Wednesday 30 September 2020

Mini Police visit Year 5

 This afternoon, the children were introduced to their 8 week programme, Mini Police. We were visited by a local PCSO who informed the children of her role and outlined the aims of this new and exciting programme. The children were also asked what makes a good Mini Police Officer. They even were allocated their own uniforms!








Immersed in the Secret Garden

This week, the children have been writing about their journey into a secret garden, thinking all the time about mood and atmosphere. Today, Year 5 explored inside the secret garden to inspire the planning of their next paragraph. 





Tuesday 29 September 2020

Reception Class Art

 This week in Reception we have been looking at our class artists: Degas and Cassatt.

We looked at a specific piece of art such as 'Race Horses' by Edgar Degas and looked at the features of the painting.


Next we tried to recreate the piece of art using mixed media such as paint, pastels, crayons and colouring pencils.

Here are some of Degas' horses:




In Cassatt class we studied this painting by Mary Cassatt:


This prompted us to study poppies and cornflowers very closely, as these were both wildflowers that feature in Mary Cassatt's painting. Using oil pastels, paint and collage techniques, we recreated the image to make our own version of the famous painting. 




Both pieces of art are proudly displayed in the school! 








Year 5 write their journey to the Secret Garden....

 Our classroom has been transformed... using images and eerie music the children write their journey to the secret garden. The children are trying to include all of the features from our suspense toolkit, including powerful verbs and prepositional phrases. 




Monday 28 September 2020

Year 5 - The Attic

Last week, the children were immersed into a forbidden room - the Attic! The use of the immersion room helped the children to think of lots of vocabulary to help describe their emotions, thoughts, what they could see, smell and hear. This lead to some fantastic suspense paragraphs, taking us on a journey to the attic. The children were so proud of their work they wanted to share them with the rest of the class. I look forward to this week’s suspense piece of writing, based on a Secret Garden...


 

Year 5 - Answering our own questions about space.

 For Homework last week, the children went away to research information to answer their scientific questions they came up with as a group. The posters the children made were creative and full of lots of facts from their homework. All children spoke clearly and professionally when presenting with their group! We all definitely learnt a lot!










Visiting the forbidden garden....

 This week our immersion room has been transformed into a secret, forbidden garden. We will be creating a piece of descriptive writing to build suspense about this garden. Year 4 have been generating vocabulary and ideas from their immersion room visit and we are exited to get writing! 


Friday 25 September 2020

Reception explore... the attic!

In Reception, we have been building our vocabulary

After being woken up by a mysterious noise, the children in Reception decided to find out what was going on up in the loft! We had to make sure that we were very quiet so that we didn't wake anyone else up!

"We need to creep!"

"We have to tip-toe!"

"We can't make a sound!"

"Quietly! Carefully!"


We reached up and opened the loft hatch! It was very dark and dusty so we turned the light on and climbed the ladder... 

We noticed that there weren't any holes in the roof, just a very slight breeze from a gap

"It must have been the wind!"

Whilst we were in the loft, we found lots of different things! Some old toys, cobwebs and even a dusty, broken bicycle! Then, the wind blew a handle on a mysterious chest: bang! That must have been the noise that woke us up! Carefully, we picked up the heavy chest and carried it downstairs to investigate...


Together, we opened the chest to find lots of different uniforms, some old and some that we recognised. We even uncovered an incredibly special medal belonging to Mrs Price's mummy for her services with St John's Ambulance! Along with police officer jackets, a train driver's hat, a nurse's tabard and a postal worker's parcel, we discovered that these were the belongings of people who help us!

We are looking forward to learning more about our People Who Help Us topic.

Tuesday 22 September 2020

Becoming a circuit!

 How do circuits work? 

Moore class are now experts on this subject as we actually became a circuit in our last science lesson! One person became the bulb, one the battery (cell) and the others are the joining wires. We passed electrons (stones) around the circuit from the battery and the bulb lit up. 

When the battery had no charge the electrons couldn’t flow so the bulb didn’t light up. When the wire became disconnected and we broke the circuit, the bulb couldn’t light up! 





Monday 21 September 2020

Year 1 Newsletter

What an exciting start to the term Year 1 have had!  

We had a very special visit from Spiky the hedgehog!  Spiky had become lost and hid in Mrs Kemmish's shed.  Thank goodness she found him and is now looking after him for a while until he is big enough to live in his proper home.  We suggested that he should live in a forest and drew pictures of what forests look like.  We have also been amazing artists and carefully drew  pictures of hedgehogs with special art pencils. 

We are really enjoying learning all about forest and did a brilliant scavenger hunt, looking for lots of different things that we might find there. 




In maths we have been practising lots of counting, recognising numbers quickly by looking at their patterns (e.g. like the spots on a dice) and making numbers in different ways.  

  

In CIP we have been doing some writing about the book Owl Babies, making collage leaves, creating forest scenes with sticks, pine cones, conkers and small insects and much much more!  In science plants have been our focus and we have been investigating their different parts. 
We cannot wait to find out what the next two weeks have in store for us!


Year 3 Newsletter

It has been a delight to welcome back Year 3 to school after such a long time away. We have been so impressed with how sensibly they have adjusted back into school life and how eager they have been to embrace all the exciting topics we will be learning about this term. 

