Croeso i Dosbarth Draenog!
In Dosbarth Draenog our teacher is Mrs Steen.
Our teaching assistants are Mrs Wooding and Miss Jones.
We share our class information as well as lots of the things that our class have been learning about using Seesaw. Should you need a link to your child’s Seesaw account please contact the school office or speak to Mrs Steen when you collect your child.
A Year in Dosbarth Draenog…
Teaching and learning in our school changes each year according to the needs of the children in our classes however we would still like to give you an insight into what a year in Dosbarth Draenog looks like!
To help us to do this, we would like to share some of their adventures from last year….
We had a wonderful fun-filled start to the year in Nursery, getting to know each other and developing our skills across the curriculum through exciting, hands-on, multi-sensory, play based activities. We learnt lots of new songs and rhymes throughout the year. We enjoyed sharing numerous books whole class, in small groups and one-to-one with an adult. We enjoyed spending lots of time outdoors using the wheeled toys, mud kitchen, digging area and large loose parts. We enjoyed regular visits to our school hall where we learnt how to find a space, move in different ways and use a range of small equipment with increasing skill.
We started our year in September with the topic ‘Getting to Know You’ during which we focussed on building relationships with each other and becoming familiar with our indoor and outdoor environments. We all enjoyed exploring the ‘Dark Den’ with different sources of light during our topic on Night and Day and finding out about daytime and night-time animals. We had lots of fun dressing-up in night-time clothes and ‘reading’ each other stories in our bedroom role play area. We explored lots of Autumn artefacts and learnt about the traditions associated with Bonfire Night as part of this topic.
During December we enjoyed learning about some of the traditions associated with Christmas. We made and sent cards, decorated our Home Corner, played a part in our Nativity play, sang some traditional Christmas songs for our families and enjoyed a Christmas party.
When we returned to school in January we started our ‘Wonderful Winter’ topic, creating snowmen out of a range of materials, baking some delicious treats and making observational paintings of Winter trees. We also celebrated Chinese New Year by making lanterns, exploring Chinese artefacts and using chopsticks. We also looked at other celebrations at this time of year, including Dydd Santes Dwynwen, Valentine’s Day, Saint David’s’ Day and Mother’s Day. We made cards and gifts and recorded a special message for our mums. We celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as book characters and sharing our favourite books. Towards the end of the Spring Term we started to think about all the baby animals being born on farms at this time of year and learnt their names. We ended the Spring Term with an Easter egg hunt in Forest School.
After Easter, we came back to school and had a think about how we are unique. We read the story Elmer and we imagined how we would feel if we were Elmer. When we started to have a class discussion, we realised that we are actually all very unique. We had lots of fun up in forest school making elephant masks and showed off our digital literacy skills by making our very own patchwork elephant on the interactive whiteboard.
We then started to think about how we had grown and changed since we were babies. We had fun looking at photos of our friends as babies. We celebrated the King’s Coronation and took part in a ‘Royal Run’ to raise money for Nightingale House Hospice. We made hearts that we hung up in the local community to bring a smile to those in the local community.
As the weather became warmer we planted sunflower seeds. This sparked a great interest into how sunflowers grow. We learnt what is needed to grow plants, the life cycle of a sunflower and we have been busy looking after our own sunflowers to make sure they have everything they need to grow.
During the last half term, we made cards for Father’s Day, took part in Sport’s Day and spent time in the Reception classroom. We enjoyed learning all about butterflies and we had fun on our school trip at Xplore!.
Finally, we have spent a lot of time developing our understanding and use of the Welsh language and culture. We all enjoyed being ‘Helpwr Heddiw’ and learning Welsh with Fflic a Fflac. We participated in daily ‘Helpwr Heddiw’ sessions during which we learnt a range of Welsh words, phrases, songs and rhymes. We had lots of opportunities to develop our understanding of Welsh culture; including coming to school in Welsh themed clothing to celebrate St. David’s Day and taking part in whole school Eisteddfod craft competitions.