Emerald Class Activities – Page 3 – Fleggburgh CofE VC Primary School

Emerald Geography

In the autumn term we learned about countries and cities of the UK. We found out about the flags of each country and how they combine to make the Union Flag of the United Kingdom.

We compared the UK to the Caribbean. We found out about their homes, beaches, weather and the foods that grow there.

History and Art

We looked at a picture by Alan Moore and were inspired to make our own class version. Each pupil made a plane, carefully studying designs of real planes at that time.

During our Great Fire of London topic, we learned about life in the 17^th century. We thought about what job we would choose and why the fire started and how it spread. We learned about buildings at that time and then designed our own buildings to replace those that were lost in the fire.

In the spring term, we learned about World War II. In Emerald Class we focused on what the war would have been like for children. We imagined what it might have been like for evacuees and wrote letters to our host families telling them about ourselves and stating our hopes for the future.

English and History

We went on a class trip to Stranger’s Hall in Norwich to learn about life during the Great Fire of London. We handled artefacts from the 17^th century, took part in a drama activity to understand how the fire spread and also looked around the rooms to see if there were any fire hazards.

Science

In the autumn term, our science topic was all about habitats and environments.

Our second autumn topic was about materials. We learned about common materials and explored what things around our school are made of. We also found out which are natural or manufactured and explored the properties of different materials, suggesting why objects are made of certain materials.

Our spring science topic is about our bodies. We are learning about our senses and discovered how our eyes work.

RSE

In RSE we considered the question ‘What makes a good friend?’

We sang the song ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’ and then matched the labels to the correct body parts on the pictures.

English

In English, we began the year by thinking about ourselves. We wrote about what we look like, our characters and our futures.

We used the book ‘You Choose Fairytales’ by Nick Sharratt to explore our preferences. This gave us the chance for lots of discussion and the opportunity to listen to our friends’ ideas before making choices for ourselves.

We used fireworks as inspiration for our autumn poetry. We read poems, wrote our own and then preformed them.

Linking with our geography topic of London, we read Paddington stories. We used the stories to understand and find examples of nouns, adjectives and verbs and then enjoyed writing our own Paddington stories.

Before Christmas we made a selection of Christmas crafts and then wrote instructions for each of them.

Leading up to our visit to the Hippodrome Circus in Great Yarmouth, we learn about circuses and thought about what acts we would do if we joined the circus. We also designed our own posters and described our favourite acts.

We enjoyed reading the Mr Men and Little Miss stories. We thought about how we could help the characters solve their problems.

We use an online resource called Pobble to support us to write for enjoyment. Each lesson we are shown a picture and given the start of a story and we then have the challenge to continue the story. Each time it is completely different and a lovely surprise to see what we will be writing about. One of our favourites was writing about Batman and his love of raspberry ice cream!

Each week we have a reading comprehension lesson where we read a book with a partner and then answer questions about what we have read.

After the Christmas break, we discussed what we had enjoyed in the holiday. It was lovely to share our thoughts with our friends.

Our spring poems are about the natural world. We listened carefully to each poem and chose parts that we liked or did not like about each poem. We are busy learning these poems for our school poetry festival and can’t wait to perform them for our families soon.

The Colours of Us

We learned how to make our own portraits. We read the book ‘The Colours of Us’ and found out that there are a vast range of skin tones. We then learned how to draw the proportions of the face and were given the task to mix the tone to match our own skin using just red, blue, yellow, black and white paints.

Great Fire of London

We learned about portraits and used our skills to reproduce a sketch of Samuel Pepys. We learned about the Great Fire of London, and read parts of the diary written by Samuel Pepys to find out what happened to people living in London during the fire.

During our Great Fire of London topic, we found out about life in the 17^th century. We learned that buildings were made of wood with thatched roofs, which is why they burned so easily. We then compared them to modern buildings in London.