The Chronicle

Advent is a special time in the Christian calendar, full of expectation, hope and preparation. This week Junior 6 have been working hard to explore the meaning of Advent in their RE lessons. They learnt that Advent has two parts: Christians celebrate Christ’s birth at Christmas time, and prepare for his expected return in the Second Coming.  

The children have also been busy preparing for their Advent Service this week, approaching rehearsals with maturity and focus. On the night, staff were impressed with the confident delivery of their heartfelt readings, poems and songs.  

Both Junior 6 classrooms are now adorned with beautifully decorated Christmas trees and, of course, the playful Junior 6 Christmas Elves - Cookies, Cream and Snowy - are keeping a watchful eye on them as they work! 

Junior 5 have continued to be an amazing group of learners, showing wonderful enthusiasm for their lessons. In History, they have been demonstrating their knowledge of The Aztecs, portraying the legend of their empire in the form of a comic strip. They loved the activity and created some excellent work. Well done, Junior 5, we continue to be amazed by your hard work – it's not long now until you have a fun and festive break!

This week in Science, Junior 4 have designed, completed, and evaluated an experiment to see which materials helped an ice cube to stay frozen the longest. We looked at the three methods of heat transfer – convection, conduction and radiation, and used materials from home and school to insulate an ice cube. We took readings throughout the day and monitored whose ice cubes had melted the most. Some ice cubes were still frozen when we went home! We discussed our findings and wrote about what kind of heat transfer method we thought was at work.

Junior 3 have been continuing their travels around Kenya in their Geography lessons this week, this time comparing differences and similarities between Kenya and the UK. The children worked in groups, looking carefully at photographs of Kenya and the UK, and planned a verbal group presentation about what they found was similar and different. Each group had a different theme to explore; food, clothes, landscape, farming and cities. The children collaborated really well and delegated jobs within their teams with maturity, as well as spotting some really interesting details in the photographs to help them make effective comparisons. Plenty of Crackley Compass stars were earned for their excellent collaboration, plus house points were awarded to the team which spotted the most details. Well done, Junior 3!

This week Junior 2 have been learning all about food chains. After thinking about the different plants and animals that we would find in several common habitats, children set about building food chains for each of these habitats. We all know that a food chain must start with a plant and that the arrows indicate 'is eaten by'. We had great fun swapping animals around on the food chains and thinking about how much we really know about what animals eat. We now know lots of creatures who are herbivores, carnivores and even omnivores - like us. I think we have a class full of budding zoologists! We have also been thinking of chains in RE, as we each wrote an act of kindness for our Advent paper chain, which we have now placed onto the class prayer table for a child to read each day and to then complete the task in school.

There was much delight in Junior 1 this week as the elves came to visit. They have been named by the children as Snowflake and Chippy. Each night they fly back to the North Pole to report to Father Christmas about what has been happening at school and who is or is not behaving themselves. In English, the children wrote letters of thanks to their elf as they were given candy canes as a thank you for being named, and they also wrote to Father Christmas to check in with him, to see how he is doing and, of course, to tell him what they would like for Christmas. We linked our Science lesson with RE and everyone learnt about Christingles - what they are, why they are used and how they are an important way to help celebrate Advent. Everybody had the chance to make a Christingle and thought carefully about how they can bring light to others who are feeling sad or lonely at this time of the year.

The children have been busy this week with the official countdown to Christmas. In English, they have been applying all their new phonics skills to writing letters to Santa. They have enjoyed decorating the class Christmas tree and home corner and welcoming Elf on the Shelf into Reception. In Art and DT, they have started to make some Christmas decorations, including their own little angel. They have also managed to squeeze in some extra rehearsals for the Nativity, ready to impress parents and the rest of the school next week.