Year 2 Newsletter

 

This week year 2 kick-started their new topic with a trip to Australia in 1770. We travelled by boat and imagined we were convicts who had been caught and sentenced to 7 years in prison in Australia. We found out that many people couldn't afford to get home and so made a life there.

In writing we are looking at letters from unhappy crayons, inspired by The Day the Crayons Quit. we began by playing the emotions game. Our teacher gave us a word (for example, annoyed or excited) and we had to show that emotion on our face. 

We then imagined how each crayon was feeling in their letter using the feelings words from earlier in the lesson. We roleplayed as the crayons and our partners interviewed us.

In our World Views lesson we explored how different colours depict different moods. We discussed how different colours make us feel different things. We were given feeling words and we mixed paint to create a colour that reminded us of that feeling.

Year 4 Newsletter

Wow! What a fantastic week year 4 have had.

Last week Year 4 set of on their school trip to Mersea. All of the children exceeded expectations and threw themselves into every activity. The children engaged in thrilling activities, such as rock climbing and archery, where they challenged themselves and many were surprised with what they could achieve! Well done to all of those children.

The children who stayed at school had a fantastic experience creating tie dye t-shirts, Tudor roses and learning all about Henry the 8th's wives. We were shocked at how brutal Henry really was! They also enjoyed learning how to play rounders and were taken to competition where all of them excelled! Well done!

Year 6 Newsletter

 Year 6 have come back to school energised, positive and ready for their final term at Windhill21.

We have started a new unit of work in English, looking at 'Disruption of the Norm'. Using everything from Orwell's famous opening line to 1984, "It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen...," to Lucy disappearing into an ordinary wardrobe - and ending up in Narnia - as inspiration, we are thoroughly enjoying describing our portals to another mysterious, fantastical place and taking our readers on quite the journey! 

In Science, we have begun to investigate Evolution. This week, we began to understand Darwin's work on this subject, and are really looking forward to further investigating the concept of 'inheritance' - and understanding which features our parents have passed onto us.

Our French lessons are preparing the year group for both our trip to France in a few weeks, and for the French Week those staying in school will enjoy. The children are becoming very proficient in ordering different foods for different meals, and understanding French grammar to make their sentences longer and more sophisticated. We also have some very adventurous eaters, who are looking forward to try lots of different French cuisine - and certainly plenty of French cheese!

We have also continued to sing our hearts out as we prepare for the 02 trip next Thursday - we are confident we will be the most melodious school in the building!

Of course, all the children are also preparing for their SATs - and in a calm, positive atmosphere. This work is also excellent preparation for the next step in their academic journey, as they ready themselves for secondary school.

Well done to year 6 - as always, so hard working, so positive and so enthusiastic about all you do.

Nursery Newsletter

What a great start we have had to the summer term!

Our new summer term topic is 'Minibeasts'.  The children have been very excited exploring our new role play area - 'Minibeast Investigation Lab' using magnifying glasses to look closely at the different minibeasts found in there.

The children have been looking closely at a number of different types of minibeasts with their teachers and, using talk, have been naming and describing the selected minibeasts.  They were then asked to choose 1 or 2 of their favourite minibeasts and explain to us why they were their favourites.

On our tuff spot the children had natural materiels to explore adn were encouraged to create their own minibeasts from the resources.

For our SCARF (Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship) lesson this week we started looking at how we can look after ourselves and stay healthy by thinking of the importance of washing hands.  We asked the questons, When do we wash our hands?; Why do we wash our hands?; and What might happen if we didn't wash our hands?  We demonstrated how germs can easily pass from one person to the next by passing around the circle a teddy bear covered in sand (fake germs) and how the sand came off the bear onto everyone's hands.  We then had a lovely time learning how to wash our hands properly with soap, e.g. washing between our fingers, around the base of the thumb, on the back of our hands, around our wrists and washing our fingernails.

In our RAW (RE lessons) we have started a new topic of Stories from around the world.  This week we looked at the famous Aesop's Fable of 'The Hare and the Tortoise', thinking about how the tortoise won the race by not rushing and being careful and slow and steady.  A helpful moral for all of us in our daily lives these days, to take time over the things we do to ensure success.

