And tonight Matthew, we are AMELIA EARHART!

For history week, Butler class focused on learning about Amelia Earhart for our significant woman in history. We started the week off by reading about her in guided reading, learning that she shad never seen an aeroplane until the age of 12. When her father took her to an air show, she became besotted by planes and fast forward a number of years, many flying lessons and a career as a nurse, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Earhart vanished during her final venture to fly around the world with Fred Noonan. Despite not knowing how she died or specifically where, Amelia Earhart is remembered for her love of flying, determination for gender equality and perseverance. 

In our topic lesson, we plotted the flight that Amelia followed, from taking off in California to disappearing over the Pacific Ocean. She was so close to setting a new record! Having learnt so much about Amelia, we wrote a biography about her describing her childhood, her love of flying and then her disappearance. We finished off our learning about Amelia by sketching her plane and Amelia herself. The artwork produced was just SUPERB! 

Year 1 Newsletter

These past two weeks, Year 1 have loved learning more about life at the seaside. We've been sorting the physical and human features of coastal areas and we have begun to compare life at the seaside nowadays to in the Victorian times. We looked at the new school timeline and watched a fun video all about Magic Grandad who went back in time and visited a beach in the Victorian times. We even had a special treat and got to eat a Hokey Pokey! This is a type of ice cream from the 1900s when people ate it from a piece of grease proof paper. 

 

     

We also had a fantastic day last Monday when we all dressed up for World History Week. The children loved getting in to character as their historical people. We all talked about who we had researched and then wrote about them as well. It was a lovely day!

   

As well as all this, we discovered a dragon's egg on the school grounds! Much excited talk and lots of wonderful writing has been going on since our discovery. The children have made their own diary and are writing detailed accounts of how they felt when they saw the dragon's egg saw and what it looked like. We've been wowed by their writing!

          As scientists,  we has some very smelly learning last week, when we answered the big question...

What makes a fish, a fish?

We watched a video all about the incredible features of fish and what they use them for.  Then we made close observations of some real fish using magnifiers, finding all the different parts that we had seen on the video.   Finally, the children made careful drawings of the fish and labelled them with their special features, such as scales, fins and gills. 

 

Year 3 Newsletter

The children in Matisse and Riley Class have wowed us all in the last few weeks!

In English, the children have been tirelessly working as journalists, reporting on the mystery dragon egg that appeared in the school field last week. They've been learning how to write in a formal style and how to include quotes using direct and indirect speech. They even had a special visit from an expert Dragonologist, Dr Ragdon Dougan! 

On Monday, the children kicked off World History Week in style as they dressed to impress! We were blown away by their well-researched, well-rehearsed speeches and their incredible costumes. We all enjoyed listening to each other and learning about famous characters in history. 

 

      

As part of World History Week, the children have been delving into the swinging 60s with the Beatles. Inspired by the fantastical imagery of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds', the children have written their own imaginative version of the lyrics. We loved hearing their creative  

ideas, from candy floss skies to firework flowers. Their brilliant ideas were later brought to life by using pastels to create colourful album covers!

In Science, we've been learning all about light. We created our own pin hole boxes to investigate which materials are the most reflective. We learnt that we cannot see anything at all if we don't have any light! We've also been learning about the Earth's main natural light source: the sun! We discussed the positives and negatives of the sun and learnt how we should protect ourselves from harmful UV rays. 

In Maths, the children have been working hard to explore a range of strategies to find the difference. They've used column subtraction, bar models and equal difference to investigate a wide variety of word problems and challenges. 

In music, the children have been learning how music has changed over the years. We explored a range of musical genres such as: Renaissance, Modern, Soul and Pop. The children used their knowledge of music to identify which musical instruments we could hear in these genres and we discussed our favourite types of music and why. They really enjoyed learning Yellow Submarine by The Beatles!  They also had great fun learning how to dance Rock 'n' Roll to 'Rock around the Clock' by Bill Haley. 

On Friday, we also enjoyed sprinting around the field as part of The Daily Mile initiative. The children were buzzing with energy throughout! 

World History Day - Who are we?

 In Moore class we loved dressing up as inspirational historical figures.  Every one gave speeches explaining who they were, why they are inspirational and why they were chosen! 

Can you guess who we are? 

Roman soldier, Tutankhamen, Luke Harper, Cleopatra, Princess Dianna 

Year 4 newsletter

 What a week...!  Year 4 have been busy learning about ‘Women in History’ as our history week focus.  We focused on Anne Frank and Amelia Earhart in particular as well as Mary Anning and Marie Curie.

To start the week, we ordered the events surrounding Anne Frank in a timeline with real photographs to match - from this, we learnt of Anne’s tragic fate. We then looked at extracts of her diary and wrote our own to describe the secret annexe in which she hid for 2 years.  Finally, we made our own Anne Frank inspired artwork for our display. 

This week, we were also visited by ‘Retune’ who provided a workshop about mental health and suggested how we can look after our mental health with different activities such as listening to music, being outside in nature, exercising, painting or drawing and being with friends.  With Tom, we wrote our own song to prove it could be a 5 minute activity! 

Our busy week was topped off on Friday afternoon when we completed the daily mile as a year group. It was great fun to be outside in the sunshine and jogging (sprinting!) laps of the field. 

Olympic hero: Jesse Owens

 Today in Year 5, we learnt all about the famous Jesse Owens. In groups, the children were able to create a presentation about a certain part of Jesse Owens’ life, all the way from birth to post-Olympic career. The children were shocked to find that due to Jesse’s skin colour, he was often dismissed or refused things. For example: Hitler refused to shake his hand at the Berlin olympics. 

Dali class showed great compassion and interest in Jesse Owens’ life and we are looking forward to writing a biography on him later this week. 

Beatlemania at Windhill21

Today, Year 3 class celebrated the start of World History Week. The children were welcomed in by the well renowned band, The Beatles; classic English playwright William Shakespeare and the infamous pirate Anne Bonny. 

The children impressed us all with some amazing costumes and in depth speeches that they presented to the class. From Albert Einstein, Freddie Mercury and Boudicca we were in awe of all your hard work!

Our year group theme this week is the history of music. We delved into this with enthusiasm to explore

how music has changed over the years. We learnt a range of musical genres such as: Renaissance, Modern, Soul and of course Pop! We used our knowledge of music to identify what musical instruments we could hear in these genres, we even discussed our favourites types of music and why.

With the appearance of The Beatles today, it was clear we had to learn one of their well known and much loved songs, The Yellow Submarine. We enjoyed an end of the day sing song out in the sunshine and treated our parents to our best Beatles impressions. 

                       

                    Some children even taught to teach a 300 year old pirate how to take a selfie!
                                                  Well done Year 3, keep up the great work.

Music pun: What's an avocado's favourite music? Guac 'N' roll.