PSHE

This week, the children have been introduced to their new house teams (Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire and Diamond) and to their new areas of responsibility within the school. Within class, we have embraced this focus of responsibility and have worked on ways that we can be more responsible and independent as we go into our second half of Year One.

In PSHE, we thought about problems that we come across during our school day and came up with ways that we could be responsible and solve them ourselves. We looked at the traffic light 'problem solving' strategy and talked about the difference that a few seconds of thinking time could make. 

We made 'freeze frames' of the problem and of after the problem and thought carefully about what our goals were. For example, we acted out the problem of your friend taking your pencil. We thought about what our true 'goal' was. Was it just to get our pencil back or to do this whilst staying friends with that person? We took a few extra seconds of thinking time to decide on different ways we could solve the problem without snatching it back.

The children made lots of great suggestions!

• We could ask for it back. 
• We could wait until they finish and then explain why we were sad.
• We could offer to share and take turns.
• We could ask the teacher to help us.
• We could go and find another pencil and offer it to our friend. 

We put our problem solving to the test today. At show and tell time, the children were put into 2 groups and told that it was up to them to be responsible and decide how to fairly lead the session themselves. I was so impressed to see that the children decided who would start in each group without any arguments and decided that they needed to sit in a circle so that everyone could see. They listened to each other beautifully and took turns. 

You were all responsible just like Kanga! Well done. Have a wonderful weekend!

Ernest Shackleton

We started the week by learning all about a mystery person...We worked in pairs, finding out a fact and coming back to tell our partner about it.

We had to show that we understood what we had read by putting the information into our own pictures. 

Next, we learned that our mystery person was Ernest Shackleton. We found out more about his journey and sequenced pictures to help us retell his story. Can your child tell you more using the pictures?

Today, to support us with our big piece of writing, we acted out the story! It was great fun and some children even carried on into their play time pretending to be Shackleton and his crew exploring Antarctica!

Here is our version of the story...

We set sail in our boat to explore Antarctica

The ice got really thick! We used our ship to ram through it!

This bit of ice was too thick and our ship got stuck.

We climbed out and tried to break the ice with our pick axes and even tried to stomp it, but it didn't work!

We waited to see if the ice would melt. Whilst we waited, we took part in some dog sled races, mapped the area or had tea parties on the ship.

When we came back we were shocked to find that our ship had been crushed by the pressure of all the ice!

We had no choice but to take our supplies and abandon our ship. We marched through the horrible ice to try to find help.

It got so cold that we decided to stop and make camp under an upturned boat. We sang songs to keep our spirits high whilst we waited for captain Shackleton to return with help.

At long last Shackleton came back with a bigger ship that could break the ice. We jumped on board and sailed to safety. It felt great to be back on dry land with warm food!

Tomorrow we will be finishing our letters, which we have written as if we are crew members on board this adventure. Please do come and see them if you would like to, everyone has tried very hard on them. In advance, have a lovely weekend.