The children are enjoying their reading corners in the classrooms which also have sensory toys to aid relaxation. This helps the children to associate reading with being a calm and enjoyable past time, and we are seeing improvements in their reading too!
Cross–curricular learning has also been enjoyable and beneficial to the children. “The Cloud Tea Monkeys” was a favourite with the children, about a girl in India, whose family work on a tea plantation. This story inspired drama and hot-seating to allow the children to get to know the characters better. They gained new, exciting vocabulary, inspiring great newspaper reports from the children. They are now experts on reported and direct speech!
They also read, “The Corn Grows Ripe” in guided reading, to support their study of Mayan culture, in history.
We have also cooked a vegetarian burger, as well as a vegetarian curry. The skills that the children focused on were: chopping, grating, squeezing, peeling, mixing and measuring. When making the vegetarian curry, the children in LW5 used a bit too much chilli powder and everybody needed a big drink! The children evaluated this recipe and suggested that if they were to do it again, they would use less chilli powder due to it being so spicy!
The vegetarian burgers were a massive success with Year 5! They thought they were extremely tasty and one child even said “If I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to tell that this didn’t have any meat in!”. The burger was served in a soft bread roll. Mrs Bell and Mrs Pedlow were very impressed with their cooking and Mrs Bell complimented the children’s cooking and explained that the burger was delicious!
