The Chronicle

Junior 6 have been studying Shakespeare’s, ‘The Tempest’ in Music and Drama over the last few weeks and we have had great fun learning about the story. From creating storms using items found outside, to acting out ‘the sinking ship,’ the children have been using their creative minds to embody the sounds and scenes of the storm. We have heard some lovely Italian accents, seen wonderful facial and vocal expression and enjoyed interesting raps created and performed by the children.

The pupils are really enjoying the lessons and look forward each week to the next chapter of the play.

Another super week of learning in Junior 5. All the pupils have been excited to learn about the stars and constellations and many are now using 'Stellarium' on their home devices. We have been sending photos and videos of our exciting observations, with Venus being the most popular!

The 'Aztec' topic has also been a real hit with this year group and they have produced some fabulous Art work and Head-dresses, which they really enjoyed creating! In Music lessons, we have been busy both in writing and performing our very own Raps. This activity facilitated great team work and who knows, we may have some budding future rappers in the making? This teamwork continued in PE, where the children played a great game called 'Caterpillar Cricket', which certainly enhanced fitness levels.

Who needs Kingswood when you’ve got Crackley Hall’s Forest School in our very own woods? The Junior 4 children had a cracking time enjoying the great outdoors on Thursday morning. The children built dens and fairy tree houses, ‘cheffed’ in the mud-kitchen and displayed their amazing creativity making clay people out of natural materials. It was wonderful to see the children bringing their history learning outside with them leading their own Viking and Roman confrontations and even Boudicca’s battle-cry was heard echoing through the woods! Outdoor living is never complete without hot chocolate and marshmallows which the children then sat down to enjoy, chuckling away to Michael Rosen’s poetry which Mrs Wildey took great pleasure in sharing with them. It was unanimously agreed that 'this was the best day ever!'

As part of an initiative called 'Postcards of Kindness', the Year 4 Kindness club have made postcards to send to a local Care Home. We are really hoping that these postcards make lots of people smile.

This week in Junior 3, we have been using place value counters to add and subtract with exchange. Everyone worked in pairs, discussing the method with each other, undertaking it practically and then displaying it in its written form. After learning about the various features of a calligram, we voyaged down to the computing suite to create and publish our very own. We had lots of fun using language features such as adjectives, adverbs, alliteration and similes, putting them all into the shape of our chosen animal! We have had such a fun first half-term in Junior 3 and cannot wait to get back after our well-earned break.

Junior 2 have been globetrotters this half term in Geography.

Our journey has taken us to all seven continents of the world where we have explored all the facts, including famous landmarks. In addition, we have also used our fact-finding skills to further research physical and human features. It has been very interesting to learn all the differences and similarities these continents have.

We have learned that a continent is a massive area of land that is separated from others by water or other natural features.

Did you know that the seven continents together cover one third of the world?  What an amazing fact!

What an incredibly busy week it has been in Junior 1 for our last week of half term! The children have embraced the story of Little Red Riding Hood with enormous enthusiasm and the two J1 classrooms have been buzzing with lots of energetic little writers. We have dressed up to retell the traditional tale, drawn a story map and written our own alternative endings. Some of the children decided on a very gruesome ending for the poor wolf, whilst others included new characters to make their story more interesting. The children also looked carefully at woodland pictures and listened to woodland sounds to imagine what it would be like to actually be walking through the wood. Finally, they used their different senses to create atmosphere when describing the story setting.

Junior 1 headed out Thursday morning with their clipboards ready and eyes alert, to complete a traffic survey as part of their Geography topic on the local area. Class Teacher and Assistant Head (Early Years and KS1), Mrs Glen-Roots, explained that the children were counting how many cars, vans, lorries, buses, bikes and motorbikes came past in a 10 minute period. Their keen eyes and eager faces show just how much they enjoyed spotting all the traffic that came past. The children enthusiastically filled in their tally charts before heading back inside to evaluate their findings.

As we move further into autumn, Reception have continued their exploration of the season and all that it brings. We started the week by reading ‘The Scarecrow’s Wedding’ which tells the story of Betty O’Barley and Harry O’Hay and their wonderful wedding on the farm. This led us on to investigating straw, scarecrows and weddings! The children thoroughly enjoyed creating life-size collages of Betty and Harry, in addition to designing wedding cakes and wedding dresses too. In Maths, we enjoyed lots of practical activities which helped us understand how to compare and sort objects – we even compared and sorted ourselves into hoops.

What a busy week we have had; we are certainly ready for a fantastic half-term break!