The Chronicle

Junior 6 have been enjoying the opportunity to play summer sports, with the weather holding enough for our fixtures to take place. The playing fields look amazing with the cricket, rounders and athletics track marked out to perfection. It is lovely to see the children looking so smart in their whites ready for cricket fixtures, with their commitment to fielding being demonstrated by the green knees on their trousers! The children have also been fighting for a coveted place on the ISA Athletics team over the last couple of weeks and the successful competitors represented Crackley Hall in Solihull on Thursday. For once, we were praying for a not-to-sunny day so that the children could compete at their best. As always, they did us proud!

Our Science topic this half-term has been Growing Up and Growing Old. Our pupils have thought about how we, as humans, change as we grow older and what life might be like for people living at each stage. We asked them to create a human timeline – they had to think about major changes at each stage. It was quite funny to see how young people imagine old age to be like. We also posed the question, ‘If we became immortal right now, what would be the advantages and the disadvantages?’ The main response was we would become bored!

Junior 4 have demonstrated their ‘green fingers’ this week, as they ventured outside to plant their sunflowers, which have been growing on the classroom windowsill for the past few weeks. We’re all hoping for some good sunshine and will have to remember to water them every day, even in half term! In amongst the many end of term assessments, the children have also been learning how to use money, playing a game that involved calculating and giving the correct amount of change. We were also delighted to share in Ben’s celebration of his First Holy Communion; it was wonderful to be able to share in this experience with him. Happy Half Term, Everyone! 

Junior 3 have had their heads down this week, working beautifully on our end of year assessments, so what better than to spend a Maths lesson outside, as part of Forest School, learning how to tell the age of a tree….not by counting rings, but by using our measuring skills – height and circumference, and division. We had great fun outside spotting Birch, Sycamore, Cherry, Oak, and Beech trees which adorn the school grounds and finding out when they were planted. In Art, we have been learning how to make a coil pot….trickier than it looks! However, we were delighted with the first batch. We are so happy for our friends, Amelia and Joseph, who have taken their First Holy Communion today. May God Bless them and their families, they have made us all so proud.

Junior 2 have finished the half term in a flurry of activity, it really has been a busy week! Our Maths lessons have focused on the topic of time. We began the week by reviewing o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past – phew! Time then turned to looking at each five minutes on the clock and we learnt how to tell the time by looking at all the numbers. This has proved to be very tricky - keep practising at home Junior 2! Our English lessons have focused on grammar, particularly connectives, and the children have been trying to add words such as ‘because’ to give an explanation. We also learnt about the Queen’s Jubilee which gave the children a real insight into why it is such an important time in history. Everyone is really looking forward to their celebrations over half term.

A busy week in Junior 1 saw them writing their own fact files on ladybirds and spiders, using all the skills they have learnt during the past few weeks. Mrs Glen-Roots was very impressed with their writing skills. They also looked at the value of coins and notes in Maths, added up amounts, found change and did a bit of shopping! In History they looked at how teddy bears have changed over the years and discovered that not all teddy bears in the past were very safe or soft to cuddle. In Science they found out more about what makes a fish a fish, which linked in with the fish topic they have just finished in Art. DT was the most exciting lesson of the week as they made monsters that moved using a pneumatic mechanism!

This week Reception have been learning a story all about Fred the Fish. They learnt the entire narrative off by heart with actions, retelling the tale all by themselves! They have also been getting much better at adding, using ‘First, Then and Next’. Reception, you are all superstars!