The Chronicle

During Mandarin this term, children have learnt to say what siblings they have, or haven’t, as well as how to introduce themselves, including different greetings, their name, age and zodiac animal sign.  Next, they mastered how to ask questions to find information out about other people, ready to work on and perform a role play conversation in pairs or as a group. The children have really enjoyed learning about the different zodiac animals and finding out which animal relates to the year of their birth; they have even practised certain actions to help them remember!

Junior 5 have had a fabulous week of learning and enjoying sport. In Art, the J5’s have been finishing off their string art. They’ve created some wonderful constructions and have shown both skill and patience in their approach. In PE, the J5 Rounders ‘A’ Team played away against Bilton Grange. They lost their first game 11 v 3, but fought hard and played skilfully to win their second match 10 v 7. The girls played wonderfully as a team and Olivia captained the team well. In the team were; Isabella, Grace, Olivia (Captain), Elsie G, Amelia, Jasmine, Issey, Penny, Lily and Elle. The Players of the Matches, awarded by the opposition were Olivia, Elle, Amelia and Jasmine.

During this half-term Year 4 have been looking at Indian patterns, (like paisley) associated with Mendhi (henna) hands decoration, traditional Indian art and the modern artist, Nabakishore Chanda.  They used their knowledge of Indian patterns to create a traditional decorated elephant using scratchwork. Inspired by Nabakishore’s work, they based their designs on the cubism topic which they have already studied, layering this with their scratch technique, together with their pattern work, to create their final piece.

During History lessons, pupils in J4W have used secondary sources to research the types of clothes the Vikings wore. They used this research to decorate their own paper figure to show what was worn by either Thralls (slaves) or Yarls and Karls  ( the rich and poor). Several of the pupils were awarded Creative Da Vinci’s for their efforts.

We hope you all have a fabulous half-term enjoying the sunshine!

Junior 3 have been very industrious this week, putting their journalistic skills to the test by interviewing witnesses to. ‘The Devastating Demise of Icarus’. We have since been busy drafting and publishing our own newspaper reports, which we are hoping will be ‘hot off the press’ early next half term.

In Maths we have been navigating our way around some tricky time concepts, days, weeks, months and even leap years. We are all now much more proficient in reading a calendar and have put this skill to great use calculating how much summer holiday we are going to have. Now all we need is some sunshine to go with it! 

With Samuel Pepys, Sir Christopher Wren and Katy Morag all featured in Junior 2 this week, we have been busy learning about the different characters and roles in 17th Century England, and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, where pupils have plotted maps and created their own beautiful little island homes.

Maths has seen a ‘Capacity and Volume’ topic, finished off with a practical session in the art room, where water was carefully measured and poured - hardly any on the floors and desks! The children challenged each other to measure accurately in litres and millilitres using a variety of containers.

We have taken possession of a Venus Fly Trap which is causing much hilarity and careful monitoring in the classroom as part of our plants topic. We are also keeping a close eye on our Fruit and Vegetable planters, which are growing beautifully despite the lack of sunshine.

Happy half term everyone!

What a wonderfully busy and fulfilling half term we have had! The children are all growing up so fast, both in height and maturity and they are well on their way to being ready for Junior 2. It was interesting to find out what makes each one of us unique during our PSHE lessons this week and the children loved finding out how they are the same or different. We especially had lots of fun when we shared what made each one of us laugh!

This week, we have been focusing on consolidating the skills we have learnt in our English and phonics lessons by revising all of our digraphs and common exception words, as well as practising our ‘magic e’ words. In Maths, we have started to learn how to tell the time, which has resulted in a new interest in the classroom clock. The children have all been so keen to look at what time we stop for lunch, start new lessons or go home and it has been wonderful to see their enthusiasm and excitement for a new mathematical concept.

We have also begun a new topic in Science, which we will continue after half term. Our new theme of ‘Plants and Growth’ began with us cutting open different fruit to examine the seeds inside. The lesson then ended with the children planting their own sunflower seed to take home to nurture over half term. We are hoping everyone remembers to put their pot in a sunny place and water it regularly, so that all of those tiny seeds emerge from the soil as green shoots.

We hope everyone in Junior 1 has a fantastic half term break and we look forward to seeing you again for your final half term in Junior 1.

What a productive week we have had in Reception. We started off by exploring spatial reasoning using tangram shapes in our maths lessons. Extending our maths vocabulary further, we discovered that two right-angled triangles not only make a parallelogram but a larger triangle too! Great fun was also had as we challenged ourselves to recreate a variety of shape pictures.

Happily, our cress seeds have grown steadily and we will be bringing them home today ready to eat over half term (Mrs Convey has recommended egg and cress sandwiches!). With warmer weather next week, we can’t wait to have a great half-term holiday!