The Chronicle

Junior 6 are having enormous fun in DT making Marble Runs at the moment in the form of a wooden maze. They have spent time planning out their designs carefully using paper strips, meticulously measuring exactly how their work will look when completed in wood.

The pupils have learned to measure accurately, saw and secure their designs and are well on their way to becoming Games Masters of the Future.

Our J5s have been thinking about others this week.

All the children have made a personal pledge detailing what they will be doing to make the world a better place: picking up rubbish; not wasting food; donating food to food banks, etc, were some of the fantastic ideas they came up with.

In Sports, we have been hard at work improving our skills on the sports fields with massive improvements already noticeable. 

Finally, three of our J5s were awarded Bronze certificates in the annual Primary Maths Challenge – well done to all who entered.

Junior 4 have been so excited learning about electricity in Science recently. The children predicted and then tested complete and incomplete circuits using batteries, bulbs and crocodile clips. We also made human circuits in the playground in teams to see who could make the most creative complete and incomplete circuits.

The children then moved on to experiment further with the equipment to find out more about different types of complete circuits. Every time a bulb lit up and a buzzer buzzed, the children were amazed by how they had made it work.

You could say that the atmosphere was electric in J4W this week!

Bold use of colour, striking geometric shapes, clearly defined lines and a huge ripple of excitement has run through the Junior 3 classes this week, as we have continued our study of the world-famous Brazilian pop artist – Romero Britto.

Both Year 3 classes have loved finding out about the early life of Romero and what inspired him and motivated him to persevere to become such an acclaimed artist. We have explored the features of his art before setting about creating our own vibrant and joyful self-portraits. One student was so inspired that he contacted Romero all the way over in Miami and Romero replied with a video message. Imagine everyone’s delight at receiving such a wonderful surprise.

Thank you, Romero and Fraser, for lighting up our week. 

You can watch Romero's video message to Fraser here. 

In J2 this week we have become intrepid fossil-hunters as we researched fun facts about Mary Anning, a famous fossil hunter from the 18th Century. Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, a beautiful coastal town on the south coast of England. This is an area where lots of incredible fossils have been found.

Mary found and identified many pre-historic fossils from the time of the dinosaurs which she and her family sold to make money. At this time Mary shared her specimens and impressive knowledge about them to scientists who were very impressed. Using soft clay, we moulded and made our own fossils in the classroom.

We are waiting for these to now dry before they are painted. We hope you like them!

This week Junior 1 have been busy learning all about trees in Science. They have found out that trees which lose their leaves are Deciduous trees and trees that keep their leaves are Evergreen trees. They found lots of examples whilst out in Forest school and in their own gardens!

In Art we have been looking at the artist Paul Klee. Last week saw us completing some wonderful oil pastel pictures inspired by his ‘Castle and Sun’ piece of art work. This week the focus was on ‘Cat and Bird’. After carefully drawing the cat and bird in pencil, they used watercolours to paint each part a bright colour, making them all different and unique.

I’m sure you will agree they make a wonderful display!

It has been another jam-packed week in Reception!

Linking to our topic of ‘In the Dark’, we have been busy exploring our Dark Den, using UV lighting, glow in the dark tape, torches and projector torches. The addition of a small disco light has really helped us to understand that there are lots of different types of lights we can use in the dark.

Our theme continued as we read ‘Funnybones’ and noticed the repeating phrase of ‘dark, dark’. Great fun was then had by writing labels for our skeleton model – who knew there were so many bones in the human body?! We have also been busy comparing one more and one less in maths, in addition to role-playing the story of Jesus being lost in the temple in our RE lesson.

As you can see from our photos, there’s never a dull moment in Reception!