Harvest festival X factor

Music

As the harvest approaches we have been practicing our song ready for assembly next week. Beatles class were blown away by the angelic choir of voices heard across the way... but we believed we could out sing them!

With a challenge proclaimed, year 3 and 5 performed for each other across the playground. We were even heard across the school! A fantastic effort and big well done to both classes as a well earned draw was decided by all the participating adults.

We had a great time singing and performing for our peers as you can see from our pictures below. Perhaps another challenge in due course to break the tie?

 

"Today you are you!"

PSHE

In PSHE, we have been exploring the concept of our friends and neighbours. We wanted to explore the theme of acceptance through investigating the differences and similarities people may have to one another.

Year 3 were great at identifying physical features including things such as:

• Hair style/colour
• Eye colour
• Boy/girl
• Clothes

And could even begin to vocalise the differences and similarities we might not be able to see such as:

• Religious beliefs
• Family background/culture
• Diet (vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivore) 
• Languages they speak
• Favourite things
• Places they live
• Family/pets

Below are images of the children investigating three similarities and three differences they share with people in their class. 

It was a great lesson that the children enjoyed and helped show them that despite our similarities and differences; the world is a much better place with everyone of us in it! 

Dr Seus: "Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!"

 

To diene, or not to diene, that is the question!

Maths
This week in maths we have been exploring place value and understanding the value of each digit in two and three digit numbers. 

We have explored this through a range of different mediums such as dienes, marbles and pictorial representations. The children have loved using the dienes to demonstrate their understanding of ones, tens and hundreds. The children are encouraged to vocalise their understanding of numbers through speaking frames within the lesson. 

• There are ten 1's in ten. 
• There are ten 10's in one hundred.
• There are ten 100's in one thousand.

Below are just a few images of our year 3 mathematicians hard at work using their place value charts to explore numbers and dienes. Well done year 3!

 

Year 3 Newsletter

Year 3 have had a great week of learning and have become intelligent investigators, geological experts and portrait artists. 

Art
We completed our global changemaker portraits and couldn't wait to put them on display! They are all fantastically unique and demonstrate skills of sketching, painting, colour mixing and understanding facial proportions. Great work everyone, they look amazing!


Writing
Our year three writing text is based upon the novel "The incredible book-eating boy". This has been a great start to our writing units as the children love the concept of this book and we even found a suitcase filled with nibbled pages and gobbled corners. We love that the children use the skills within the lesson to inspire their writing and contribute towards an epic whole class model.

Topic/Geography
Our topic this term is Egypt and we have explored continents and replayed their favourite year 2 song! We have used maps to identify the northern and southern hemispheres as well as understanding what an equator is. Our knowledge of maps helped us to recognise the hot, dry and barren climate of Egypt and its desert biomes that many creatures find difficult to live in if it weren't for the amazing River Nile. We can't wait to learn more!

Maths
In maths, we have become Rekenrek super stars. We used this key mathematical tool to help us revise our number bonds to 10 and 20. Then we began to bridge over ten and use the Rekenrek to recognise how numbers can be partitioned differently to help make our sums easier to work out!

Spelling
In year 3, we love to see great spelling. Each week we practice a different sound pattern or skill and practice sounding them out, spelling them and then using them within a sentence. Here are some pictures of us practicing some key words with O spelling but U sound.

Year 1 Newsletter

 What a fantastic start to Year 1 we have had!  Our first two weeks have been filled with forest scavenger hunts, learning about our changemakers, Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, experimenting with new art skills and much much more!  We are so proud of how the children have settled into their new routines and lessons. They have been amazing!

'What is a forest?' scavenger hunt. 

Creating washes using power paint for the background of our portraits

1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th...

Using ordinal number to describe our colour preferences. 

'Red is my 3rd favourite colour.'

Year 6 Newsletter

Persevering Pupils! Super students! Chuffed children!  Three alliterated phrases to reflect the fantastic start that Year 6 has made to the new term. Each class started the new school year by studying their artist (the person who changed the world and whom each class is named after).  Both English and art lessons were filled with enthusiasm and curiosity as we wrote biographies and learnt about the techniques of drawing and painting. We think you will agree from the photo that all children completed work to be proud of but, as teachers, we were most proud of the resilience and perseverance that each and every child demonstrated on their journey.  Science also got off to an impactful start as we made 'blood soup' to help to embed our knowledge of the composition of blood as we began to learn about the role and function of blood and blood vessels.  However, without a doubt though, the highlight of the first fortnight had to be the trip to Harlow Outdoors.  We were blessed with sunny weather and sunny dispositions as the children rock climbed, paddle boarded and mountain boarded.  What a great way for all the teachers to get to know the children.

Our first week in Beatles Class

Welcome to year 3 Beatles Class! What an epic first week back filled with exciting activities and lessons around our "global changemaker" The Beatles. 

Oracy and drama
To start off, we explored what makes someone a changemaker and used this knowledge to help us research important information about The Beatles. 

We worked in small groups to research an individual member of the band and create a small speech about their importance within the band and how they helped to change the music industry. We were all encouraged to present in a unique way. As a result of this, our presentations were all unique, some of us used different speakers, some spoke as a whole group and some of us even added drama. It was great and we became experts on our changemaker. 

Music
We couldn't learn about The Beatles without listening to their songs and practicing it ourselves! We listened to "yellow submarine" and used paint to represent the notes, rhythm and pace of the music through a variety of brush strokes and marks.

We used Boomwhackers (musical percussion tubes) to understand how notes are used in music and the different sounds they can make. To test the notes we practiced banging them with our hands, on our knees, on the ground, walls, tables and a variety of different surfaces to see how the sound can be changed. After experimenting, we got into groups and wanted to see how we could order these notes into groups ranging from the deepest sound to the highest. 

Boomwhackers was a great introduction to getting into and understanding music. This led to us understanding composition and how to create our own rhythms through a variety of claps and rests. 

Art 
During our first week back, we wanted to create art pieces that were inspired by our global changemakers. We practiced sketching skills such as: using a pencil to draw facial features; sketching circles and how to position facial features on a face shape using grid lines.

We also practiced with acrylic paint things such as:

• what happens when you add more water 
• Wet vs dry paint brushes
• brush strokes
• mark making
• creating textures
• Colour mixing

These skills helped us to create a final piece of one of our chosen Beatles member ready for display around our classroom!

Pen pals
To end our week we were introduced to our class post-box and we were lucky enough to each receive a letter from a pen pal all the way from Alabama, America! We are so excited to write them letters as you can see from our faces.