The Chronicle

What a fantastic half term we’ve had in Junior 6, the children have worked so hard the past seven weeks and they all more than deserve a well-earned break.

In English, this week we finished off our exploration of The Spiderwick Chronicles by creating our own diary entries. The children imagined that they had just moved into the mysterious Spiderwick Mansion and described the house in super detail and the strange creatures they found living inside. We were so impressed by your ambitious vocabulary and individual style - hearing about each of your experiences in the Mansion was both exhilarating and inspiring.

In Science, we finished off our week-long investigation into mold growth. The children have completed a week of fantastic scientific observations and can now compare their findings like real mycologists! You are all Superstars J6 – keep it up!

Junior 5 have had a busy week learning about Black History across a variety of subjects. In English, they have answered comprehension questions on Katherine Johnson and Nelson Mandela.

The children have also written non-chronological reports about an Alien (using imaginative ideas) from a newly discovered planet that NASA might have discovered with Katherine’s assistance.

In Art, Junior 5L have been creating their own Kente cloth pieces, using coloured paper and scissors to create a weaved, patterned background. Once they had created the base, they used black pen to add geometric patterns to their designs.

It was palindromes, motifs and pitched percussions galore in Junior 4 this week as we learnt how to compile our own mythical creatures to sound. Inspired by DJ and composer, Mason Bates, and listening to his orchestral symphony Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, each of us made a poster to represent our creatures. We then transferred this to sound using a variety of instruments in an ensemble, showing how music can conjure up creative ideas and a powerful picture in our imaginations. Each group showcased their work, whilst listening to constructive comments on how our compositions could be improved.

Junior 3 have been busy preparing for their writing assessment this week by fully immersing themselves in all things Stone Age. We have visited the Forest School area to think of amazing adjectives to describe a wooded Stone Age camp setting. We pretended to sit around a roaring campfire and to forage for food and tools. We even sat huddled in a make-shift cave and imagined what it would have been like for families centuries ago sat in the cold and the gloom.

Back in school, we have also been exploring the very first forms of art as we created our own cave paintings and learnt how to draw a mixed-media landscape of Stonehenge. We thought carefully about how to create perspective in our pictures by making the stones closest to us larger, and gradually becoming smaller as they got further away.

With the weather turning cold this week, we are very thankful that, in this day and age, we have warm cosy homes to return to after a day of hard work in school.

J2 have continued working diligently right until the end of this half term. We have enjoyed Forest School sessions with Mrs Clarke and J2R have their next session straight after half term. The children have been set a fun activity to do in the holiday on Seesaw, please have a look. All of the J2 team are exceptionally proud of the children and hope that they have a well deserved rest before we head into the next half term. I wonder what surprises there might be in store for you? See you in November J2.

What a fantastic end to our first half-term in Junior 1. Our class Assembly was a huge success, and everyone was so proud of how well we performed. We loved seeing our wonderful families in school on Thursday morning and everyone’s smiling faces gave us such a warm ending to our week. We have learnt so much about harvest time and we have worked hard to learn our lines and then say them as loud as we could to fill the hall. We learnt how fruit, vegetables and wheat are harvested during the autumn and how the wheat is ground into flour. We were amazed to learn how flour is used to make biscuits, cakes, pastries, bread, and pasta. We loved performing our Harvest song which we have been learning with Mrs Olden in our Music lessons, making sure we sang clearly and remembered all the actions. Now it is time for our half-term break, and we are all looking forward to having a rest from our lessons ready to come back full of energy next term. Well done, Junior 1!

This week in Reception we have been making lots of patterns in Maths. The children have used natural resources from outside to make autumn patterns, as well as creating simple patterns with shapes and colours in their Maths books. They have also been ‘wowing’ us with their writing this week. They have been writing cvc words in their books and some have even been able to write short captions to match a picture. We are so impressed!

This week we have gone pumpkin mad with some kindly donated pumpkins of various sizes and colours. The children have loved getting their hands messy, scooping out the insides of the pumpkins and separating the seeds from the flesh. They have chopped slices of pumpkin, weighed out ingredients, mixed and spooned out the mixture, then baked delicious pumpkin muffins down at the Gables kitchen.

Outside, they experimented with wooden hammers and heavier stones, to investigate which made the best tool for hammering golf tees into a giant pumpkin.

Pumpkins even found their way into our topical action songs this week!