Year 2 draw a castle

Year 2 are loving their topic about Castles.

They started by painting pictures of people who work in castles.

The corridor also reflects the topic with castles and people. 

In art the children have been learning how to sketch.  They explored the different types of marks they can make with different grades of pencil.  They then applied this skill to sketching stones.

The next step was to draw a castle and add small pieces of detail.

They are pretty amazing!

Year 6 Newsletter

Over the past two weeks in Year 6 we have been designing and making our own Ancient Greek style vases. The children started this learning journey by exploring a range of existing designs and sketching their own interpretations of these in their sketch books. The children then blew up balloons to the appropriate size, based on their design, before beginning to paper mache them with newspaper and PVA glue. Having dried, the children were then able to mixed their own earthy colours to paint them. The children are now designing their decorative patterns and myths that will feature on the outside of their vases. These will hopefully be ready for display next week in the classroom.

Year 5 Newsletter

Year 5 have examined multiple sources of evidence to understand the deeds that Suffragettes committed in order to get the vote! Deeds not words, was the Suffragette's motto. The children have also been exploring the similarities and differences between Suffragettes and Suffragists. Through examining further evidence the children were able to compare and contrast the two movements.

It was apparent the the Suffragists were peaceful protesters, who believed women should have the vote whereas the Suffragettes took more drastic actions in order for this same message to be heard.

We have began to look at the famous moment in history when Emily Wilding Davison ran in front of the King's Horse at the Epsom derby and the different reactions this extreme 'deed' created.

The children have also continued to persevere with the usually dreaded topic of 'FRACTIONS!!' this week and we are seeing great improvements in their; attitude to the topic, progress and their overall understanding of fractions, so we are very proud of them all!

                      

Was Emily Wilding Davison a hero?

In June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison (a long time suffragette) threw herself in front of the king's horse at the Epsom Derby.  She died 3 days later.  It caused news to spread round the world and the profile of the suffragettes and their plight was raised. Was Emily Wilding Davison a hero?  This was the question that we were debating while examining evidence from 1913 including footage from Derby Day, newspaper reports and headlines, the diary of the King, hatemail, suffragette speeches and a letter to Emily Wilding Davison from her mother.

Weighing up the evidence...Suffragist versus Suffragette

This week, we compared artefacts from the Suffragists with artefacts from the Suffragettes. We realised that there were many similarities but also cavernous differences. We organised our thinking and recorded these using a Venn diagram.

Life as a Suffragette: Dear diary...

In our writing this week, we have been getting into the character of Maud, a poor, laundry worker who has started to get involved with the suffragettes. Through using film to form the basis of our ideas, we have been able to write diary entries on significant events that have happened in Maud’s life so far. Furthermore, we have been using our knowledge from topic lessons about the suffragette movement to predict what might happen next for Maud.
The children were then able to hot seat each other, asking Maud questions in order to understand her thoughts, feelings and actions to inspire their writing.

Oranges...in Geography!

In Topic, Rousseau class have been using oranges to help us answer questions about questions about the Earth! We investigated (and then ate!) the oranges and noticed that oranges are segmented into vertical sections similarly to how the time zones across the world work.

It was amazing to think that as we were learning this (2pm GMT), people in Australia had just gone to bed and people in the USA were just waking up!

We found out that in Antarctica (where all the orange segments join together) there was no time zone. Explorers in Antarctica, take the time zone of their country of origin.

What is bullying?

Today, Magritte class continued with their mini police programme. This week we have been understanding more about bullying and how it arises.  Specifically, we unpicked and classified types of bullying: cyber, physical and verbal and understood that repetition of unkind and unacceptable behaviour is what constitutes bullying.  We also focussed on cyber bullying and reminded each other about how to stay on line. 

Magritte Year 5 science - The Tomato Ketchup Experiment

Today in science we investigated the viscosity of liquids by comparing tomato ketchup brands. Tesco own brand on the left, Stockwell (Tesco value brand) in the middle and Heinz on the right. What conclusions can you bring from watching this time-lapse video?

Teen Numbers

Year 1 have been exploring the teen numbers in maths. The children have been saying the number, writing the number and building the number using a variety of manipulatives. As an extra challenge, the children had to match up different number cards with their correct manipulative presented in a number of different ways.

Oh Grandma... what big teeth you have!

 

The children in Reception had a very special visitor this week! Little Red Riding Hood's Grandma, Little Grey, joined us for a cup of tea. She was keen to ask for help from all the children. After telling us all about how she hid in the cupboard and narrowly escaped the Big Bad Wolf, she asked for our advice on how to stop wolves from knocking on her door ever again!

The children came up with lots of different ideas including...

"Put a sign on the door saying 'No wolves allowed!'"
"Look through the spy hole and if it's a wolf, don't open the door!"
"Put a note to remind yourself to lock the front door!"

Equaliteam Week 3

This week in the Equaliteam, we spoke about different families and how important it is that we welcome every family into our school. We discussed why we thought we should be so inclusive:

• We want to be friendly
• It is fair
• So that everyone can feel safe, loved and included

The Equaliteam created posters to display in the school:

Inspired by Hugo Cabret

Enthralled with our class novel, which is part novel and part graphic novel, we used our sketching techniques to recreate illustrations from Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.  These may take a few weeks to complete!

Deeds not words.....

What were the deeds committed by the suffragettes and how do we know? These are the questions we asked ourselves as we explored evidence in the form of photos, magazine covers, newspaper articles, police reports, pamphlets, posters and more. We were intrigued to learn that they committed ‘wilful damage, and arson. Emily Wilding Davidson was even willing to die for her cause when she threw herself in front of the king’s horse!

Code breaking in Reception

In maths this week, Reception have been learning about finding parts of a whole. 

We used this knowledge to crack a code to open a very heavy padlock that was attached to a mysterious looking book! It was a little tricky as some codes had more than one answer...

"5 is the whole. 2 and 3 are parts of the whole but so are 4 and 1! We have to try 2 and 3 and then 4 and 1 to see which answer is going to work!"

- Sebastian

Together we cracked the code and discovered that the book was all about a pirate's secret treasure... we are still on the lookout!

We even got some police officers on the case
to ask passers by about any treasure sightings!

Year 1 African Masks

On Monday, year 1 looked at some African masks as part of our Africa topic. The children studied the masks closely using magnifying glasses and created some observational drawings using oil pastels.

Signs, safety and speed

Magritte class had a great afternoon with the mini police learning about how to stay safe on the road and how to cross roads safely.  We learnt about the meaning of road signs that affect us and the consequences of not following them. Speeding can be fatal. Wearing headphones as we cross the road can also be fatal. In Winter, it is important to wear items of reflective clothing. Here is a link to a road safety video we were told about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAgxZ-l5pY8