The Chronicle

This week in English, Junior 6 have begun their investigation into the poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Written in 1906, The Highwayman is a romantic ballad that tells the tragic story of an unnamed highwayman and his lover Bess. The children read and watched multiple interpretations of the story, paying particular attention to the vocabulary. We thought about how certain unusual, or archaic, words have fallen out of common use in the English language and what new words have been created to replace them. Super work this week Junior 6, well done!

This week, Junior 5 enjoyed immersing themselves in Tudor life at Tudor World learning about Kings, Queens and a particular famous playwright. They even had the opportunity to sniff what the plague smelt like, although we don’t think they’ll be quick to do that again! It was a wonderful experience for all of the children, who have all gained a wealth of Tudor knowledge and, importantly, curiosity to learn more. Tudor World were hugely impressed with the behaviour of all of the children and even more entralled with their knowledge. Well done to everyone!

In Drama this week, Junior 4 have been finding out about how Christian Aid helps people across the world affected by natural disasters due to climate change. We have been exploring climate change through group work as we each told a story in mime about the effects climate change has on people throughout the world.  We started the problem and moved onto the cause, effect, solution and concluded with the ideal world.

This week Junior 3 have been putting their improved knowledge of times tables to good use as we begin to explore multiplication of 2-digit numbers. We are all fantastic at spotting multiples of ten and multiplying any 2-digit number by a multipe of ten, using our known facts. We used place value counters to build arrays and enjoyed capturing our understanding on the ipads, using Seesaw. In our Science lessons, we have been exploring a new topic of ‘Light’ and on Wednesday we completed an exciting investigation to see which materials reflect light well. We really impressed Mrs van Zyl with our use of scientific vocabulary, as well as our teamwork when testing the materials. When we ‘reflect’ on our learning this week, we should all be very proud of how hard we have worked.

Junior 2 have been so excited about our new topic; China. We have introduced a new story which tells a tale about a young Chinese girl who draws beautiful food to help feed the poor. This has encouraged the children to embrace the art of storytelling through their unique depictions of Chinese landscapes. With colourful brushes in hand, they have painted scenes of tranquil blossom trees and ancient mist covered mountains. Through their collective creativity these children have forged a tapestry of wonder, blending reality with fantasy celebrating the rich cultural heritage embedded in China’s landscape.

Our new story Mrs Armitage on Wheels has really caught the children’s imagination this week. We have taken full advantage of the repeating text to enable the children to recall and begin to write sentences independently. Everyone has been super proud of the writing which has been produced! We have also been active ‘Beezley the Bees’ in our Maths lessons with the challenge this week being to relate addition and subtraction number problems; it was very tricky! In our History lessons, we travelled back in time to the Viking period to find out how and why people in the past travelled across the oceans, before making our own Viking long boats. We then ‘flew off’ to Antarctica for Science, to learn about penguins. Did you know penguins also live in burrows in the warmth of the Galápagos Islands? This is just a taste of the busy, hardworking week we have had in Junior 1!

This week in Reception the children have been exploring 1 more and 1 less in their maths.  We had lots of fun playing a dice game in the classroom, then got our coats on to head outside for a quick game of hopscotch. We noticed that the numbers got bigger when we added 1 more, and we hopped forwards… when we worked out 1 less, the numbers got smaller, and we had to hop back. Luckily all the hopping and jumping kept us toasty warm on such a chilly morning!

The Crackley Police Station has been a hive of activity this week, with lots of burglars caught by our budding police constables. Details were logged at the custody desk and the accused were offered time out in the tyre-jails for all volunteer thieves. Our outside area also lent itself to police chases and treasure hunts.

Inside Nursery we have continued our police theme during Maths sessions with lots of subtraction practice: how many jewels have been taken away? Childrren are using some lovely scientific vocabulary - ‘floating and sinking’ arose during this week’s water play, when police divers had to retrieve stolen objects that had been thrown into the river. In our art and craft finger gym, the children were invited to record their fingerprints and practiced scissor skills by cutting out their burglar photofits and then reassembling the pieces onto a ‘wanted’ poster.

Our theme of Baptism has continued during RE and we are all looking forward to the Baptism of one of our own Little Crackers in a few weeks’ time, which is very exciting. So we talked about the fact that the Sacrament of Baptism can also happen at any age and we shared examples of familiar members of school staff who have themselves converted as adults, or whose children were baptised at Nursery age.

In Dormice, continuing with our transport theme, we had immense fun painting with cars and trains, creating track and tyre prints across the tables. It is a wonderfully creative way to help our two-year-olds develop fine motor skills skills and gain a knowledge of the world around them. We also explored parking options with the garage and created tunnels for seeing which cars went down the fastest. We also discovered the tractor was too big to fit down!