The Chronicle

This week in Junior 6 we have started to learn about William Shakespeare. 

We briefly looked at his personal history, when and where he was born and how he built his own theatre in London. We discovered that you can even get soil from his birthplace!  We then moved on to look at Romeo and Juliet, one of his tragedies, continuing the theme, which we started when looking at The Highwayman.  We focused on the prologue to the play, tried to understand the language he used and thought about the rhythm and rhyme of the sonnet.  We then looked at the rivalry between the Montagues and the Capulets and how they might have insulted each other back then in Verona.

The J5's have returned to home learning, after half term, with vigour. 

After creating and describing their own Islands, they have enthusiastically written their own shipwreck stories, based on our class novel, Kensuke's Kingdom. These stories reflect their increasing ability to: describe (using a range of adjectives, alliteration and examples of figurative language); create tension;  resolve a problem; and finally to compose a detailed ending, whilst gripping the reader. Superb! We have a range of budding authors in our midst, J5!

We also had a fancy dress Friday - well done everyone!

Junior 4 have been very busy delving even deeper into the historical world of the Anglo-Saxons by reading the epic ancient poem, Beowolf. The children have been introduced to English folklore's world of wonderful monsters, heroes, warriors, kings and dragons through this study and are thoroughly enjoying it, to the point that many of the children have bought a copy of the book themselves!

In English and Drama lessons, the children have been studying the colourful characters of the poem through hot seating, drawing, observing, visualising, acting and writing. The gloomy swamp of Grendal's lair has been contrasted with the indoor splendour of Hrothgar's Great Hall and we have been holding out for the hero himself; Beowolf.

Next week the children will explore heroism more and find out about what makes Beowolf a true hero. 

Mrs Jackson-Mayne's English group have been focusing on improving sentences by with expanded noun phrases and 'wow' words. They have used an online thesaurus to find synonyms to widen their vocabulary and improve their description.

How loud is your ROAR?! Inspired by French artist, Henri Rousseau, Junior 3 have been producing some ROARsome pictures of tigers, this week.

This fearsome task was just what they needed, after sharing all of their exciting activities that they did during their half term break.

In English, the children have been exploring non-fiction, practising the difference between fact and opinion, as well as creating their own animal – unfortunately, we didn’t have any Duigottrills!

Exploration of the British coastline was on the menu for Geography, spotting features that we see when the land meets the sea. Well done, Junior 3 – you are all doing so well.

Half term came and went so quickly but we are now back and ready to learn.

This week we return to our History topic (it has a rest every half term!) We are going to find out all about Motte and Bailey castles, something that remains very close to Ms Holmes heart as she has always wanted to live in one! 2D and 3D shapes have arrived in Maths as we investigate all things flat and three dimensional and in English we are thinking about the tapestry of life as we find out about different members of our family – where they were born, how they came to be living here and what things they have done in their lives. Pupils have interviewed these family members and found out lots of exciting stuff, which they didn’t previously know!

Watch this space for brilliant fact finding.

Our Planet by Harrison 

Junior 1 have certainly hit the ground running since returning from half term! They have tackled some very challenging maths problems by using their knowledge of number bonds to ten to solve calculations to twenty, as well as comparing different additions to find out how they can be the same.

Their English has seen them learning all about what makes a superhero and then contrasting this with villains. They even found some real life superheroes in their own families! Geography has been a highlight of the week with the children recording their own weather forecasts using the map of the UK, weather symbols and even some props. Everyone had to remember all four countries within the UK as well as what the different weather may be. Mrs Glen-Roots and Mrs Hardwick were ‘blown away’ by how professional they all were!

Our Science and History lessons have been equally enjoyable with the children learning about mammals and the history of crayons, and there has been some fabulous work submitted to Seesaw.

Well done Junior 1, just one more week of home learning to go!

People who help us has been this week’s theme in Reception. We have enjoyed finding out about occupations such as Fire Fighters, Police Officers, Doctors and Nurses and have even made our own stethoscopes! Drawing and labelling pictures of people who help us, together with writing fantastic facts about their occupations, continues to help us perfect both our letter formation and presentation too.

Maths has seen us exploring the numbers 9 and 10 and we had great fun representing, sorting, and ordering these numerals – we even had a game of Bingo too! Our French skills continue to grow as we learned how to tell someone where we live; whilst in RE we began to learn about the season of Lent.

What a busy week we have had!