The Chronicle

This week Junior 6 have been giving their all in lessons. How apt for a week where they have been working with fractions in Maths! In English, the children have been focusing on how character descriptions are built up. They explored the ‘show, not tell’ technique where writers use powerful adjectives, adverbs, and descriptive verbs to create emotional attachment in the reader and allow them to draw their own conclusions about a character. After reading a text about a fictional teacher called Mr Mortis who floats around school with a ‘disapproving sneer’ and has a ‘dagger-like stare’, the children felt reassured that he was not their teacher!

This half-term, Junior 5L have been learning all about the Aztecs. The children have written a paragraph about Tenochtitlan (the city that the Aztecs built on Lake Texcoco to live and grow food on). They also wrote about how the Aztecs came to settle on the lake. Interesting and vibrant Aztec mosaics have been created using colouring pencils. In Art, Junior 5 have been studying Aztec faces and using what they have discovered to design their very own Aztec faces, ready to be made out of tin foil, string, pencil and paint.

Junior 4 have had a fantastic week. We have been learning about recording data of our favourite vertebrates using tally charts and translating this into bar graphs. We have also been discovering all about the rebellion of Queen Boudica and the reasons why she fought against the Romans. On Thursday, we travelled to Eversfield for a football match and played really well against a strong team. Well done, Junior 4!

Junior 3 have been using Forest School to immerse themselves fully in the Stone Age experience this week. The children have been working in small groups to explore the woodland using all of their five senses; sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. By experiencing the woodland first-hand, the children were able to generate plenty of ambitious adjectives to be able to describe their new surroundings. Once these were recorded by video for their digital journals, and then onto paper back in the classroom, the children then used this wonderful new word bank to enhance their descriptions of Stone Age woodland during a writing lesson. Well done, Junior 3, it’s been lovely to read your brilliant writing off the back of this lesson!

This week, Junior 2 have been continuing with their learning around the Rapunzel story. They have worked towards writing their own diary entry as Rapunzel, using accurate punctuation and building in adjectives and time conjunctions too! They have also started their latest creation in art, in which they are making their own version of Rapunzel using a range of different materials. We can't wait to see what they can create!

Junior 1 have been busy bees again this week. They have learnt to use a part-whole diagram in Maths and used it to create addition number sentences, which in turn linked to building up their knowledge of number bonds within 10. In English, they had the chance to become the Little Red Hen and write a letter to the animals asking them to help her on the farm and not to be so lazy doing nothing all day long! Geography introduced a compass to help with directions, which were used to help place animals in specific places on a grid, while in History features of Victorian homes were considered to help sort homes into those built in Victorian times and those that were newer or older.

Our Reception children have been busy comparing objects and pictures by size this week - and really enjoyed listening to the story Where's My Teddy by Jez Alborough as an introduction to big and small.  We organised tea parties for our bears, then chose food according to size and recorded it all in our books. We have also been busy in Art lessons, finishing our work on Picasso by cutting up, and reassembling our own faces to create our own crazy cubist portraits. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your support in making sure everyone is in the right uniform on the right day - but can we just ask you to check that labels are still attached to clothing - especially black PE tops and warm coats. As the weather is changing we need them more - and when they get taken off, mix ups easily happen!