Bendish Lane, Whitwell, Hitchin, Hertfordshire. SG4 8HX

01438 871241

St Paul's Walden

Primary School

Welcome to the Rowans!

Our Class Teacher is Miss Lewis.

Our Teaching Assistant is Mrs Jeffs.

 

We support the Rowans to become collaborative, independent and resilient learners. We look forward to seeing the Rowans confidence and love of learning grow as they journey through Key Stage 1. 

 

 

Here are some activities that we have done in Autumn 1

 

English

The Rowans have been learning how to follow and write instructions. The class created instructions on how to make paper pumpkins and followed them to see if they worked. As you can see from the pictures below, they were a success!

Maths

The Rowans have been revisiting addition, subtraction and subitising this half term. The class had great fun showing off their subitising skills during their Lego Tower board-game. The aim was to roll the dice, and then match the numeral to the number represented on the Lego block. The person with the tallest tower at the end was the winner! 

 

Computing

The Rowans are practicing their programming skills, aiming to create a space-themed mini-game. The Year 2's were brushing up on their programming knowledge by introducing the Year 1's to the world of Scratch!

 

Art

The Rowans have been learning about the artist Andy Goldsworthy. They were inspired by his natural sculptures to create a class project of a tree made out of the fallen Autumn leaves. They carefully cut of the stems to use as the trunk, then used the leaves to create an ombré from green to dark brown.

 

Science

The Rowans had great fun trying out different exercises that they might do at break-time. They were deciding which exercises they though made their heart beat the fastest, their muscles feel the strongest, their bodies feel the most flexible, and made them feel the happiest!

PSHE

This half term, the Rowans were learning about and commemorating the life of the Queen. They traced over a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and used water-colours to bring their images to life.

 

Here are some activities that we have done in Autumn 2

Anti-Bullying Week

For anti-bullying week in Rowans, we have been discussing how wonderful it is that we are all different. To celebrate this, as well as wearing our odd socks to school, we coloured in our own odd socks to display in the classroom!

Maths

The Rowans have been exploring Measurement in Maths. They worked in groups to sort the objects into best measured by Length, Mass or Volume. 

History

The Rowans have been comparing Seaside Holidays over the last 150 years. They were using what they have learnt to sort the photographs into chronological order: 100 years ago, 50 years ago and today!

Science

The Rowans' topic this term has been Materials Monster! They have been learning about everyday materials and their properties. They first sorted some everyday materials into Man-Made and Natural materials. They then worked together to sort materials by their properties. Finally, they solved the What Material Am I? mysteries and presented their work on a poster.

PE

The Rowans were exploring Dance in PE this half term. They used the story of the infamous Gunpowder Plot of 5th November 1605 as inspiration to create their own interpretive dance!

Winter Decorations

The Rowans had great fun decorating their snowflakes, snowmen and stars for our school tree and class door. Plus, we were lucky enough to enjoy the snow during breaktime! 

 

Here are some activities that we have done in Spring 1

 

Maths

In Maths, we have been delving into Geometry, with our exciting new topic: 2D and 3D Shapes!  The Rowans enjoyed taking their pen for a walk, identifying the shapes that describing the lines and shapes that they had drawn using their fantastic new vocabulary. They then worked together in teams to sort their 2D shapes. First, they sorted them by their shape-name. Then, into regular and irregular shapes. Finally, they sorted them by their properties. They were fascinated by the amount of different groups they could make!

PE

The Rowans have been enjoying one of their new PE topic with Mr Murray: Circuit Training!
They have started off by listening to and remembering instructions. One of the Rowan's favourite instruction activities from this week was Colour Code. Mr Murray held up different-coloured cones and the Rowans had to remember which action linked with which colour, for example: red = stop, green = run, yellow = reverse. They had great fun trying to remember each colour's action as Mr Murray added all of the colours he could find!

English

In English, we have been learning lots of exciting ways to make our writing more engaging for the reader.  We have been exploring the book Chocolate Planet by Jon Blake, and have started to write our own fantasy adventure story! To get us ready for these wonderful stories, we have been learning how to use expanded noun phrases to help the reader to imagine these strange planets.

