you already are, please email: friends@dulwichwood.com

LEGO: do you have any lego that your children no longer play with or do you know anyone who does? Miss Castle has some fantastic activities she would like to run with children but to make it possible she needs more lego. All donations gratefully received!

Jubilee Day – Friday 27th May 2022

Dulwich Wood children will be celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on Friday 27th May with a picnic style lunch, dressing up and sharing cake!

What to wear:  Children can come dressed as their favourite royal past, present, future or make believe from around the World!!

What to bring:  children can bring a picnic blanket to sit on at lunchtime, Chartwells are providing a special picnic lunch, see menu below.

Royal Bake-Off:  Children can enter the Bake Off by making a Jubilee themed cake and bring it in to be judged by their class.

What’s happening: Teachers will be organising fun games and activities for the children throughout the day. The School Council, with the help of Year 5, have given the Teachers lots of great ideas.

Dates for the Diary

  • Friday 27th May –  Jubilee Day
  • Monday 30th May – Friday 3rd June – Half Term
  • Monday 6th June – INSET Day
  • Tuesday 7th June – Children return
  • Friday 17th June – Fun Run
  • Saturday 9th July – Friend’s of Dulwich Wood Summer Fair
  • Tuesday 12th & Thursday 14th -Learning Reviews 3:30pm – 7pm
  • Thursday 21st July – Term Ends (school finishes at 1pm

Dulwich Wood Menu

 

Friday 13th May 2022