Upper Transition - current activies

Building a Community. Houses & Homes. Poetry: ‘Expressive writing’.	‘Our helping Hands quilt is a pictorial display of our family in our favourite room in our home.
In the first half of this term we have focussed on building a positive learning environment. We have thoroughly enjoyed all of our activities. One of our favourites was ‘Frog on the Lily Pad’. This game made us work co-operatively to move the frog (green balloon) from lily pad to lily pad. We learnt that working together made the activity a lot easier and more fun. We have also been very busy making a giant quilt pattern, which has drawings of our families, in our favourite room of our home. We glued on each patch and placed hand prints around the outside of our quilt. The hand prints are to symbolise our class unity and ability to give each other a helping hand. We have also started our Science based topic of ‘Houses and Homes. We have used the well-known fairytale ‘The Three Little Pigs’ as a starting point and have had a marvellous trip to the Geffrye Museum. It was very interesting comparing the Victorian living room with our own living room. Over the next weeks we are going to be investigating different materials to build and share miniature homes.

	The Magic of Poetry ‘We have written poems using a magical person and through this magical person, magical events occur.’ Our writing sessions have begun with great success. On top of our recounts and diary writing we have embraced expressive writing as well. We have been listening to poetry daily and, in the last few weeks, been writing our very own poems. We have written poems using a magical person and through this magical person magical events occur. We have been looking at the functionality of poetry and learning about the uses of rhythm and alliteration. We have also identified the different uses of text styles and punctuation in poetry and discussing how it is very different from transactional or formal writing. This is an example of our poetry ‘The Magic Boy’ The Magic Boy took his magic stick. He gave it a whack, and he gave it a twist, The Magic Boy said a magic word and… The Magic Boy had a big orange octopus! The Magic Boy took his magic stick. He gave it a whack, and he gave it a twist. He tapped his head and he tapped his leg, and … The Happy Magic Boy had a, magic octopus head. by a child in Upper Transition