Dulwich Wood Primary School

Spring Term Learning Journey – All the World’s a Stage

Reception: Following up from our spring investigations, this week we have started reading ‘The Extraordinary Gardener’ by Sam Boughton. We have, once again, made great use of our imagining tool to create the most extraordinary plants and creatures, in order to help Joe (the main character of the story) create a world less dull and ordinary. We have been exploring different kinds of seeds (including conkers, peas, avocado stones, coconuts etc.) and we have enjoyed taking part in gardening activities and writing instructions to plant a seed.

Year 1: During Science this week, we have been asking questions and making links to identify and name some common garden and wild plants. We went on a plant hunt around the playground and used a plant identification key to name the different plants. The children were great at using their reasoning tool to think about whether the plants they saw were wild plants, garden plants or both.

Year 2 used their making links tool in Science as we continued our learning from British Science Week. We have been investigating the beginnings of Spring and, in particular, the temperature of the school pond, and the length of the tree shadows. We enjoyed making some bark rubbings to explore whether this changes over time.

Year 3 had an amazing trip to the Science Museum this week. We used our imagining and making links tools while exploring all of the brilliant activities in the Wonderlab. It was a lot of fun! In Literacy, we enjoyed using our planning and collaboration tools to act out the crucial assassination scene in Julius Caesar. There was some expert use of body language and tone of voice to demonstrate how the different characters were feeling. Next stop – The Globe!

Year 4: We built the rockets that we planned for British Science Week, using our collaboration tool to share resources and produce some superb models together! After testing them, we used our reasoning tool to identify which rockets were most and least successful, so that we could improve our designs further before re-testing them.

Year 5: In computing over the last few weeks, we have been using our imagining and making links tools. We have been creating a trailer using Movie Maker for an imagined performance of our literacy text ‘The Tempest’ by William Shakespeare. We have had to work hard to insert images and music to make the trailers exciting and dynamic!

Year 6 have been super scientists, creating new innovative inventions to help change the way we live. There are inventions from smart watches that do more than just answer calls – they save lives if you get into a spot of trouble to a mop that cleans up after your dog, so you don’t have to! We have also been making the most of the sun! Using our collaboration tool, we took our maths booster outside to practise coordinates by mapping out the playground and creating treasure hunts for each other.