Welcome to Dragonfly Class!
The class teacher is Miss Dockerty and the teaching assistants based in Dragonfly Class are Mr Fuller, Mrs Venn and Mrs Gardiner.
Key information:
- We have PE on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Please come to school wearing your PE kit.
- Show and Tell is on Fridays.
- On a Friday, one child will be chosen as the 'Banwell Bee' for their behaviour and attitude to learning throughout the week. If your child is the Banwell Bee they will bring home our class bear, Ted, for the weekend!
Homework
Supporting your child with reading at home will make a huge difference to their progress at school. We have a reading tree in class, through which we celebrate how many times the children have read at home each week. All of the children are keen to get to the gold star at the top, however our expectation is that your child reads 5 times a week, where possible. We ask that you make a quick note in your child’s reading record book (initials and the date is fine, or a little note if you want to comment) every time you hear your child read.
Show and tell
We love to celebrate home learning in school and show and tell at the end of the day is the perfect opportunity for this. Our Show and Tell Day is a Friday. When your child has continued their learning at home, for example finding something linked to a season on a walk or has got an achievement that they are proud of, maybe a swimming certificate or a boxing medal, please encourage them to bring it in on our show and tell days and they can proudly share their learning with the class.
Academic year 2023-24
Grow a Little Seed
Jack's Mum is very angry that he has exchanged their cow for a bag of magic beans. She throws the beans out of the window and sends Jack to bed. When he wakes up the next morning, he cannot believe what is in front of his eyes!
During term 5 we will be looking at Spring. We will continue on our journey of observational drawing and will be sketching birds and spring flowers. We are also going to investigating all things growing! We will be planting our own seeds and keeping a seed journal, noting what helps our little seed to grow. As a class we will explore bulbs and notice how they grow when they are put in water. We will identify the different parts that make up a plant and do experiments to find out what plants need in order to grow.
Alongside our Science learning, the children will be immersed in the traditional fairy tale 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. We will become story tellers and actors, as well as artists, creating our very own clay beanstalk.
Toys past and present
What is your favourite toy? Can you imagine what toys were like years and years before you were born?
In term 4 we will be discussing, drawing and describing our favourite toys. We will investigate what materials they are made of and if they are moving toys, how they are able to move. We will then start to think about what toys we liked when we were younger and what we liked to do when we were in Reception and Nursery compared to what we like to do now. We will be exploring how toys have changed over time. We will be interviewing our parents, grandparents and teachers to find out what their favourite toys were when they were little and we will notice similarities and differences between their favourite toys and our own.
1...2...3...BLAST OFF!
In term three, we have been learning all about space. The children have shown a keen interest in the planets, so that is where we began. We had the Space Dome in school and the children were fascinated by seeing the planets on the screens around them and we learnt them all by name, through a very catchy song. Since then, lots of children have enjoyed bringing in planet puzzles and models for us to use in school, which we have thoroughly enjoyed!
The children have been learning about lots of significant people who have been into space, including Yuri Gagaran, Helen Sharman and Neil Armstrong to name a few. Dragonfly class have been absolutely fantastic at remembering all of the facts we have learnt about these people and why they are significant people. We have spoken about how each and every one of the important people we have looked at has contributed to space travel and every child is in the process of creating a poster all about space for you to see!
It has been a joy to see the children throughout this project and whilst we have been talking about our hopes and dreams for our futures, a few of our children have decided that they would like to be astronauts when they are grown up too!
Hummingbirds
During Term 3, the years twos in Dragonfly Class have been reading 'Hummingbird' by Nicola Davies in their English sessions. The children have become fascinated with the birds and we regularly watch clips of them eating nectar from flowers, flying through the sky and listening to the sounds that they make.
We have used their interest in these birds to continue the learning into Art sessions. We have been practised our observational sketching and every year one and year two child has created their very own Hummingbird sketch.
The children are all very proud of their work! We hope that you love them too!
Animals Including Humans (Key Stage One Science)
During the first term, the children have enjoyed investigating animals. We have identified different types of animals and used this information to classify them into mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds and fish. The children thoroughly enjoyed their workshop in school led by Noah's Ark Zoo and the children really impressed the workshop leaders with their fantastic knowledge and understanding of animals. You can see some photos below of our brilliant morning, where we got to handle animals including a hissing cockroach, a tortoise, a snail and a guinea pig!
During Autumn Term 2, we will continue our work on animals and will be introducing vocabulary including 'herbivore', 'carnivore' and 'omnivore'. We will also be looking more in depth at the human body and will investigate the five senses.
Celebrations!
In Term 2, we will be focusing on Religious Education as one of the core subjects within our project. We will look at a range of different celebrations from different cultures, including Diwali, Firework Night and of course Christmas. We will also be looking at how different people may celebrate birthdays, weddings and births of babies.
Within this project, the children will be given lots of opportunities to get creative and write. We have already written firework poems and created some fantastic firework art. The children will model with clay and create diwa lamps and their own rangoli patterns.
Preparations for our Key Stage One Nativity are now underway. The children are very excited to start rehearsals. We hope you are looking forward to seeing Banwell Primary School Key Stage One's production of 'The Dinky Donkeys'!
Into The Wilderness
We have started our school year with an art and science project called Into The Wilderness.
We have used a book called 'Leaf Man' by Lois Ehlert as a stimulus. Lois Ehlert uses collage techniques in order to illustrate her books. We watched videos of how she collected her natural objects and layered them on top of each other, before photographing them. We collected leaves together in order to make our very own leaf collage pictures (you can see the finished products below!)
We have also been sketching this term. We sketched the habitat where our leaf animal lives, for example a tree for a leaf owl. Once we had done one sketch, we looked at pictures of the real habitats and had another go sketching it a second time - this time our sketches were much more realistic! We have learnt how to use water colour paints and have explored what happens when we add more water and how we could could add different tones of colour to our habitat pictures.
We created our final pieces by creating a spring out of paper, which we used to attach our leaf collage on to the painted sketch. We love how our pieces have turned out! We hope you love them too!
