The Chronicle

Reception have been getting ready for a trip to the farm, so our story this week was, 'Farmer Duck.'  Poor Farmer Duck found himself having to do all the work for the lazy farmer – but we certainly didn’t have any lazy farmers in school!  The children have been working really hard; sequencing the story, matching and writing key words, writing captions to go with pictures, and then retelling the story themselves.  It’s been a busy week, and we spotted some fabulous work – well done everyone.

In the Outside Learning Area, Badgers and Hedgehogs were tasked to find the right words to talk a teacher through different activities: to prepare a bowl of cornflakes and to brush your teeth. Mrs Whitehurst did exactly as she was told, which created a lot of messy fun and giggles, until the children gave the correct instructions, in the right order.

Our Dormice had great fun in their PE lesson with Mr Vaughan, learning about movement to music and incorporating colour matching to physical effort. 

Inside, Charlotte invited the children to take turns in the sensory tray. They squirted foam, dripped food-colouring in, and then whooshed and swirled in the soapy goo. So, lots of squeals of delight here too!

Encouraging independence and managing risk: the children are enjoying using their water bottles to top up throughout the day, as well as to be able to access the climbing frame via the side bars now that everyone is more confident on this apparatus.

This week’s topical focus has been to explore the role of  ‘Teachers’, who guide Learning and keep everyone safe in Nursery. The children called the registers, played a memory game using a tray of teacher tools, and solved clues to play ‘Guess the teacher’. We sang ‘Five, fat pencils, sitting on the wall’ and, ‘I went to visit a school one day’.

During RE, we used the internet to find our local Church, St Francis and to look at the features inside that show us it’s a house of God with plenty of room to welcome everyone. We saw photos of Father Kevin, wearing lots of different coloured vestments as well as his everyday black suit and clerical collar.

This week in Art, Junior 6 have been looking at the work of the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. Focusing primarily on his signature piece, 'The Starry Night,' we looked at the life of this famous artist. We learnt all about the brilliant works of art that he produced, but also all the challenges that he faced. We then began weaving our own stars to create our very own Starry Night! The children have also wrapped up their Titanic paintings - the finished results of which are on display in the Art Room and are fantastic – we highly recommend going to have a look at them! Well done everyone, you’ve worked so hard this week.

On Wednesday, Junior 5 were given the wonderful opportunity to watch the Princethorpe production of ‘Loserville’. They were extremely excited to see this inspirational performance, led by pupils from Years 7 to 10. The children were respectful when giving the talented performers positive and constructive feedback and we are very proud of how they conducted themselves. Some may even follow in the footsteps of the former Crackley students (of which there were many) and audition for shows when they go into Year 7 themselves!

Another exciting week in Junior 4. In their science lessons, pupils were asked to predict which type of chocolate would melt the quickest and why - white, milk or dark? The sweet aroma of melted chocolate filled both classrooms and, as the pupils worked so enthusiastically, they all got to sample each type. They also noted that this was a reversible change - the solid chocolate, once heated, became a liquid and, when cooled, it became a solid again.

Well done, Junior 4!

This week Junior 3 have been really getting to grips with how to use a bar model to help with division in their Maths lesson. They are now able to divide increasingly large numbers using their knowledge of equal groups, flexible partitioning and they even know how to calculate and record a remainder!

Children have also been working hard to put the finishing touches to our class assembly, which we are looking forward to sharing with everyone next week.

Junior 2 children continue to impress their teachers with how hard they are working and their consistently positive attitude. This week, we have been using arrays to help make multiplication sentences. We have been retelling a familiar story in English, considering the beginning, middle and end, finding out about the story of the willow pattern plate.

In science, the children made fruit kebabs as a healthy snack and they have learnt all about making food choices that are good for their bodies and minds. Well done, Junior 2.

This week, we have travelled all the way from the Antarctic right back here to the capital of England! In science, we learnt a little more about penguins and how they keep warm. This then led us to consider which materials would be good to use to keep ourselves warm. The children were so excited to be real scientists, experimenting with test tubes and hot water. Five test tubes were filled and water temperatures were recorded, before being placed near an open window. The tubes were wrapped in different materials and predictions were made. The temperature was then recorded after half an hour with surprising results for the children. It was then a quick trip to London for geography, as we looked at the landmarks of London; the children particularly loved the idea of the MI6 building housing real spies. Finally, it was up, up and away for our art lesson as the children made their pulley hot air balloons. We are certainly never standing still for a moment in Junior 1!