The Chronicle

We have enjoyed another busy week in Junior 6 this week and we have had particular fun learning about what school was like in Victorian times.  We researched what the classrooms were like in the late 1800s, what subjects pupils studied back then, what the punishments were like for poor behaviour and what equipment children would have used.  We decided that we are quite happy being at Crackley Hall today in our colourful classrooms with the range of subjects that we do, and we definitely don't want the Victorian punishments!

As part of our cross-curricular topic, in Art this week J5 were looking at Aztec art.  The Aztecs had some incredible ways of creating the vibrant colours they used to dye their clothes.  They also used pigments for paintings, murals and to cover sculptures. Every colour was valuable for the Aztecs, but there were ten or so that had a special meaning. The most important and certainly the most prevalent in terms of surviving artefacts was blue-turquoise. The pupils have started to design an Aztec brooch or Aztec headdress using free drawing and including as much detail as possible.  In the coming weeks they will be learning how to papercraft using scissors and coloured paper to create their designs. We have also been busy creating the PTA Christmas cards - they look fabulous - look out for the sample card which will be arriving in the next few weeks!

There’s been lots of excitement in J4 this week, as our pupils have started to make and test out string telephones. This ties in with our topic of 'Sound'. We wanted to investigate how sound waves/vibrations travel not only through the air but through materials. In pairs, Junior 4 excitedly made their phones and then went outside and tested them. They took it in turns to place their mouths tightly into their cups, to create a vacuum, and sent messages to each other. They were really impressed to learn that the sound waves/vibrations did travel along the string and into each other’s ears. The string needed to be pulled fairly tight and not touched to create maximum clarity. Super Junior 4 Scientists!

Junior 3 have been getting to grips this week with their reading practice. Lots of chapter books are flying off the shelves from The Boy who Grew Dragons to The Worst Witch Saves the Day! It’s so wonderful watching the children progress and flourish, loving reading and embracing life in Junior 3. We have also introduced pupils to Verbal Reasoning, taking things very slowly at first to ensure all the skills are taught carefully. Verbal Reasoning – or VR as we call it, is a fabulous way of helping children to use logic and thinking skills, playing with letters and words.

This week in Art, the children are beginning their work on Stonehenge….finding out about why it may be there, what it may have been used for and, more importantly, how the stones were brought to the site. The children will use their sketchbooks to find out how to make simple drawings into more detailed and colourful work. A happy Autumn Equinox everyone!

This week, Mrs Jackson Mayne spoke about friendship in our Monday assembly and we all loved singing We get by with a little help from our Friends whilst standing in the sunshine in the playground. Junior 2 have been reflecting on the concept of friendship in class. We have talked about what makes a good friend and how we can help each other. Everyone joined their own paper loop onto a friendship chain to display in class, to show how we can all work together. In Thursday’s assembly we talked about how everyone is special to God and how He is looking for the small things we can do for each other. Junior 2 agreed that kindness can be more difficult if it is someone you aren’t friends with, so we reflected on what we could all do to show kindness to people we don’t know. Everyone agreed that a smile and a thank you would be a wonderful way to make someone’s day! We are now looking forward to sharing our kindness with others.

Another jammed packed week in Junior 1 this week started with using our sense of taste in Science to try different food to see which ones we liked and which we didn’t. We then had to decide if each food was sour, bitter, salty or sweet. Unsurprisingly, the favourites all come from the sweet group! In Geography we went for a walk around our local area, looking for some landmarks to help us recognise where we were. It was a lot of fun to be out in the sunshine and then put the features we saw in the right places on a map of the area. We have also begun to look at the story of the Three Little Pigs in more detail this week – learning the story and adding actions to it and sequencing it in the correct order.

It’s hard to believe that we are already at the end of our third week in Reception! Once more, we have had an action-packed week and have really enjoyed our Maths topic of sorting and comparing. Using buttons, cubes, camels and teddies we discovered that there are lots of ways in which objects can be sorted. In RE we learned about the story of Creation and drew some brilliant pictures of some of the things God created, with the stars, tigers and fish being popular choices. Today we have enjoyed delicious cakes from the PTA and helped to raise funds for Macmillan – what a great way to end another busy week!