Welcome to another Hollinwood blog. This week has seen many of the primary classes introducing ‘Talk for Writing’ into their classes, after all the primary staff including our teaching assistants had a full day’s training before the half term holiday. Mrs Lomax wanted to show you all how enthused her class have been with this new approach – here is Tyler re-telling ‘Farmer Duck’ with a very impressive ‘quack!’..

The class have also been exploring other cultural traditions and celebrations..

We have been researching Chinese New Year and we have done some dragon dancing and danced to some traditional Chinese music. We have read the Chinese New Year story and we have found out that we are either Dragons..

..or Rabbits..

We had a lot of fun making and wearing our masks!

We have also tasted some Chinese fortune cookies and enjoyed reading our fortunes. We especially liked George’s – ‘Learning is a treasure which accompanies us everywhere’.

This week both our reception classes and Mr Lawton’s Communication Group shared some Chinese New Year fun, trying to use chopsticks to pick  up objects..

..to eat with and try new food..

..feeling dried seaweed and painting and collaging pictures of the zodiac animals..

It was great to see the children having fun and experiencing new things. On Tuesday these three classes also enjoyed a wonderful visit to Blackpool Zoo as part of their topic on animals..

This week it is the turn of Mr Heap’s class to tell us what they have been up to..

This week has been very busy! After a lovely half term relaxing and eating lots of pancakes we were all ready to start our new creative curriculum topic, ‘Fur, skin and scales’. We are very excited about learning more information within this and this week was our introduction!

We started the week with Caelan’s ‘Marvellous Meerkat’ adventure. It was great to hear all about what he had been doing over his half term and we chose our favourite picture from his adventure. I wonder who will be lucky enough to take home our Marvellous Meerkat this week..

Some of our class had the opportunity to visit Heaton Park and we looked around the farm to see if we could find any animals with fur, skin and scales. We had a fantastic time..

We have learnt about different animal groups such as reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish, insects and birds and sorted these animals into their correct groups..

After sorting and familiarising ourselves with animal groups we then created our own unique class mammal. This is a Red haired Monkey Stripy Moo! It likes to swing in trees and it can run very fast. It makes its own milk for its babies. Our mammal did not come out of an egg, it was born alive and it can swim, however it lives on land..

We then all created our own unique mammals. We described them and made them on the computer also..

Within Art we all enjoyed making some slithering snakes for our class display..

And finally within SEAL we have looked at different ways to relax..

I hope you all have a restful and lovely weekend as we have another very busy and exciting week ahead!!

Miss Gordon’s Nurture Group have been busy too..

This week in Nurture we have been reading and studying ‘Of Mice and Men’. Our pupils have developed knowledge and understanding of Steinbeck’s language in chapter one and George and Lennie’s dream..

In our recent Geography lessons our group have created their own rain gauges to measure the rainfall on school grounds over the last 4 weeks; this has allowed the pupils to collate each other’s data and show an understanding of the weather’s effects in the surrounding area..

In this week’s Science lesson we created our very own replica of the lungs using balloons, plastic cups, sellotape and clay. This small model works by pulling down on the balloon attached to the bottom of the cup which applies force and pressure, putting air into the balloon that is inside the cup, imitating a working lung..

During our Maths lessons we have been completing assessment papers so we can track our learners’ progress and find out what we have learnt so far over the term..

Mr Lawton’s Communication Group have also been working hard..

This week we finished off our Valentines potions and cards – we started these before the holidays and the pupils have really enjoyed making them using different nice smelling soaps and glitter..

Hopefully families liked their special presents as much as the pupils liked making them!

This term we are looking at the topic ‘fur, skin and scales’ and we started off our week with a trip to Blackpool Zoo where the pupils had to look very hard for the animals they wanted to see. We spoke about the different animals and the way they looked, asking lots of questions and trying to gain a better understanding of what each animal looked like with fur, skin or scales. Each pupil had their own work to complete throughout the day..

In class we have also been looking at real snake skin..

..and a real rabbit pelt..

We will be looking at our own skin and exploring the differences between them next. This week has been Chinese New Year and the class had the opportunity to taste some oriental foods; they tried some spring rolls, prawn crackers, egg fried rice, noodles, seaweed and some sweet and sour sauce with rice crackers. The pupils tried really hard to use chopsticks..

They also painted different animals that link in with the years..

Now let’s have a look at our SEAL Superstars and our Stars of the Week:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Renico, Lenni, Maddison, Victory, Lewis, Ollie and Jake for representing the school with fantastic behaviour at Blackpool Zoo..

SEAL Superstar: Lenni for being able to relax in the pool and do some independent splashing and swimming..

• Miss Grimsley’s class:
  Star of the Week: Ijaaz for doing some fantastic looking at the orangutans in the zoo..

SEAL Superstar: Mia for showing she can relax by going in the sensory den and singing songs..

• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Tyler for doing a fantastic re-tell of Farmer Duck using Talk for Writing..

SEAL Superstar: Farrukh for recognising what she likes to do and asking for the toy

• Mr Corrigan’s class:
  Star of the Week: Essah for fantastic listening and learning to try new things..

SEAL Superstar: Nathan for being a great example to his friends in how to interact with others in the activity areas

• Miss Louden’s class:
  Star of the Week: Callum and Kyle for their hard work in Maths
  SEAL Superstar: Lewis H. for looking after his friends
• Miss Parkinson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Ellie for swimming independently..

SEAL Superstar: Maia and Luke for achieving part of their goals..

• Miss Shin’s class:
  Star of the Week: the whole class for learning and reciting a poem by heart

Well done, everyone! I’m delighted to say that our new peer mentoring scheme has got off to a very successful start using the lego robots..

Next Thursday we are celebrating World Book Day and we have sent out letters to ask if you could take a picture of your child reading a book in an unusual place before they bring in their favourite book and the picture on Thursday to share with the rest of the class. I have asked our governors to come into school and share their favourite book/story with our primary classes.

Letters have also gone home about our Easter Holiday Club (you can also find details here), including a day trip to the Blue Planet Aquarium! Please remember to return the form by next Friday 2nd March if you would like to book a place for your child.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jaina

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