The Chronicle

This week, in Junior 6, we have adopted a cross curricular approach to our English lessons by linking them to our History theme. 

We have been learning about The Titanic in History, the ship itself, the passengers and the accommodation on board and this week we learned about the events that led to the actual disaster.  We researched these events and put together a timeline to tell the story, watched a 1950s movie adaptation of the disaster and then wrote diary extracts, imagining we had been on board and survived the tragic events of the Sunday 14 and Monday 15 April 1912. 

Such an interesting, yet horrific topic! 

Our Junior 5s have been introduced to an amazing Michael Morpurgo book, Kenzuke’s Kingdom, this week and are thoroughly enjoying finding out about the adventures of the main character, who gets washed up on a mysterious island. It’s so lovely to share a novel with the children and become fully immersed in it – and the great thing is, we have another two weeks to enjoy this amazing book!

In Maths, we have introduced division again, after spending time on multiplication. Well done to everyone for getting to grips with these concepts – you’ve got this!! 

Year 4 are developing their positive mindsets.

4B have been thinking about the power of the word 'yet'. We have to work every day to learn new things and keep trying even when it's hard. Being able to say we don't know how to do something, YET, is powerful. We can do it, if we keep trying.

4W are been thinking about the choices that they make and that they have the power to make the right choices like making a cake for their parents or recreating situations where it can be hard to make the right choice.

We are gearing up for Children's Mental Health Week next week where we will be exploring this year's theme of 'Express Yourself.' Get ready for another fun week Year 4! 

With a sprinkling of snow and some very chilly weather to start our third week of home-learning, Junior 3 have kept their brains and fingers warm getting fully involved in our history topic of Ancient Egypt.

We have conducted our own research into the different Gods and Goddesses, learned all about the gory process of mummification and enjoyed reading an Egyptian folktale called Egyptian Cinderella together.

In our Art lessons, we have continued to develop our drawing skills but have also tried our hand at making scarab beetles, Egyptian necklaces and even, mummified cats! We have become so accustomed to hieroglyphs, that we even had an Ancient Egyptian Maths lessons using their ancient number system. Have a look at some of the tricky problems that we wrote. 

The cold weather has done nothing to deter the Junior 2 children from working and playing hard this week. The snow, although it hasn’t stayed for long, linked beautifully with our ‘Instructions’ topic, as the children learned how to make Origami snowflakes online. We have also looked at snow poetry and winter recipes and the children have really created some super work.

Ms Holmes has been teaching ‘speech marks’ this week, to help with writing which is already fabulous – each time we add in a new punctuation or writing skill, the children work so hard to improve their work.

In Geography, Deforestation of the world’s rainforests has been a difficult topic to think about, but we are all now better informed as to how we need to protect our planet.

This week has seen Junior 1 using rulers in Maths to draw and measure straight lines in centimetres, a skill that is not easy to master! In Science we have been learning the names of animals and their babies. Some of these were obvious such as a duck and its duckling, but a swan and its cygnet was a revelation to some.

History and DT joined forces this week and Junior 1 were challenged to create their own penny spinners and to learn how to catch a ball in a cup, just like people did for fun in the past. PE and Drama also teamed up, with an unusual version of the story Alice in Wonderland. As the story went on, yoga moves were introduced for everyone to copy and hold, stretching muscles I’m sure no-one knew they had!!

Researching our feathery friends has been the theme in Reception this week.

Linking into the RSPB’s ‘Big Garden Birdwatch’ taking place between Friday 29 and Sunday 31 January, we have been busy investigating garden birds, making bird feeders, performing bird poetry, labelling bird pictures and we also even found time to don our binoculars to complete bird surveys in our gardens! Phew!

Not content with all of these great learning activities, we also explored the composition of the numbers 6, 7 and 8 and completed some terrific part whole models in Maths.

We’ve also been exercising our voices in Drama by re-enacting scenes from Little Red Riding Hood. In fact our wolf voices were so scary that Mrs Convey nearly fell off her chair several times!