The Chronicle

This week in Science, Junior 6 have been learning about the history of life on Planet Earth. We have been investigating when and where life first started, all the way up to the present day. We covered crucial landmarks, such as the first single celled organism, the Ice Age, the first fish, the first amphibian and the first ‘modern’ human. In groups, the children were tasked with labelling the key points of evolution of life on a 20-metre-long tape measure that represented 3,600 million years of life on earth. The children were amazed to find out how late in our history the first humans appeared. Well done for being such keen scientists Junior 6 – keep up that curiosity!

Junior 5 travelled back in time on Monday to the 1500s to take part in Tudor Day! Children, staff and parents wore their finest Tudor garb and transformed into princes, princesses, street urchins, maids, lords and ladies. The children enjoyed a wide variety of practical activities immersing them in the daily life of people from that time period; from leather stamping, soap making and embroidery to candle making. These mini-workshops were all set against a backdrop of snippets of news about the future of Queen Anne Boleyn, who had been tried and just been found guilty of treason! This exciting and stimulating day ended with a live Tudor banquet with food from the period and the children providing the entertainment in the form of dancing, storytelling, juggling, acrobatics and general joking and foolery. What a fantastic day of fun and learning we had.

Junior 4 have all made their very own 3D elephants in English this week, as this ties in with our amazing class novel, The Girl Who Stole An Elephant.  We used a range of ambitious vocabulary, alliteration and similes to describe their amazing elephants, which will become a descriptive, opening paragraph to a short adventure story. This  will be planned and created with themselves and their elephants as the main characters. We can’t wait to read them! Well done, super Junior 4 writers!

This week Junior 3 have been investigating the effects of friction, as part of our Science topic on Forces. We set up a fair test to see how far our little toy car would travel on a range of differently textured surfaces. There were lots of considerations before we began. What did we need to keep the same? What would we change each time? What would we be measuring and what factors might affect our results? We also had the opportunity to apply some of our mathematical skills and predict how far the car would travel over each surface before carefully testing, measuring, and recording. Our results were quite surprising and helped us to reach a variety of conclusions about how friction can affect movement. We now know that the floor in the assembly hall offers very little friction, and the car zoomed a whole 200 cms before stopping. Well done for being such super scientists, Junior 3.

Year 2 children continue to impress Mrs Burley, Mrs Thomas and Mrs Bhogal with how hard they are working and their consistent great attitude. This week we have been using arrays to help them make multiplication sentences. We have been retelling a familiar story in English, considering beginning, middle and end. The children were very excited to be moving onto our MasterChef topic in Science, especially looking forward to some food tasting we have in the next couple of weeks. In PE, children have been showcasing excellent netball skills and participating in small-sided games, encouraging the children to work together.

There has been one stand out highlight of this week and the Junior 1 children, along with their teachers, were thrilled with the excitement it invoked. Science was certainly the most popular lesson of the week! Everyone was incredibly excited to be doing a ‘real’ experiment and there was a buzz of enthusiastic children in both classrooms. The experiment allowed the children to think about how different materials keep us warm and which would make the best insulator. Everyone made their prediction whether tin foil, bubble wrap, felt, cotton or cotton wool would be the best before the experiment began. We had to ensure it was a fair test by pouring an equal amount of water, at the same temperature, into each test tube which was wrapped in the different materials. We then compared the temperature of each one at five-minute intervals. We were all astounded at the result! What super scientists you are, Junior 1.

This week Reception have been painting their paper-mâché owls in Art and DT. They just need to stick on the feathers and draw the face, then they will be ready to come home. They have been working on these over the last few weeks and are excited to see how a balloon can be transformed into an owl. This week they have also learnt about jungle animals, and have been researching and writing facts about their favourite animals.  In Maths they have been learning the number bonds to 5.

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