The Chronicle

This week in Junior 6 we have had great fun finding out about one of the world’s biomes – the rainforest, as part of our Geography unit. We studied whereabouts in the world that we would find these ecosystems and what the climate is like there to support and sustain such a vast array of life.  We looked at the structure and layers of the forest and thought about the many different species of birds and animals that inhabit this part of our planet. We watched some of the amazing footage from the Planet Earth series and after carrying out our own research, we compiled our own fact files.

Junior 5W have discovered a new world when they explored the Aztecs in History this week. They have been extrapolating information from texts, maps, pictures and vidoes to find out the geography of the Aztec Empire. New places have been discovered like Lake Texcoco, Mexico City and Tenochtitlan (try saying that out loud!) and have been locating them on maps of the world and on maps of Mexico. The pupils have shown their curiosity about this topic by asking heaps of questions which is a great way to start a topic. Bring on the Amazing Aztecs!

Junior 4 have really enjoyed further exploring 'Sound' this week in Science, and have made and played an array of fabulous musical instruments. They have also been exploring pitch and have made and decorated panpipes, which were merrily played by all. A budding Junior 4 musical band has thus been created! Well done to all!

Junior 3 have had another super week enjoying our forage into the Stone Age, through English and Art. Pupils are excited to find out more and have been further investigating at home. This week we shall be moving on to exploring the sorts of tools they used ‘back in the day’ and investigating how making specialist tools became an art form using every ounce of the Stone Age brain and little else but stone and parts of the animals along with a terrific shot!

Many children watched and were in awe of the funeral of the Late Queen Elizabeth II and were fascinated and attentive of all they had seen, marvelling at the marching and the uniforms on display last Monday. History happening before their eyes in a way that only the United Kingdom can provide. We are now excited to witness the Coronation when it finally happens!

Swimming is now in ‘full flow’ and the children have been excited to catch the mini-bus and head out of school down to the pool.

We love making our learning cross-curricular in Junior 2. The children have learnt about the different parts of castles this week and what they were for. We then created our own chalk drawing of a castle and used pieces of mosaic paper to add detail. In English, we have started reading Sarah Gibbs’ version of Rapunzel. We used drama to help us write a paragraph to describe one of the scenes from the story focusing on correct punctuation and using exclamation. Maths has seen us exploring number lines with intervals of one or ten. We have focused really hard on always reading questions carefully and checking our work.

In French lessons, the children enjoyed learning a bit about life in French schools. Many liked the way children in France don’t have to wear a uniform, but were less convinced by the idea of a later school finish! They practiced writing their names with beautiful French, cursive handwriting. Très bien J2!

The Little Red Hen was our focus in English this week and after listening to the story, we used our Mighty Writer mat to help create the story in picture form. This helped us to re-tell the story in the correct order without forgetting any of the main parts! In Geography we were lucky enough to take a walk around our local area and notice some features near our school that help us to tell where we are. Once we got back to class we then had to remember the order we saw each of the features and stick pictures of them in the correct order onto a map. Science saw us look at our sense of taste and we had great fun tasting different foods and deciding if we like them or not. We then had the challenge of tasting some crisps and deciding what flavour they were, which was trickier than we first thought.

This week has been all systems go in Reception! We have started our full timetable with daily phonics, literacy and maths. The children have amazed us with how hard they are trying and shown us that they are going to be superstar learners! We have been counting in maths using lots of different items from around the classroom and in literacy we have been practising writing their name and drawing pictures of themselves and their family.