Year 4 newsletter

They say that all roads lead to London. In the case of Year 4, all lessons lead to London (well almost) as we continue to discover new information that leads to our Big Discussion statement “London is a great place to live!” We have been immersed in a rainy, London evening when we had the opportunity to interview “Jack”, a homeless teenager living on the streets. Using our map skills, we have navigated round London and understood, what commuting is like when tube lines are closed. We have also inferred much about Stratford and how it evolved in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. Some us were shocked that whole roads could be destroyed as part of compulsory purchase schemes but could understand the benefit in so doing. In Science, we have been closely examining leaves as they fall from trees, understanding the key features that lead to identification. Nevertheless, without a shadow of a doubt, the highlight of the past two weeks has been the Birchwood Games. The children were thrilled to take part in a huge variety of activities.

Year 3 Update

This week Year 3 have been learning about the 17 global goals and how we can contribute as a school and as individuals to help change the world for the future! The school have identified plastics as our focus issue. The children have decided to suggest some changes that they believe will help the school and the wider community.

On top of all of this the children have had a busy week learning our song for the harvest festival, learning about how magnets attract and repel as well as writing their own suspense stories. We have now started to learn a new suspense story, the children can practice their retelling skills with you at home.

In addition to this, in maths the children have been reviewing odd and even numbers and identifying patterns within sequences of 2 and 3 digit numbers. All the children have been working really hard and we are very proud of them.

Keep up the hard work Year 3!

Year 1 Newsletter

What a busy week in Year 1! As part of our forest topic, we received an email saying, "The forest has got to go!". In our talk trios, we first considered reasons for why the forest might be destroyed. The children thought it could be to extend the car park, build a gym and swimming pool or to make paper from the wood.

Next we considered reasons to keep the forest. The children said that they love going to the forest and climbing trees and they learn new things in the forest. They were concerned about the animals who would be affected if the forest was cut down.

Finally the children voted with their feet to say whether they thought the forest should go or the forest should stay.

In Science, Zogla visited us again wondering how flowers stand up on their own. We took a cutting of a flower and tried to make it stand up but we couldn't make it work! In our talk trios we had lots of ideas for why this was. We realised it's because plants need roots to anchor them in the soil. We studied the roots from a viola, a dandelion and a carrot!

We noticed that roots look different and learned that there are tap roots and fibrous roots. Tap roots, like carrots and dandelion roots, are long and thick and have fine hairs sprouting from them. Fibrous roots, like those of a viola, have lots and lots of very thin hairs, with no main thick root. 

Year 2 Newsletter

This week in year 2 the children have become change makers! First, they had a look around the school to discover that there wasn't anywhere to recycle plastic. They decided that in their classrooms they would like a plastic recycling box so that they could check for the recycling sign and recycle plastic in the box. In English we have mastered our tale of the three little pigs (see video) and have begun to pick apart what makes a great traditional tale. During our Maths lessons we have been exploring the idea of greater and less than. Science has seen us exercising and measuring our pulse rates to see what impact that has on our hearts. Lastly in topic we have answered the big question: why was it called the Great Fire of London? A very busy week!

Le Cafe Bleu Year 6

Year 6 enjoyed a lovely French day last Friday. Not only did they get to make their own pain au chocolate, they also enjoyed creating a fabulous french cafe, sampling French delicacies while practising their French conversation. Mme Millward and Mme McFarlane were on hand to serve le chocolat chaud, jus d’orange, les croissants, les framboise et le melon. Tres delicieux!

Making hedgehogs in the forest

Today Miro went to the forest to make hedgehogs! We started with a ball of clay which we sculpted to make a smooth hedgehog body with a pinched nose. We then collected things in the forest that we could use to make spikes! We used our log as a workstation and created some fantastic hedgehogs.

World's Largest Lesson!

On Monday 24th September it was World's Largest Lesson day! The World's Largest Lesson is when children all around the world learn about the 17 Global Goals, which were set by the United Nations to try to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and tackle climate change by 2030.

As a school, Windhill21 we are going to focus on the problem with plastic. We made a start on Monday by looking at the plastic problem in our community and collecting ideas for things we could do to tackle it. Each class then created an action plan for how we can start to make a difference.

Reception solves a mystery!

Today, Reception received a letter from Mrs Moore to ask us to clear away the immersion room... but we were a little confused... we hadn't been in the immersion room this week! So, as problem solvers, we set off to try and find out what was going on. 

When we arrived, we noticed that the room had been left in a bit of a mess! There were footprints everywhere and a bowl of half eaten fruit and vegetables. The children got thinking about how this mess could have been made and how we could find out who was responsible. 

We definitely knew that it had to have been someone in the school, as Mary worked out that "the school locks the doors and doesn't let any one else in!". Suela also knew, by looking at the footprints, that the person had to be an adult because "the shoe is so big". Ethan was quick to notice that "the person has only eaten bits of the cucumber and not the pears, so they must like cucumbers and not pears!"

The children got to work making up questions to ask the grown ups in the setting, including:

"Do you like cucumbers?"
"Do you have spotty bits on the bottom of your shoes?"
"Do you think cucumbers are better than pears?"

After a lot of investigation, the children narrowed it down to Mrs Holland and Mrs Williams, who both loved cucumbers, but not pears. Izabella noticed that Mrs Williams' footprint looked very similar to the ones we saw...

It turns out, Mrs Williams had been cleaning the split flour up in the corridor when her tummy started to rumble! Noticing our bowl of left over snack, she took the bowl to the immersion room for a quiet little snack. Unfortunately, before Mrs Williams got a chance to tidy up, she was called into the dining room to help Mrs Cantel!

Mrs Williams was very sorry for causing such a fuss, and as soon as she realised she had made a bit of a mess, she went straight away to clean it up!

What a busy afternoon! The children were excellent 

Problem Solvers and Inquirers ☺

Are all flowers the same?

In Science, Zogla the alien came to visit us! She asked us whether all flowers looked the same. We decided to help Zogla by taking her to the garden to show her lots of different types of flower. When we came back to the classroom, we looked very carefully at them with our magnifying glasses and made observational drawings to show how different the flowers were.

We can subitise!

In Year 1 we have been learning how to subitise. Subitising is when you can instantly recognise the number of objects in a group without having to count them! To practise our subitising, we played dominoes, snap and dice games.

Leaf classification

This morning, Moore Class were scientists as they collected a range of leaves which we then classified back in class. We now know the difference between: wavy, toothed, lobed and entire leaves.

Rounding!

Year 4 have been busy mastering the art of rounding to the nearest 10, 100, 1000 using number lines to identify the closest 10, 100 or 1000. In the words of one child in the context of what to do if a number is exactly half way between two numbers, “If you were halfway to your nan’s house, why would you ever go back?”

Hungry, homeless and helpless

Year 4 were fully immersed within the sights and sounds of  London on a cold, damp evening as they interviewed ‘Jack’, a homeless teenager to understand how he had become homeless and how he felt living on the streets in this way. This experience led to the children writing well informed narrative openings (cold tasks) full of empathy and reflection. We will build on this experience over the unit, exploring characterisation and setting as the children create their own characters and bring them to life.

Could you navigate round London?

Year 4 have been putting their map skills into action by ‘using’ the Underground to navigate round London.  Locating stations and underground lines using grid references and keys seemed fairly easy...but finding new routes when lines or stations were closed was much trickier! We reflected that the London Underground made London a great place to live because it enables you to travel quickly to anywhere in London. However, some of us recognised that this was only true if all lines and stations remained open. We are sure that commuters and Londoners alike would agree!!!