The Chronicle

This week, in RE, Junior 6 have continued to think about the story of Doubting Thomas and how he did not believe in Jesus' resurrection until he actually saw it for himself.  Junior 6 debated whether it is possible to believe in something even if you have not seen it and whether it depends on who has told you it, your own knowledge of possibilities and the exaggeration factor that may be involved. 

We discussed whether one llama on the playground was more believable than one hundred and whether Mr. Duigan telling us about it was more believable than Annalise!  We then considered times and events in our own lives when we have believed things without seeing them and vice versa.

Junior 5 have had another great week of learning. In Science they have carefully labelled the various parts of a flowering plant and have identified both the male and female parts. They have also learnt how flowers reproduce through pollination and by seed dispersal.

There has been excitement in sports as some of our boys were selected to play Cricket against Bilton Grange School, and they impressively only lost by one run!  We are looking forward to all of our imminent sports fixtures.

In Geography, we are continuing to enhance our mapping skills and we were very excited when we used Google Earth to see where we live!

Junior 4 have continued to impress their teachers this week with their enthusiasm for the topics we are covering. In Mrs Widley’s English class they have been rehearsing persuading others to visit where they live in English. In Drama they are learning about Viking sagas so they have been visualising Viking lands of the gods and legendary characters like Odin, Freya and goblins! 

Coinciding with a change in weather this week, J4 are learning to talk about the weather in French.  Mrs Jackson-Mayne’s Maths group have begun the topic of data handling. This topic lends itself to talking and investigating maths. Pupils have been encouraged to discuss their data and consider the best ways to display it.  Mrs Burley’s Maths group are ensuring that they are secure with written methods of subtraction and in English they have been planning a letter from the viewpoint of the Big Bad Wolf who is complaining about Little Red Riding Hood and the damage that she is doing to the woods - we have had great fun! 

At the beginning of the week, all pupils shared their memories of the last year. It has been a privilege to read their personal observations and feelings over the last year. It is hoped that some of these will go into the Time Capsule which will be buried at the end of this academic year.

This week Junior 3 have continued to enjoy exploring the story of Daedalus and Icarus through lots of drama activities. We have also been practising a range of writing skills, such as using a wider range of conjunctions, time adverbials and ambitious vocabulary to add real sparkle to our sentences. We are now ready to begin drafting our own versions of this popular Greek myth and have been sharing lots of exciting ideas.

In our Art lessons, we are working on a collaborative project to create an enormous pair of wings (just like Daedalus and Icarus) inspired by the modern-day street artist, Kelsey Montague. Of course, with our wings, we will remember ‘not to fly too close to the sun!’

Junior 2 have been busy blowing Ms Holmes’ and Mrs Bhogal’s socks off with their measuring skills in Maths and finding out more about The Fire of Warwick, ready for their presentation by St Johns Museum. The Plague still reigns supreme, as the children wrote about the horrors of the Bubonic Pandemic in 1665! They have lived through a lockdown or two themselves so this has been really cool.

Mrs Burley has been helping the children to find out more about ‘coding’ using Daisy the Dinosaur in computing and in a delicious link with Science, Madame Tatton has been teaching the pupils how to say fruits and vegetables in French! The children have started their watering rota for our planters in the school grounds. Already the plants and seeds are growing and germinating. We look forward to seeing how tall our sunflowers and beans will grow with the lovely sunny weather and odd bursts of rain!

Junior 1 have been continuing with their geography theme of Capital cities in the UK and this week it was the turn of Edinburgh. Both classes were so excited to use the VR sets to look around Scotland’s capital and it was wonderful to hear their squeals of delight when it felt as though they were actually there! The children then went on to write a postcard to describe what they had seen.

In our History lessons, we have learnt about the Viking longboats and we have begun to make our own. As there is so much to do to make our boats authentic, we will be completing them next week. We have also been busy using lots of different resources in our Maths lessons, to explore the concept of arrays and doubles, and to be able to remember all of the associated number facts.

Mrs Armitage has continued to enthral us in our English lessons and this week everyone has written a story map, found the missing parts of the story and even written some speech bubbles to show what Mrs Armitage adds to her increasingly full bike! As ever, it has been a week of fun and learning in Junior 1.

It has been another busy and productive week in Reception as we have looked at the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar in greater depth. We learned some important new words, such as chrysalis and metamorphosis and have been getting regular updates on the caterpillars that one of our pupils has at home.

Much fun has been had in art as we have been enjoying painting caterpillars, butterflies and leaves with water on the path outside. You can imagine how excited we were when a Red Admiral butterfly flew by and then landed on some of us! We also noticed that when the sun came out the pictures faded away, and we learned that this is called evaporation.