The Chronicle

Over the last few weeks in Art we have been researching all about the artist Matisse.  We have learned about the way French ‘Fauvist’ Henri Matisse found that getting older and losing his ability to walk and see well, impacted on his painting and drawing.  So instead of painting, he began to cut paper from his wheelchair. We have been studying his later works to see how Matisse didn’t lose favour with the public, but became even more popular with bold colour and strong shapes. We have been trying to cut shapes without using pencil lines to follow and we have created some fabulous work.

This term, our J5 scientists have been immersing themselves in everything SPACE related!! They have ‘become’ miniature planets, whilst measuring out the distance of each planet from the sun on a scaled down version. They have ‘become’ the Earth and sun when demonstrating how the Earth spins on its own axis, while rotating around the sun. One of their highlights was when we joined the UK Space Academy for a live session about how we use satellites – they were amazed to learn how many uses we have for satellites and how much space junk there is floating around our planet!

As we approach October half-term, all of the children have continued to work incredibly hard. In Science, we could hear the twangs, thwacks and taps of their homemade instruments, as the children continued their love for learning about sound. ‘Disrespectful’, ‘Remorseless’, ‘Evil’, ‘Cruel’, ‘Domineering’ and ‘Villainous,’ were just some of the wonderfully ambitious words that the children thought of to describe (not their behaviour!) but the Overseer, in the book, Cloud Tea Monkeys. Each and every one of the children should be immensely proud of their start to Junior 4 and they thoroughly deserve a restful and adventurous half-term break. Well done, Junior 4! 

Junior 3 have had an incredibly busy week and everyone has risen to the challenge of writing their first full story about the Stone Age, using the work we have spent the past few weeks on, coming together in creative and exciting ways. Ms Holmes and Mrs van Zyl have been amazed at the standard and look forward to seeing the pupils progress even further next term. Some budding authors we think! Our second week of celebrating Black History Month, has seen the children looking at, and discussing, the colourful work of Sarah Shiundu, whose paintings of the Masaai women at everyday tasks has inspired them to try their hands at sponge painting landscapes and Brusho techniques, and creating the wonderful tall thin shapes of the Masaai women at work and play.

We were absolutely delighted to spend our last afternoon in Forest School before our half-term break; please look at the photos in the separate article in the Chronicle. In Maths we have been practising our number bonds to 100, as well as working out how to add two numbers together by adding to ten first. The classrooms have been alive with children experimenting in different ways, using the tens counters, Base Ten equipment and Numicon resources. It has been wonderful to see the pupils’ confidence grow as they try to work out different Maths problems, especially when working in pairs. Our materials topic for Science has culminated in the children designing and making their own materials monsters which we were pleased to see were all very unique. The children had to look very closely at the design they had made, to see if they could replicate it. Needless to say, we are sure the J2 monsters had a life of their own! This week in our English lessons, we have been planning our own fairy tales, with a particular focus on the beginning, middle and end of the story. The children have been working hard to remember their full stops, capital letters and sentence openers. What an amazing week and a fantastic half-term it has been in Junior 2! We hope you all have a wonderful half-term and we look forward to seeing you in November.

Junior 1 were out and about this week completing a traffic survey in their Geography lesson to see what type of vehicles travel along the Coventry Road while we are busy working in our classes. We had to be quick to record the number of each type of vehicle as they were very quick! In Science we made some listening ears to help us as we went on a listening walk around school. When we were quiet, we could hear lots of different noises from people typing on their computers, singing, footsteps and even a clock ticking. We also continued to look at Alma Thomas in Art and created another piece of artwork inspired by her, this time using colourful mosaic pieces of paper. It’s going up on display soon for everyone in school to see.

We’ve had a super final week of the half term in Reception! We have been busy writing and finding 1, 2 and 3 in Maths and we had lots of fun finding out about hedgehogs to continue with our ‘Wonderful Woodland’ topic. We also had a very special visitor who brought in some real-life owls for us to meet! For Black History Month we learnt about Usain Bolt and watched him win his races before we created our own victory poses. A fantastic first half-term for both classes. Well done, Reception!