Welcome To Our New Website!
Welcome To Our New Website!
Birchwood Primary School

Elm 1 2024-2025

 
Welcome to Elm 1!
 
 
2024 - 2025
 
Miss Aston - Class Teacher
Mrs Whitlock/Mrs Winyard/Mrs Amvrosiadis/Mrs Spencer/Miss Gregory - Teaching Assistants
 
Summer 2
 
Enchanted Woodland
Using the ‘Making 10’ strategy in to help solve today’s number equations.
In our phonics lessons we have used our knowledge of the sounds letters make to write sentences.
Well done Elm 1 for your fantastic class assembly. We enjoyed hearing about all the exciting learning that you have done so far this year. What a busy year it has been!
After our exciting discovery in the woodland we practised writing some sentences to describe what we saw. We made sure that we included adjectives to help the reader picture exactly what we saw.
Imagine our surprise when we came across a strange note in the middle of our phoneme cards. 'If you go down to the woods today you’ll be sure of a big surprise!' After finishing our phonics lesson, we put on our coats and went to investigate.
 
Summer 1
 
Rio de Vida
Elm 1 explored different sentence openers to include in our character descriptions.
Well done to our latest book token winners. Fantastic effort in today’s sponsored walk/run.
Well done Elm 1!  Super effort completing this morning’s sponsored walk/run.
Elm class enjoyed visiting the Food Technology Room this week to complete their DT work. We made roasted vegetable pasta salad. After washing our hands, we used the bridge and claw technique to safely cut our vegetables.  After mixing the vegetables with the pasta, mayonnaise and pesto we enjoyed eating it!
This week Year 1 enjoyed a ‘farm-tastic’ trip to the National Forest Adventure farm. We walked around the barn and outside paddocks, meeting lots of animals on the way - cows, pigs, sheep, goats, Shetland ponies and even guinea pigs! After making our way through the ‘chicken walk - thru’, we enjoyed a tractor ride around the farm. After lunch, we had great fun exploring the outdoor areas.
Using out knowledge of primary and secondary colours, we created out own ‘Castle and sun’ pictures in the style of Paul Klee.
Today Year 1 have been looking at the primary colours and then mixing them to create secondary colours. 
 
Spring 2
 
Monarchs
Today we enjoyed a visit from Charlie, a local firefighter. We learned about his job and saw what he had to wear to protect himself in a fire. We then learned about keeping safe in our home. Finally we practised ‘Stop, drop and roll’ to help us stay safe if there ever was a fire.

What a great time we had practising our skipping skills on National Skipping Day!

Our latest book token winner. Well done Harley, your ‘Story in a box’ was fantastic.
This afternoon we worked in small groups to create posters which described the different features of the five animal groups - mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians.
After folding paper shapes in half, we explored how many different ways we could cut the slices of bread in half. We knew that the parts had to be equal and that one part had to fit exactly on top of the other. Finally we cut the bread into two equal parts.
Elm 1 certainly have some budding football players! We learned lots of new skills this afternoon. 
Happy World Book Day! What a fun day we’ve had dressing up as our favourite characters and having visitors read stories to us. We particularly enjoyed ‘DEAR’. When the bell rang we had to ‘Drop Everything And Read’!
 
Spring 1
 
No Place Like Home

This afternoon Polesworth Library, in conjunction with The Birmingham Rep, hosted a workshop and show which we were invited to attend. What a wonderful afternoon we had!  The show told the tale of a snowflake, a little girl and her Pappie – all longing for their own special place in the world.

After testing lots of chairs and practising some joining techniques, we designed and made chairs for Baby Bear.
After creating our plans yesterday, we orally rehearsed our stories to our talk partners before we start and write them tomorrow.
An area of our classroom was covered in sheets of newspaper which each represented a habitat. As we listened to the story, the newspaper/habitats slowly disappeared as trees were cut down, litter was dropped, houses were built and leaves and grass were removed.
Today we acted out the story of the Enormous Turnip! It was so much fun and helped us to get into the characters. This will definitely help us when we start to write our own version of the story.
Goldilocks was delighted with the instructions that we wrote as she could now make her own delicious porridge.
 
Autumn 2
 
School Days
We loved the live read with Santa! #SANTALIVEREAD It got us into the Christmas spirit. Thank you Santa, Merry Christmas.
Christmas dinner was very tasty! We even had a festive singsong at the same time!
It’s panto time! 'Oh, no it isn’t!'
 
'Oh, yes it is!' What had a great time watching the pantomime this afternoon.
What an exciting afternoon we had opening our winter books. Thank you to Team Birchwood for making this possible. 
In DT we explored the journey of wheat from seed to harvest, learning how it is made into flour and then into bread. Using the skills of measuring, mixing and kneading we then made a dough. After leaving it to rise we shaped the pitta breads and put them into the oven to cook. Finally we chose a filling and enjoyed eating the final product.
This week, Year 1 were transported back in time to Victorian times. It was very different to the Birchwood that we know and love! After a hand inspection we practised the 3Rs then completed an exercise drill. We also looked at some Victorian artefacts and had to guess what they were used for.
In order to celebrate each others differences we enjoyed wearing odd socks to school today.
What a lovely way to start our science theme this half term. Elm class went on an Autumn walk to look for signs of Autumn.
After having looked at the Dutch artist and Mathematician Maurits Escher, we investigated some shapes to see if they tessellate. 
 
Autumn 1
 
Everyday Materials
After looking at Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night we practised the impasto technique then had a go at creating our own masterpieces. 
 
'I’m so proud of it!' Elsie-Mae.
Elm 1 enjoyed the first Birchwood library visit of the year. First we had a lovely walk to the library, completing two traffic surveys on the way. We then took time to look at some of the beautiful books before choosing one to take home.
For our final Forest Schools session this half term we were reminded how to ‘feed the fire’ safely. We also learned a new skill - sawing wood with our partners. Thank you Mrs Smith, we have had so much fun!
We used our part whole models to solve Miss Aston’s number stories.
 
'I saw 3 lions and 6 elephants at the zoo. How many animals did I see altogether?'
 
'There were 8 children in the classroom. 3 of them went outside. How many were left in the classroom?'
 
'2 of the children went back inside. How many are in the classroom now?'
Today we enjoyed the first Forest Schools session of the year. After playing a game of trust, we explored the wooded area and learned the skill of whittling.