Year 6 newsletter

 What a fantastic return to school Year 6 have had! We were blown away by the passion and care each and every child had put into rehearsing their speech over the half term period. Our Global Goal focus is "Sustainable Cities and Communities: safeguarding and protecting the world's cultural heritage", and wow - the children have made the most considered, eloquent, and compelling arguments to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, and to act as protectors of a nation's culture and sense of self. Huge congratulations to both James Allen and Louis Blind, who will be representing Kahlo and Da Vinci at the South Mill Arts Centre on our Speech Night. 

We have kicked off a new writing unit on Greek Myths - focusing on the legendary tale of the brave Jason and his band of trusty Argonauts, who faced peril and challenge in their quest to retrieve the infamous golden fleece. The children are thoroughly enjoying both the story and the imaginative narrative we are creating as we go. We can't wait to share their final interpretations. 

Our half termly World View lesson had an interesting focus - does having more make you happier? What an interesting afternoon we had, discussing the implications of everything from defining 'more' to the implications of finance, love, support, working for joy or for money. As always, the children were thoughtful, mature and extremely confident working in their trios and sharing their thoughts. We constructed a recipe for happiness at the end of the lesson, and we think this is a good way to live our lives.

As ever, a week of hard work, lots of enthusiasm and high energy - well done to Year 6!

Year 2 newletter

 This week was kickstarted with the arrival of the duckling eggs for our science topic Lifecycles! The children were so excited to see the first few cracks appear and over the next few days we watched as the ducklings used all their strength to hatch out! We are keeping a duckling diary to closely observe the changes that we can see and they have already grown so much! 

The children have already had a duckling cuddle, but there will be more to come this week and we will even be swimming them! Stay tuned for the blog post! 

Not only did the ducks arrive, but we also had a week of performing our Global Goal speeches. All the children got up in front of their class and did a fabulous job of performing. Everyone did amazingly and should feel very proud of themselves! The children voted for the top 3 speech performers from each class and then they spoke again and the winners were decided by all the children in Attenborough and Greta. Congratulations to our finalists: Sebastian, Stella, Milla, Megan, Eesher and Archie!
 Well done to Stella and Archie for being our winners!

Year 2 Print the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru

 

 

Art – Printing       Summer term   Australia

After learning about the Great Barrier Reef in Geography, the children created underwater pictures.  They used a wash of Brusho for the background and then printed the coral on top.  They used pieces of lace and ribbon to make the prints and to add a third dimension they stuck a piece of ribbon onto their picture. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Uluru – The children learnt about the sacred rock called Uluru.  They used a watercolour wash to paint the background and added prints to create texture and shading. 

 

 

 

THANK YOU!

 Yesterday, the Global Goalkeepers dropped off all of your kind donations to the Bishop’s Stortford food bank, who were overwhelmed with the generous donations! Thanks to all of your brilliant support the Bishop’s Stortford food bank can pack up food parcels for those desperately in need! So, we want to say a massive thank you for your help!

Votes for Women!

 Year 5 this week have been examining multiple sources of evidence to understand the deeds that suffragettes committed in order to get the vote! 

Deeds not words, was a famous phrase used by the suffragettes. The children were shocked to learn about some of the actions the women took and were able to draw opinions on our key question, whether or not the suffragettes were clever or criminal. 

Holy Trinity Night Shelter (Year 4)

 Today we received a letter to say thank you for the donation to The Holy Trinity Night Shelter. We thought that all of year 4 would like to see it. Well done again! 

Homeless Shelter fundraising!

 Wow, what an amazing achievement from Year 4! After selling their brilliant artwork, the children have raised a massive £120 for The Holy Trinity Night Shelter. David and a volunteer from the shelter came to visit us today to speak about the night shelter and collect our donations of hygiene products, cans, packets of food and biscuits!  We surprised them with the cash donation which they were so pleased about! Look out in the newspaper for a mention of this event! 

Well done Year 4 😊

Year 1 Newsletter

Year 1 have been very creative over the past few weeks. Before half term, we embraced being artists and drew some detailed leaf pictures. We all had three attempts to make our drawings better and became 'critical friends' when we gave our classmates helpful advice on how to improve their work. Last week, we drew our fourth and final leaf, colouring it in by blending colours, being careful to use the exact colours that we could see when we inspected our real leaves through magnifying glasses. We then had a 'gallery walk', where we walked around the class, looking at everyone's art work and giving precise, positive feedback on their work. Mrs Smith and Mrs Witney were so impressed with the work that they have already hung all the pictures up around the class!

In addition to our wonderful art, we have been working very hard at our maths. We have continued to use cherry diagrams and tens frames to help us show the parts of a whole number and we have now progressed to writing these into bar models and number sentences. This has been a tricky concept, but all the children have worked hard and we are using speaking frames to remember how to work out the parts of a number. 

Our science unit about plants has been drawing to a close and one of our final lessons was to investigate if taller trees have wider trunks!  We worked in groups measuring the different types of trees on the school field.  We learned that the word 'circumference' is the length of the edge of a round shape like the trunk of a tree.  We measured the trees circumference with tape measures.  Then we measured the approximate height of the trees by walking away until we could see the very top of the crown and counting the distance back to the base of the trunk in pigeon steps.  Our results were a bit mixed between our groups and measuring was very tricky, some taller trees had the widest trunks but others didn't!  However we had great fun and loved learning some new skills!

