This was entirely child led. Before learning about frogs, Ioan wrote down some questions he wanted to investigate about frogs. He then made a tray to show what he had learnt.

Resources

  • Card
  • Pencil
  • Scissors
  • Toy frogs
  • Frog life cycle figurines
  • Circus scarves
  • Trees
  • Leaves
  • Flowers

Method

Ioan wrote labels and made arrows, for the stages of the life cycle. He set them out as he went along.

Once he’d set them out in a line, he made his final arrow. This was meant to go from the frog, back to the frogspawn. With them set out in a line, the arrow didn’t reach, so I left him to problem solve. A few minutes later, he called me excitedly to show me that he’d set them out in a circle.

Ioan decided to write his questions on flaps, so that when somebody read the question, they had time to think about it without seeing the answer. Then when they wanted to check the answer, they could they could lift the flap.

The first question Ioan had was, “How far can frogs jump?” He answered that in frog jumps.

He also wanted to know what the name was for a group of frogs (the collective noun).

Ioan knew that some colourful frogs were poisonous, but was unsure how they poisoned people. He wanted to find out whether they had a sting like a bee.

He was pretty sure we didn’t have any poisonous frogs in this country, but for reassurance, he wanted to find out for certain.

Finally, Ioan knew that frogs eat flies. He wanted to find out whether they eat anything else.

Ioan did his research, answered his questions, then proudly invited Finn to come and see his tray.

I love watching him play with his trays afterwards.

DfES Outcomes for EYFS and National Curriculum (2013)

Science Year 1 programme of study

Animals, including humans

  • identify and name a variety of common animals including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals
  • identify and name a variety of common animals that are carnivores, herbivores and omnivores

English Year 1 programme of study

Reading – word reading

  • apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words
  • read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words

Writing – composition

Write sentences by:

  • saying out loud what they are going to write about
  • composing a sentence orally before writing it
  • sequencing sentences to form short narratives
  • re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense

Writing – vocabulary, grammar and punctuation

  • leave spaces between words
  • join words and joining clauses using and
  • begin to punctuate sentences using a capital letter and a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark
  • use a capital letter for names of people, places, the days of the week, and the personal pronoun ‘I’