The Chronicle

This week in Junior 6, we have been thinking about the choices we make.  We began by reading the story of the Fall in RE and thought about how Eve knew what the rules were but made a choice that broke these rules.  We considered all the times that we have to make choices on a daily basis and discussed different situations where two choices are possible.  We thought about how every decision we make, whether good or bad, has a consequence and how we must give thought to the choices we make and accept responsibility for our own decisions.

In our English lessons, we have been reading a brilliant book called Cosmic by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. It’s all about a 12-year-old boy, Liam, and his adventures in space. Our children have been acting out scenes from the book; drawing rockets, writing text conversations between Liam and his friend, Florida, and discussing lots of features of the book. They have been working tremendously hard and cannot wait to read the next instalment!

Junior 4 are continuing to excel across the curriculum and are impressing all of us with their endless enthusiasm for learning. In Science, we made string telephones and wrote a description of our dream bedroom, together with diary extracts, to collaborate with our Junior 4 novel, Cloud Tea Monkeys. Mrs Roberts was encouraged by their ability to create panpipes, to demonstrate different varying pitches of sound, although we are not sure whether the rest of the school enjoyed this rather noisy experiment!

Pupils in J4 have been ‘hot seating characters’ in their English lessons this week. It was amazing to see how they interacted with the main character and asked inferential questions, which demonstrated a deep understanding of the text. 

We also found time to take maths outdoors, finding various objects in nature to represent 4-digit numbers. The children produced some amazing comparisons of 4-digit numbers, using sticks, stones, leaves and acorns. Well done to everyone, you are all superstars!

This week Junior 3 have gone ‘all out’ exploring the story settings of Stone Age Boy. We headed out into the Forest School and got our creative ‘thinking hats’ on, brainstorming vocabulary linked to the sights, sounds and smells that would have made up a stone age camp. We were amazed at all the small details that we noticed and it gave us some wonderful ideas for our writing. Our setting descriptions have been out of this world! We have also enjoyed doing our first ever ‘consumer test’ in Science; finding out which drinks have the most sugar in them and how this can impact our health. As always in Science, there were a few surprises! 

The children continued to immerse themselves in our 'Castles' topic this week. We have been thrilled with their artwork and they really enjoyed using different mediums to create their very own castle picture. How amazing do they look?! The children are becoming experts at naming the different parts of a castle, different types of castles, why castles were built the way they were and who introduced castles into Britain? We have been very busy! In Science we have explored so many different materials and even fed them to our materials monster! He loves finding out about materials and particularly likes to eat plastic bottles. It has been a fun and productive week in Year 2. 

Junior 1 this week were asked to create a model of themselves out of salt dough and their hands in RE, just like God has made all of us using His hands. We also used our hands to learn which is left and which is right. We found out that our left hand makes the capital ‘L’ to help us remember. We used this in Geography to find our way round a treasure map and follow directions. History saw us finding out about Tudor houses and how they were much warmer and brighter than earlier homes. In Science we continued to look at our senses; this week it was sight. Using our hands, we found that if we don’t have our sight, we can use them to read with, using ‘braille’. We also managed to write our names in braille, which was quite tricky to do!

Despite a very soggy start to the week, Reception have continued to wow Mrs Malcolm, Miss Collins, Mrs Green and Mrs Convey with their super attitude to their learning. We have thoroughly enjoyed learning and reciting a lovely poem about an owl and made some terrific owl headbands which we wore for our performance at the end of the week. After reading Owl Babies we thought carefully about the feelings of the baby owls and were glad that their mummy returned at the end of the story! Our woodland theme continued in Art and DT, when we made some minibeasts out of pipe cleaners and beads – don’t worry, they won’t bite!