The Chronicle

It was fantastic to welcome our new Junior 6s into the classroom last week to begin our journey together! We got straight down to work having gone through our timetable and in English, thought about the different ways that we could begin our sentences so that they are as varied as possible. We wrote some super descriptions, making sure that our vocabulary choices were as precise as possible, and our words painted a very clear picture for our readers. In Maths, we looked at place value and considered what different digits represent in numbers, multiplying and dividing these, and rounding them. In RE we began our unit on The Story of the People of God and learnt more about the Bible and the books within it. All the children have made a wonderful start and are really looking forward to the year ahead!

This weel in Junior 6 we have been thinking about how to create specific atmospheres in our writing by the language we choose and the associations, sometimes subconsciously, that we make when we read and hear certain words. We began by reading an extract from The Hobbit and identified how J.R.R. Tolkein had chosen language and created a picture for us by selecting precise words from his palette. We looked at collages of pictures and photos and considered how these made us feel and why. We then transferred these ideas into our own word banks and drew upon these when writing our own descriptions. We are definitely learning to read like a writer and write like a reader!

It’s been an exciting two weeks in Junior 5. After catching up with friends, comparing new shoes and sharing our mixed feelings of apprehension and curiosity about the year ahead with each other, we soon happily settled back into school life, albeit with new classrooms and teachers! As part of our ‘Getting to Know One Another’ week, we have been working on a piece of art that shows our profile in silhouette, filled in with illustrations all about us. We have loved sharing and talking about our interests and favourite things and feel we all know each other a lot better now. What better way to start a brand new school year.

In J5L’s Science lessons, we have been learning the order of the planets and the distance they are from the sun. To make this a more fun activity, we took our planet signs and went outside so that we could space ourselves out in a scaled down version of the layout. Mercury, for example, is only 40cm away from the sun in our version, whereas Neptune is 30m away! During the holidays, some of us created some amazing posters about different planets. Mrs Lammas and Miss Broadbent were blown away with our projects!

All of Junior 4 have returned to school full of enthusiasm and they have all been so ready to learn! It’s also been fabulous to see how organised they have been with their school equipment. In Science we have been learning about Sounds, how we hear and learning all about the function of the ear. We have also been on a learning walk in and around school to observe the sounds that we have heard.

This week, Junior 4 continued their excellent start to the year, putting their all in to every lesson and continuing to arrive at school with an outstanding attitude. In English, they enjoyed listening to the first part of our class book Cloud Tea Monkeys and then enjoyed adding detail to their sentences by expanding the noun. We also went swimming as a year group and we all ventured into the water ready to learn and improve our strokes. As we approach Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, the children have been writing their own tributes in the form of poetry, which will be on display along with other year groups. We were also treated to a wonderful collective worship, expertly prepared and delivered by Daiya, Amelia and Harrison. Well done to everyone! 

Junior 3H have had a fantastic start to the new year and have come back to school raring to go. As Ms Holmes and Mrs Paphitis said, “what a lovely bunch!”

They have been chatting about classroom matters, getting used to all the new displays and bookshelves and thinking about what we are going to be learning about this year. Their class book, The Twits got them off to a great start. 

They have enjoyed getting to know each other and finding out all about the lessons and teachers who will be teaching them.

This week, Junior 3 settled into their learning and especially into their stone age topic. They made like cavemen and women and got properly grubby during our art lessons, as we used our hands to create some spectacular ‘cave’ paintings. They learned all about the tools stone age people would have used, how they would have made their ‘paints’ and also how they would have experimented with shape and pattern.

They have also been flexing their place value muscles in Maths, adeptly recognising the value of each digit and becoming flexible in partitioning numbers in different ways. The children loved using base 10 to show our understanding. These foundation skills are going to be the basis of a wonderful year of mathematics.

Junior 3H had a wonderful time creating tiny crowns for a prayer card for Her Majesty this week. We spent time looking at different royal crowns and what they meant. We talked about gemstones and their significance. Pupils then created their own royal ‘crown’ and we discussed and wrote down some of the things we had been thinking about since the passing of Queen Elizabeth.

Well done on your first two weeks in Junior 2 everybody, you have been super stars! You have been learning our new routines and expectations and we know we are going to have a fabulous year. We have started our ‘Castles’ topic and you amazed us with what you could remember about William the Conqueror, where he came from, how many years ago and why he introduced castles into Britain. In English we have started to delve into the beautiful book Inside the Villains and have been focusing on characters and even created our own. We have been getting our brains going again in Maths and it is so lovely to see how you all enjoy maths and are able to use reasoning to explain your answers; we do love maths here at Crackley. Have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to doing it all again next week.

How lovely it was to welcome everyone back to school and see that our Junior 1 classes have grown by the addition of Matteo and Sherry. After settling into our new classes and catching up with each other, we have been rather busy. Our topic in Science is ‘Who am I?’, so we learnt about different body parts that we have and that inside our body is a skeleton. Using cotton buds and art straws, we cleverly made a picture of our skeletons and found out that where our arms and legs bend there are joints. Maths saw us revisit numbers to 10 and there was an opportunity to play interactive activities on the whiteboard to reinforce our learning. In Geography we were able to look at our country, town and school from space, using Google Earth. The best part was watching it zoom in from outside Earth to right above our school!

Our Junior 1 classes are loving the idea that they are no longer the youngest children in school! They also beginning to understand this brings new responsibility as they begin to set a good example to others. Everyone is continuing to settle well into their new routines and a more formal approach to some lessons. This week we have been consolidating our Reception phonics before learning new digraphs and common exception words. Our Maths has been focusing on counting forwards and backwards, as well as finding one more and one less. However, the highlight of our week has definitely been our Science lesson where we focussed on the sense of smell. The children took great delight in finding matching pots - which were covered to hide what was inside. This meant everyone had to use their sense of smell to find someone with the same! We then went on to smell lots of different things and record our likes and dislikes. Fun and learning combined.

The children had a wonderful first week in Reception! They have been such superstars, coming into school bravely and enjoying all of the activities in the classroom. They have also been to their first assembly and singing practice with Mrs Olden! We are so proud of the children and cannot wait to see them thrive this year!

In our second week Reception have continued getting to know each other and have each made a poster all about themselves and their family. They have enjoyed sharing their photos with each other and talking about their likes and dislikes. Reception have had their first Mandarin and French lessons this week and their first session at Forest School. It has been a week of firsts as they adapt to the busy day to day life at Crackley Hall.