The children cut up some pictures of West Um - a newly discovered area of the Chocolate Planet - describing what they could see using some fantastic, creative expanded noun phrases. 

Science

The Rowans have been continuing to explore properties of materials in Science this term, with a focus on whether materials can Squash, Twist, Bend and/or Stretch!
They had great fun investigating different materials and deciding which properties applied to each one.
They discovered that most of the materials could Bend, Squash and Twist, but only some of the materials could Stretch. 
 

Art

The Rowans have been learning some new skills and techniques in Art. This week, they have been learning to weave and enjoyed expressing their creativity and practising their fine motor skills by weaving rainbows. There was some super teamwork going on; helping to each-other untangle their wool, remember the weave-pattern and tie their knots. 

 

Here are some activities that we have done in Spring 2

DT

In Design and Technology this half term, the Rowans' topic was Wheels and Axles. They investigated different toy vehicles made from different materials, discovering how the wheels and axles worked together to allow the vehicles to move. The Rowans then reused recyclable materials from home to design and build their own toy cars. They worked extremely hard and made some wonderful creations!

PE

In PE, the Rowans have been learning about Bat and Ball skills. They were very excited to learn the techniques for holding a cricket bat correctly, practising keeping their eye on the ball and safely bowling the ball towards the batter. 

Maths

In Maths this term, the Rowans have been learning to count up and down in their 2s, 5s and 10s. They did some fantastic teamwork, putting 2s, 5s and 10s on a number line. They then took it in turns to turn over random numbers along the line, and challenged their team to count up and spot which numbers were missing.

Science

In Science, the Rowans were exploring food chains. They created food chain mobiles as a fun way to see how living things are connected. They also went into the hall and used different coloured wool to show how food chains are interlinked - creating a giant food web! They were very surprised to see how many different food chains could be linked together. 

Mother's Day Cards

The Rowans enjoyed making their Mother's Day Cards. They used coloured card to carefully cut out stems and petals so that they could make their own bouquet to decorate the front of their cards.

Easter Egg Hunt

The Rowans had a great time finding the Easter Egg tickets that the Easter Bunny had hidden around the St Pauls Walden Primary School school grounds. They were rewarded for their super searching with an Easter Egg each! 

Here are some activities from Summer 1

Science

The Rowan's topic this half-term is Little Masterchefs. They will be learning about how different foods help us to be healthy and what they do for our minds and bodies, as well as health and safety when cooking. They started off this exciting topic by making their own vegetable pizzas. They did a fantastic job chopping their vegetables safely, and enjoyed tasting the raw vegetables, decorating their pizzas - and of course adding lots of cheese. They were fascinated by how much the taste and texture of the vegetables tasted once they were cooked. There was great debate over which was the tastiest vegetable! 

They have also enjoyed tasting fruits that are popular in the Caribbean - linking to our Caribbean poetry topic from last term.
They all tried kiwi, mango, passionfruit, mangosteen and dragonfruit. Everyone enjoyed most of the fruits - and they had great fun investigating how each fruit looked, felt, smelled and tasted.

Art

The Rowans have been looking at abstract sculptures this term. They discovered some of these sculptures by British artists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. They discussed the different shapes that they used in their sculptures, and what the sculptures could be representing.  They then carved, pinched and rolled their clay to shape and form their own version of Hepworth and Moore's sculptures.

Y1 Maths

The Year 1s in Rowans have been introduced to Money and Fractions. They have been using the Cuisenaire rods to help them add and subtract money and solve money word problems. They then used the Cuisenaire rods to learn how to split a whole into halves and quarters. 

 

 

The Coronation of King Charles III

The Rowans teamed up with the Silver Birches for a house competition to see which house could make the longest Union Jack paperchain in 15 minutes. Both teams managed to use over 100 links in their paperchains! Great teamwork everyone! 

 

 

Here are some activities from Summer 2

PE - Gymnastics

The Rowans have been working hard in gymnastics, perfecting their routines of a balanced pose, a jump, a roll and a final pose. They listened very carefully to the instructions on how to balance and jump safely, and everyone was confident to jump off of the final jump equipment. They all completed their solo routines, finishing with a variety of exciting poses. Well done, Rowans!