Today we are going to revisit ‘helicopter stories’ using the outdoors, flowers and plants as inspiration. We will work outdoors for this session. Kai has been telling us about a story that he had seen on TV about flowers - particularly a sunflower that grew really big. Adults will ask him to talk about this again and then will model a story linked to an flower or plant that we have seen. We will also provide pictures as prompts of scenarios that might happen or further characters that they may include. We will encourage the children (in their small groups) to tell / dictate their stories – these will be written down verbatim, exactly as they are told, by the adults. At this time the children will each be given a whiteboard and will be encouraged to illustrate the story in their chosen way. We will also encourage them to make marks and explore writing on their work - we will ask the children to share their illustrations with their friends at the end. Throughout we will remind them of using the pinch and flick technique and an appropriate grip. The children will then act out their story (without an audience and in their own way - the adult delivering the activity doesn’t need to join in or lead how the story is acted out as the children will do this). We want to develop the children’s ‘imaginings’ during both the telling and the acting out of their stories.

PE: The children will be changing for this session so will need their named PE kits in school.  Today we will begin our practise for Sports Day. First we will warm up by pretending to look for and pick flowers around the playground - we will encourage the children to stretch and bend. 

The children will be working in colour teams on the big playground and will be practising the first three of the following races. We will be showing them how to work as a team and where to go at the end of your turn:

• Balance bike race
• Jumping
• Javelin
• Egg and spoon
• Beanbag on heads race
• Water relay

To cool down we will explore ‘Jedi writing’ with giant tubes. Then we will talk about the importance of rest as well as exercise.

 Today we will tell the children that a robot has come from another planet and wants to know about plants. We have found a book to tell the robot all about growing plants. We will remind the children of all their comments last week about growing plants and we will check that this is covered in the book (water, sun, soil etc). (Ernie told us that they need water, Fiadh explained that they grow from the soil, Ellie knew that flowers grow from seeds). We will follow the instructions in the book, page by page, to check that they work before sharing the book with the robot. (Mrs Hardwick will be the robot and the robot doesn't know how to read a book!) We will discuss the instructions that the children need to give to the robot for it to be able to read the book successfully.  We will ask questions about which way up the book needs to be, the direction of print (left to right and top to bottom) and of reading the book front to back. Mrs Hardwick will carry out the children’s instructions exactly as they have been given. We will pause and talk about each stage of the instruction to check that it works and that we agree. The children will be able to adapt their program if it doesn't work the first time  (We will make links with computer programming).

 Milo wanted to grow plants, Sebbie asked why do flowers need water? George asked how do flowers grow? So … today we are going to plant some grass heads. We will add water to some and not to others to see what happens. We will explain that the grass will not have flowers but that it grows in the same way. We will look at the instruction sheet together so that we can follow it. We will ask questions as the children work: Can you see how small the grass seeds are? What do the seeds need to help them grow? Why do we need compost? The children will need to decorate their grass heads by sticking eyes and facial features onto them. They will be able to choose which materials to use for their design  - fabric, paper, card or plastic. They will need to stick them on using a glue spreader. We will remind them to make the heads damp with water, but not too soggy. They will need to find somewhere sunny to leave them. Finally we will ask them… how long do you think it will take before your grass head needs its hair cutting?

Friday

Marsaili asked about petals and wanted to know more about them  and how they grow and Brodie asked how flowers open ... so today the children will use the flowers that they have brought in for Show and Tell for their Maths activity and we will talk about how they are formed and how they open. We will ask the children to talk about their flowers and describe them to their friends. We will use the visualiser to look closely at them and talk about what we all notice, we will compare some flowers and talk about similarities and differences. Next we will practise subitising skills as the children look closely at images on the IWB which they will be shown briefly. We will explain that they are going to be then shown individual flowers on the visualiser very quickly and again they will need to use subitising skills (recognising how many there are without needing to count). Children will take turns in suggesting and agreeing how many. We will also show images of two flowers on the screen and ask which has more and which has fewer, making sure the difference is significant.