Year 1 Newsletter

 Year 1 have started the summer term with a little trip to the seaside!  For our poetry writing, we have been using our imaginations and all our senses in our seaside experience days.  Over two days, we went on imaginary visits to the seaside to help us collect vocabulary for our poetry writing. We ‘arrived’ at the seaside and took off our shoes and socks off so that we could ‘feel’ the sand beneath our feet!  We acted out different seaside activities such as walking across the sand, building a sandcastle, collecting shells and pebbles, licking delicious ice-creams and smelling the wafts of fish and chips.   We also watched a virtual seaside walk and listened to lots of different seaside sounds. We ‘paddled’ in the cold sea, shivering as we dipped our toes in the chilly water, feeling the waves splash our legs and noticed that the pebbles were really shiny in the water.  We'll use all our fantastic vocabulary to write our own seaside poems! 

    For this half terms world view lesson, we have been thinking about sounds that we like.  After doing a 'guess the sound' quiz and sharing our favourite sounds, songs and music in circle time, we explored the sounds that the different percussion instruments make.  We chose one we liked and in our groups we used symbols to create a short piece of music.  We performed them to the rest of the class!

 

In our maths lessons we have been doubling and halving and in our first topic lesson, we put our geographers hats on and thought about the question: Should we go to the seaside?

Yes we should go to the seaside because... we can swim in the sea, go surfing, relax and have some peace, have an ice cream and have fun building sand castles!

                                                     

We're not sure if we should go to the seaside because... there are dangerous things on the sand and in the water, you might drop rubbish and it might go in the sea, it is fun but you might go in the sea without an adult and get sucked in by a wave.

                                                     

No we should not go to the seaside because... you could get pinched by a crab, a gull might sweep past and snap your food up,  you might hurt your feet on a stony beach, if we leave rubbish animals can eat it and get really sick. 

                                                     

  

Year 3 Newsletter

 Year 3 Newsletter

Writing

Today in writing, we put ourselves in Lucy’s shoes. It was the middle of the night and not a soul was awake, but we heard noises. Hustling and bustling noises. Creeping and prowling noises. Yowling and yapping noises.

Using a range of night-time sounds, a lightening machine and dramatic midnight images we were able to feel how Lucy felt within our story. We acted out how our bodies feel when we are anxious or scared but also what we might do to reassure ourselves in this situation like cuddling our favourite teddy!

PE

Exciting news, we have started our summer PE unit of dance! This week we have explored how we can use our bodies to interpret different creatures throughout the Amazon rainforest from the tiny ant to the soaring birds in the sky. 

Science

This term we are finishing our unit on rocks. We investigated the surrounding landscape of Windhill21 to understand the importance that the soil has and what it is made from. We found many interesting things such as; different types of rock, water, many creatures alive and dead including plants. 

Year 5 Newsletter

 We have had a busy first week back in Year 5! 

This week the children started writing their own narrative story based off of Katherine Rundell’s ‘The Explorer’. The children have shown some great skill in their writing and have been able to create some really powerful similes and metaphors in their work. 

In addition, the children have been continuing to learn breakfast vocabulary in French and have been able to become super fluent in order to play a competitive game of four in a row. We hope to improve our french language further and introduce restaurant role play!

We were super lucky with the weather this week, so Year 5 managed to get outside to create some nature observational drawings. The children’s skill in this area was astonishing and the children really enjoyed getting outside for their learning.

Reception Newsletter

We've had a lovely week back at school and the children have really enjoyed being introduced to their topic of minibeasts. We've had snails in class and the children have tried their hand at some impressive sketching! The children also made their own minibeasts out of playdough and made their own fascinating books about their favourite tiny creature.

 

For our Worldviews lesson this half term, we asked ourselves about our favourite weather and why. To really throw ourselves into the question, we took the children into the immersion room and they imagined they were in the desert! We turned the temperature up high and surrounded the children with pictures of the Sahara and then a completely different, cold scene, with lots of snow ice and put the air conditioning on high! The children spent ages talking about their favourite weathers and then went on to make some beautiful collage suns, researched weather by looking at non-fiction books and wrote about their favourite weather and why.