The Chronicle

Junior 6V

All of the J6 pupils are so excited to get back to winter sports at Crackley Hall. In the Winter term the boys play rugby and football, the girls play hockey and netball. During football this week, we trained by doing different drills to practise our skills, and in Hockey we also practised skills and played fun matches against each other. For after school club we can choose a different sport each week. The girls and boys both chose football this week and are looking forward to trying rugby or hockey next week. We are so excited to be back playing Winter sports again...and especially looking forward to getting muddy!

Junior 5R

The J5’s returned enthusiastic and ready to learn after their half term break and have enjoyed a super week.

A sudden downpour of rain didn’t dampen our spirits during J5/6 PE and we all enjoyed the array of sports Mrs Vaughan planned for us: Hockey, Netball, Football and Rugby.

Our exciting new topic in Science is 'Forces' and we had fun estimating and measuring various classroom objects with Newton meters.

Creating Superheroes has been a real hit too as we delved into writing lively comic strips and detailed fact files.

Hattie was so inspired by our 'Earth, Sun and Moon' topic, that she googled famous female Scientists/Astronomers and discovered Dr Maggie and has since penned a letter to the Scientist herself!  We were impressed and are all eagerly awaiting her response.

Junior 4B

Year 4 are starting to write their own stories based around their own Super Gran or Super Grandad.

For all of those that remember, this is based upon the much-loved series 'Super Gran' - you can refresh your memory here.  We have had great fun creating our own characters before we go on to think about what special gifts our character has and how she will use them for the greater good. This all ties into our Vocations Fortnight where we are also thinking about our own special gifts, calling from God and contributions to the world. Here are a few of our designs for our characters. 

Junior 3S

This week in Junior 3S, we have been learning the anatomical names for bones in the human body. Assisted by Roy, Crackley Hall’s resident skeleton, the children have been exploring the function of bones, learning how they develop and the important jobs they do for us. Having heard a rumour that woolly mammoths are making a comeback, we have been preparing by learning how to wash this huge beast. The children have been practising being a ‘bossy boots’, improving their understanding of imperative verbs, ready to write instructions for 'How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth'. We are delighted to be back at school and are all excited for the next few weeks.

We, in Junior 2, are fast becoming Maths Magicians! Having worked so hard during the first part of half-term, we have come back fighting-fit using what we have learned to help us solve tricky maths challenges. Maths word problems can be problematic because not only do you have to be sure to read the question correctly, you must make sure the accurate operation is used in order to solve the problem. We started using concrete resources but as we became confident, we stretched ourselves by working out the problems without them! We are so smart that we even explored two-step questions. Ms Holmes and Mrs Bhogal are very proud of us!

Junior 1GR

What a busy week it has been in J1; we really can’t believe that we have only been back a week! Our English work has focussed on writing captions and lists, which has resulted in such enthusiastic writers in class.

We have read and retold Pat Hutchins’ story ‘Don’t forget the Bacon’ as a link to our English aim, which the children found enormous fun. They have sequenced the story, written their own shopping lists, labelled the pictures from the story and matched the new items to what was on mum’s original shopping list. There was great hilarity when the little boy remembered six farm eggs as six fat legs and nobody could believe that he even forgot to buy the bacon!

In maths, we have been learning about fact families and also how to count backwards by counting aloud as well as using a number line. We learnt how ‘counting back’ can be used for subtraction and we investigated how addition and subtraction problems can be related to each other, to form a fact family.

Of course, we have also celebrated bonfire night which is such an important time of the year for our youngest members of school. We have listened to fireworks music whilst working, coloured fireworks pictures and made our own sparkly rockets.

After a super half-term break, Reception returned to school full of beans, raring to go this week. With the nights’ drawing in and winter approaching, we have started to investigate both hibernation and nocturnal animals. We have been busy writing, researching and recording hedgehog facts in addition to reading stories about hedgehogs. Using our knowledge of hedgehogs, we each made our own hedgehog in clay. It was great fun using scissors to create the spikes and of course, googly eyes are obligatory! Mrs Convey and Mrs Green have been amazed by both our creativity and our impressive knowledge of nocturnal animals – why not see how many you can name?