Riley and Matisse Class have both been exploring the life and works of their class artist, and have created some colourful artwork displays in the artists' styles. 

In English, the children have wowed us with their suspense writing skills. To inspire their creativity, we used the immersion room to create an eerie attic, complete with music, sound effects and dusty props covered with cobwebs. From this, the children generated an amazing bank of vocabulary and sentence starters to describe the attic. We used drama to bring the story to life, creeping out of bed and up the creaky ladder into the dark, abandoned attic. Who knows what secrets will be discovered?

In History, the children have been learning about the Ancient Egyptians and investigating our big question... Were they brilliant or brutal? They were particularly mesmerised about the mummification process... Not for the faint hearted! 

In PSHE, we've been discussing the children's feelings about lockdown, and how it's okay to experience different feelings and emotions. We read the story 'Lucy's Blue Day', by Christopher Duke, where Lucy's hair changes colour depending on her emotions. We've also been exploring the idea of risk and how we can navigate risky or dangerous situations.

In Maths, we have been focussing on place value, using Dienes to represent ones, tens and hundreds. We've also been exploring open ended maths problems, such as how many 3 digit numbers you can make from a four digit number such as 4682?




Nursery settling in

 

This has been nursery’s first full week at Windhill21 and we have all had a busy week settling in and adjusting to the new routines. The children have done brilliantly considering this has been the first time for some that they have been left ever due to the covid situation. Many of the children have enjoyed playing in our role play area which is a baby clinic looking after the babies and getting them dressed.

The children have learnt that our nursery is called ‘Potter Class’ and we have enjoyed sharing the Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle soft toys with our friends and listening to the stories, as well as colouring in a picture of Peter Rabbit.

 

Outside we have been in our nursery bubble riding on the scooters and climbing on the apparatus and enjoying making tea and cake in the mud kitchen. 



Reception Newsletter

The Reception children completed their first full week of school and wow did they amaze us! The children settled in so well and have been so independent, well done to all of them! During the first week we introduced our topic of: People Who Help Us. We discussed the different jobs that these people do and why they are so important. Next we talked about a very important person: A Lollipop Person! The children told us how they help them to cross the road safely. The Teachers dressed up as the Lollipop Person holding a stop sign and talked to the children about the importance of waiting till the cars have stopped to cross. The children then made their own stop signs and went outside into the early years garden to practise using their stop signs on our very own car track!

Sunday 20 September 2020

Year 6 newsletter

What a pleasure it has been to welcome Year 6 back to school! The children have returned to the classroom full of enthusiasm, ideas and excitement for learning. We have packed a lot into our first two weeks; exploring our class artists, delving into our new topic and creating some suspense filled Gothic fiction writing.  
The children have produced some wonderful art: Lichtenstein class created self-portraits using Benday dots and Roy Lichtenstein's trademark Pop art style, Hockney class embraced David Hockney's artistic flair by capturing his spectacular use of colour - coupled with his eye for interesting detail, Kobra class developed kaleidoscopic portraits with bold lines and bright colours - a celebration of the Brazilian artists breath-taking work. I am sure you will agree the end results from all three classes are truly impressive.
                 




In Topic lessons we have begun to examine our key question 'World War I: commemorate or celebrate?' The children have started to review different historical sources and debate various view points to to help formulate their own opinions on this truly thought provoking question.
Year 6 have also started to explore the tension and suspense filled world of Gothic fiction. Using an abandoned attic and a fateful sound as a 'hook', the children have had us on the edge of our seats describing an eerie sound that leads them on a fearful ascent to ‘The Attic’....what lies in wait in this forgotten room?

We have so much more exciting learning to come - and look forward to keeping you all updated.

The Year 6 team.

Year 5 Newsletter

It has been amazing to welcome Banksy and Dali back to school and great to see all the children willing to learn again! All children in Year 5 have been impressing us with their writing over the last couple of weeks. We have been trying to create a suspense piece of writing based on an eerie attic, where creativity has been stimulated with the use of the immersion room, drama and video clips. Creating a suspense piece of writing, which creates mood and atmosphere by choosing precise language is not easy but the children have really risen to the challenge. The children have also excited and engaged in their topic work and have already begun to form opinions on whether the Ancient Mayans were brilliant or brutal! Most of the children voted brilliant as we explored the Mayan’s number system. All of the children were able to read and write numbers in Ancient Mayan! In maths, we have been exploring place value and learning to estimate numbers on number lines up to 1 million!

Saturday 19 September 2020

Year 4 newsletter

 Year 4 have enjoyed settling back into school after a long 5 months! We have packed a lot in over the last two weeks including art, topic, drama and some very exciting writing opportunities. Both classes focused on their class artist during the first few days of school - Moore class made sculptures in the style of Henry Moore. 


Having been inspired by a short animation where a young boy heard a strange noise from his attic, we went to investigate! We used drama to replicate the actions we would take on our ascent to the attic and created a conscience alley of the emotions and thoughts that would be running through our mind! 



In topic, Year 4 have started to investigate whether London was a great place to live during the Victorian times. We have looked at a timeline of events that took place in London’s history’s and are started to delve deeper into the main inventions and acts that shaped the Victorian Era. Our new topic words this week are: reign and era.