The Chronicle

In French this week the children have been learning how to give opinions on different sports in French. The children interviewed each other to find out which sports they liked and didn’t like. They correctly guessed that the most popular sport in France was ‘le foot’! They discovered that handball is a popular game in French schools and Basque Pelota, which is played in the Basque country is one of the fastest sports in the world.  Allez Junior 6!

During music in J5W this week, we explored two of the famous songs from Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story. Setting the scene, we were treated to a rendition of the yearning ballad, Somewhere, sung beautifully by one of Crackley’s singing teachers, Shoshanna Stokes.  This was followed by pupils looking at how energy was created in the catchy and striking Mambo! The agitation felt between the rival gangs was explored by using syncopation across a wide range of percussion instruments, culminating in a lively Latin American dance routine fit for any musical theatre show!

This week, Junior 4 have excelled with their improving knowledge of Anglo-Saxons and it was an absolute delight seeing them design and draw accurate Anglo-Saxon villages. Science was all about chocolate on Monday and the children had loads of fun, conducting an extremely important investigation! On Friday, the children dressed up in their maths themed outfits and enthusiastically took part in Number Day – Waggles the Dog was proud! J4S had a maths relay, eagerly trying to find as many mathematical pairs as they could. Well done Junior 4, for another magnificent week. 

This week Junior 3 have been thinking about nappies and money! Our Maths topic for the next couple of weeks is thinking about the cost of everyday items, which notes and coins we might use when paying for them and how we can begin to think about giving change. The children enjoyed working out their answers using our replica money and have been problem-solving their way through a weekly shop. In English, our focus is on ’Kenning’ poems….ask the children and see if they can remember how to write one!  We are really enjoying our science topic ‘The Nappy Challenge’ and have been planning and conducting some super investigations; including which nappy is the most absorbent and which ones are the most-stretchy. We all know how to plan a fair test and we spent a long time discussing the variables that might affect our investigations. We can confidently conclude that ‘Pampers’ are the most absorbent nappy that we tested, ten times more absorbent than ‘Huggies Swimmers’! This led on to an interesting conversation about why you wouldn’t want a swim nappy to absorb water.

Firstly, a big thank you to the parents for sending in such an amazing range of breads from around the world. We had great fun smelling, tasting and discussing where they came from and why they were so different. Maths and Science went hand in hand this week and we transferred information about our favourite breads into tally charts and pictograms. We also had fun learning more about Chinese culture and their special Chinese New Year celebrations. We re-enacted the story of the Chinese Zodiac – it was tricky remembering the order that the animals crossed the river! Number Day saw us link Maths, Art and our topic on China! The children drew a symmetrical image of a tiger using pastels which were very impressive.  We also drew Jonny from Sing in drawing club!

Science this week saw us looking at the dangers of cold weather. We all designed a ‘Danger’ sign using the warning colours of red, yellow and black, just like the colours that animals in nature use. We then looked at how snowflakes are made and learnt that every snowflake is different. Using paper and scissors we all had a go at creating our own snowflakes and displayed them on our classroom window. In English, while continuing to look at Mrs Armitage on Wheels, we looked at some onomatopoeia words that helped bring the story to life. We then used them and our own ideas to add more detail to the story. We finished the week with Number Day and had lots of fun playing number games and dressing up as numbers or wearing numbers.

This week Reception have been learning all about Chinese New Year! We have been reading the Chinese zodiac story about the animal race and writing about the animals. We have also been using the VR Headsets to look at how people in China celebrate the New Year and we have made lots of crafts including Chinese dragons and lanterns.