  

We know that there was some discussion before half term about Mrs Moore cutting down the forest! Please do not be alarmed - this was just part of our topic work, as we discussed different reasons that people may want to cut down a wooden area! The children became wonderfully engrossed in the subject and we were having classroom debates and voting as to whether Mrs Moore should cut down the forest or leave it alone. After writing letters to Mrs Moore explaining how we felt and why she should or shouldn't consider cutting down the forest, you'll be pleased to know that we persuaded her to keep it and the forest is remaining where it is! Phew!

I am using My voice to save My planet

This morning, Rousseau class turned their science writes into speeches to persuade others to think about their actions that contribute towards climate change. They were amazing at putting the blame on the audience and really making each other think about the consequences of their actions.
We put into practise all the oracy skills we have learnt about projecting our voice, using eye contact, gestures and directing our speeches to our audience.

What would happen if all the ice on earth melted?

This week, Year 4 are writing their science writes. We were posed the question, ‘Could you survive without ice?’ We decided that actually yes we could live without ice cubes in our water and thought we could use wet paper towels instead of ice packs. However, when we realised the big picture, we found out there would be dramatic consequences! 

The rock in this picture represents Antarctica and the ice on top! As Miss Woodcock heated it with a hairdryer (the sun), the ice melted and the water ran into the sea at the bottom of the box. The blanket over the box represented the blanket of carbon dioxide over the earth caused by global warming. Using this image, we described the process of global warming. 

Save the sea!

In Dali class, we share a passion for doing all we can to save the planet. One topic we have recently been discussing is the damage that plastic is doing to our planet and oceans. We have spoken about the effects it has on both our water supply and the wildlife in the ocean.
A group of year 5 girls decided to take action and organise a cake sale for the charity Plastic Oceans.
They managed to raise money through selling cakes, bracelets and artwork to the rest of the school. Everyone in Dali class is super proud of them. Well done girls!

Year 5 Newsletter

What a great week in Year 5!  One of our highlights has been writing persusive leaflets in science in order encourage others to make wise choices when it comes to packing a packed lunch.  "Don't let your lunch cost of the Earth" is our message.  Look out for leaflets in packed lunch boxes and around town as we spread the word!  In English, we have been looking at how to write formally in the context of persuasion.  Interestingly, using long words and avoiding contractions can make us sound both clever and persuasive at the same time (even if others don't even understand what it is that we are trying to persuade them to do!).   Following the theme of Global goal number 5, gender equality, we have been planning and researching out topic write.  Many of us were particularly outraged to discover that the prize money in the women's FA cup was 100 times smaller than the prize money for men!  We have also really enjoyed exploring 3D shapes in maths, particularly, understanding the origin of cube numbers and understanding the differences between cubes and cuboids.

Votes for Women!

Year 5 this week have been examining multiple sources of evidence to understand the deeds that suffragettes committed in order to get the vote!
Deeds not words, was a very famous phrase used by the suffragettes. The children were shocked to learn about some of the actions the women took and were able to draw opinions on our key question,  whether or not the suffragettes were clever or criminal!   

Year 1

Year 1 have had fun looking at African masks this week. They took part in some observational drawings using oil pastels. The children looked very carefully at each mask, identifying the correct colours and features and representing them in their art work.

We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Miss Hayden to Hepworth Class. Miss Hayden will be part of Year One all the way through to June.

Year 3 Newsletter

We've had a very hectic but exciting week since coming back after half term!  For Parliament Week we've written some powerful poetry with a focus on climate change in the Arctic.  The children performed them with heartfelt passion and Natalie and Alice were brave enough to perform theirs in assembly to the whole school!   Continuing our journey through Ancient Egypt saw the children acting out the mummification process - they loved hooking the brain out through the nose of the pretend deceased and taking out the organs to put in canopic jars!  We also had a visit from a fabulous expert, Egyptologist Carol Harper, who happens to be the mum of Mrs Rogers in year 5!  With her expert help, some children acted out the myth surrounding the god Osiris and how he was killed by his brother.  We all got to smell some of the herbs and grains from Egypt that they would have grown in the ancient times. The children weren't very impressed with the smell!  We looked closely at some amazing artefacts and studied art work on papyrus.  Thanks to some brilliant questions from the children we found out all sorts of fun facts such as the sorts of foods they ate, why the dead were mummified and what their toilets were like!  To top it off we also made some delicious houmous for our design and technology unit this term.  After following the basic recipe to make it and tasting it, the children then chose a herb or spice to add to their portion.  There were mixed reviews but nearly all the children tried it and we're really proud of them!

Year 6 Newsletter

Wow! What a first week back after half term! The children were thrown into Parliament week this week by being asked to form their own political parties and write manifestos to explain what the aims of their parties were. These were then presented to the whole school during Friday morning assembly where by the rest of the school then voted for their favourite party throughout the day. All the children had fantastic ideas to improve our school and to help our impact on climate change. The winning party was 'Open arms party'. We will be hearing more from them soon!

As well as being extremely busy organising and promoting their parties this week, the children have also been writing their own protest poetry about climate change. All of the children wrote very powerful poems which we hope to present to a wider audience soon. Well done to Hanako, Declan and Kian who performed their poems in front of the school during Friday afternoon assembly.