The Chronicle

This week in Junior 6, the children have been working extremely hard to conquer division.  They have had to use their knowledge of division facts to maintain accuracy in their calculations and use their problem-solving skills to work out the cost of various items. 

In RE, we have looked at the story of Cain and Abel and considered the emotional themes contained within it.  We have thought about when we may have felt jealous or unhappy with others and most importantly, what we can do to establish harmony in our relationships.

In Computing, we have been learning about Internet Safety through completing missions, earning badges and playing games on Carnegie Cadets.

In our history lessons this term, we are learning about the Aztecs. So far, we have discovered that they were originally nomads and, because of a vision that their leader (Tenoch) had, they settled on Lake Texcoco and built their famous city, Tenochtitlan. They were fierce warriors who believed that if they made sacrifices to their gods, they would have a happier life. We have also learnt that chinampas are floating pieces of land created to grow crops on – they were created because the city was built upon the lake and they didn’t have much land to build on, so they created the chinampas to grow their vegetables and fruit. This week we began designing and creating some Aztec art (mainly mosaics). Take a look in the gallery for some amazing examples of our work.

Year 4 have been writing explanation texts. In Mrs Burley's English class, Dragon’s Den came to visit and we all had to brave presenting our ideas for a ‘Teacher Pleaser’ machine to all of the Dragons. They were very kind and they would invest in all of our ideas. They were particularly impressed with the machine that always made sure there were fresh flowers in the classroom, a magic marking pen and a portal to well-known stationery shops, just to name a few design ideas. Our task now is to plan how to write up our explanations using lots of causal connectives, time conjunctions and all of the other features you would find in an explanation text. 

Year 4 have also been rapping way before Christmas this week! During RE with they enjoyed studying the Pope’s letter on looking after our world and linking this with His message. They unanimously wanted to be the generation to make a change to keep God’s world beautiful and expressed this through a rap, using a rap song as their inspirational backing track! With microphones at the ready, they sang out their views with mighty voices, from pollution in our oceans to protecting everything God has given to us. Yo J4W – that’s what we call a rap!

This week in Junior 3 we have been busy weaving some creative magic in the form of acrostic poetry. After studying some effective language features, such as alliteration, onomatopoeia and similes, we set about listening to and watching firework displays on the interactive whiteboard. We thought about all the sounds and sights and smells that surround us on firework night and then used these to create all the phrases for our acrostic poems. I’m sure you will agree they are ‘booming’ fantastic!

We also added the finishing touches to our Stonehenge pictures by adding a wash of grassy green and a sky of brilliant blue.

Junior 2 have been incredibly busy this week building up sequencing and storytelling skills. We have focused on the Six Dinner Sid series by Inga Moore, a firm favourite with the children, as they discover why it is that Sid, a huge black cat, likes to make sure he eats six dinners every day.

We used a Pie Corbett technique to help with sequencing the story and we acted out a simplified version of the text before beginning our first story using our own words.

“Come on Sid……don’t let your owners get away with giving you only one dinner a day!”

This week Junior 1 have been investigating things form the past. After taking a trip back in time to a Victorian kitchen with Magic Grandad we had to sort and match the old things with the new.

We have also shown how kind and thoughtful we are this week with the focus in our prayers towards the weak and the vulnerable. Lots of us brought in donations for the Food Bank, which Mrs Jackson-Mayne will be delivering to those in need this weekend.

We wrote about this in our RE books too.

This week has seen Reception investigating the season of autumn. We used magnifying glasses to examine pine cones, acorns and different types of squashes – what a wonderful selection of colours and patterns they have! Lots of emergent writing has been taking place, both in our autumn area and also our Crackley Café role play. The children have been busy making signs, menus and labels advertising delicious cakes, milkshakes and sandwiches, tempting Mrs Green and Mrs Convey on a daily basis.

Our small world area has been taken over by jungle animals and the children have enjoyed devising exciting adventures and stories as they play with them - luckily, no animals have escaped yet!  

And we really enjoyed our time outside in the woods in Forest School.