The Chronicle

This week in Junior 6 we have been working extremely hard preparing for our entrance examinations on Saturday.  We have been focusing on managing our time in exam style tasks and sustaining our focus for long periods of time, while quickly switching between different subjects.  We have practised reading comprehensions and lots of descriptive writing, as well as lots of different maths problems.  We are looking forward to showing off how good we are on Saturday!

Junior 5 have been immersed in The Tempest by William Shakespeare for many weeks now and this week we have made the fabulous cast of characters come to life! After discussing the traits and personalities of the characters on the island so far in the story, we arranged ourselves into groups and chose one to become and then created a ‘family’ portrait style photograph. Along with our drama skills of communicating through body language, facial expression and staging, our techniques of co-operation and collaboration were put to the test by Mrs Wildey and many of us were rewarded with the pink star of Archimedes the Ant! Take a look at our portraits and see if you can spot which characters we were trying to portray?

Our J4 pupils have had an exciting week combining literacy skills with science and art. To conclude the work on our class book, The Cloud Tea Monkeys by Elspeth Graham and Mal Peet, which tells the tale of a young girl called Tashi whose mother is an impoverished tea-picker who becomes ill and Tashi tries to continue her mother's job. Ridiculed by the bad-tempered Overseer, Tashi seeks solace where the local monkeys regularly share her fruit, and her generosity is repaid as they pick the highest and best tea to fill her basket. The children picked leaves and made their own tea in Science and tasted a range of herbal teas to help ‘infuse’ them with wow words in English! Their task was to decorate their own box for their own tea and use slogans, rhetorical questions and persuasive language to describe their unique tea. Using examples from a range of tea boxes, they were able to extend their vocabulary by magpieing descriptive phrases from tea-makers. It was tea-rific!

Junior 3 have returned with aplomb to their learning after the half-term break. We were very excited to start our new Geography topic on Kenya and have been delighted with the fantastic efforts the children made with their project work over the holiday. Pupils have taken turns to be our ‘Kenya correspondent’ and took us on a tour of the country through their informative and attractive presentations. We have heard about the wildebeest of the Masai Mara, the beautiful silver beaches of Mombasa and the tantalizing tribe of the Turkana. We are so well informed that our teachers are now going to have to think carefully about what else they can teach us! We have also been putting our alphabetical skills to good use and learning how to navigate a dictionary in our search for the meaning of some adventurous new vocabulary. A special mention to Henry in J3H for his wonderful contribution to the on-going Poppy collection; he made a stunning vase of poppies to mark this important historical occasion.

Year 2 have returned from half-term with renewed vigour! In Maths, they have been working hard on adding and subtracting two-digit numbers with exchanging. Can you believe that we are doing column addition and subtraction in Year 2?! This has involved lots of concrete work with equipment so that they understand why we need to exchange ones for tens. In English, we read a fabulous book about a very brave and bold Rapunzel who showed great resilience to escape and defeat the wicked witch. We went on to continue the story and we came up with some fantastic ideas focusing on using different sentence starters to make our writing interesting for the reader. Over half-term, the children were set the task of researching their local area and creating a presentation for their class. We have been so impressed with their work and have taken great pleasure in awarding many Da Vincis. Well done, Year 2!  

After a lovely half term rest Junior 1 have come back with revitalised energy and enthusiasm. Cinderella is our new book in English and a different, Mexican, version was introduced to the class. We went back in time to Queen Victoria in History to find out some interesting facts about this famous queen. Did you know she was the person who introduced Christmas trees and Easter eggs to our country? We had to cast our minds back to before the half-term holiday for Geography, as we were using the information we gathered about what vehicles travel on the main road outside our school to plot onto a chart. This helped us see clearly that cars were the most popular vehicles and the least popular were motorbikes and emergency vehicles.

After a lovely half-term break, Reception have returned to school full of beans and eager to learn. This week we have been discovering how to stay safe on Bonfire Night, in addition to writing some super firework sounds too. We were very lucky to have Mrs Verma visit us and explain how Diwali is celebrated and we even tried some traditional Indian food – it was delicious! In Maths we investigated fewer and more than 1, 2, and 3 and learnt that a number can be made up of different numbers. Although it’s been a blustery week, we blew away the cobwebs with plenty of fresh air in PE and Ball Skills; what a lot of fun we’ve had!