Year 3 Newsletter

Year 3 Newsletter

Science
This term in science, we have been exploring and experimenting with how light is made. We have used our immersion room to help use investigate a range of different materials to understand the meaning of the scientific terms: transparent, translucent and opaque. We also explored how shadows can change based n distance from a light source and how this affected the darkness of the shadow.

Writing
We are becoming global changemakers and using our voices to prepare speeches ready for our Windhill21 speech writing unit. We are advocates for the oceans and fighting against ocean pollution. It has been a great unit for research and inspiring us to call people of all generations to action to protect our world!

Celebration of work
This week we were lucky enough to be visited by the adults of year 3 and celebrate all the work and learning they have done so far this school year. We shared our artwork, published work, books both old and new and even performed a taster of our Plastic speeches to the attending adults.

We are incredibly proud of all they have achieved and loved seeing them sharing their achievements with you all. Well done year 3!

Nursery Newsletter

What a wonderful few weeks we have had in nursery.  The children have been really enjoying their traditional tales topic and have been focussing o the ‘3 Billy Goats Gruff’ and ‘Little Red riding Hood’. 

We have been using the junk material to build the Trolls bridge, and we have been comparing the differences in size, big, medium and small.  The children were able to demonstrate their knowledge of size comparisons with a simple sorting activity and various objects that were big, medium and small.

We have continues our link to maths through the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood, playing a dice and ‘cakes’ game with Little Red’s basket she was taking to her Granny’s house.  The children had to try and subitize (recognise without counting) how many spots were on the dice a then find the corresponding number of cakes to put in the basket.  They continued doing this until they had 10 cakes for granny!

In our SCARF (Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship)  sessions we have continued to look at the book ‘Elmer’ to think about how having differences is good and that all our families are different.  We have been celebrating our friends and the different skills and abilities we each have and learning that how to include everyone.

For our Religions Around the World lessons we have been celebrating Chinese New Year.  We had many activities to help celebrate this including making dragons for dancing and having a go at eating noodles with chopsticks!  We also looked at the Persian New Year, Nowruz, and how this is celebrated.  The Persian New Year celebrates the beginning of spring so we looked at differences between Winter and Spring and thought about thee changes of the seasons.

Year 6 Newsletter

 Year 6 has had an amazing couple of weeks!  Inspired by Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, we have created and written our own unique narratives with monsters (encountered in dark alleyways, school corridors, underground sewers and forests to name but a few ideas)!  We are going to publish them this week because we are excited to share them with you when we have our open afternoon in a few weeks' time.  

Our passions have also been ignited during speech writing lessons as we have been understanding the issues behind Global Goal 11.4 and its aims to protect and safeguard the world's cultural heritage. In particular, we have been outraged that Greece's cultural heritage still lies in the hands of the British Government as it refuses to return the Parthenon Sculptures (also known as the Elgin Marbles) to Greece.  Every child in Year 6 has written a compelling speech as to why we all need to lobby our MPs and persuade the government to return the sculptures, friezes and carvings to their rightful home in Greece.  Sadly, there can only be one representative from each year 6 class on speech day, however we are proud every single pupil in year 6 and all children will be bringing their speeches home to deliver to you over the half term break.

Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 3 December 2004 {{cc-by-sa-2.0}} ---- Keywo

Last week, we were lucky to attend two virtual author events as part of the Festival of Literature (M G Leonard and Phil Earle).  Both writers were inspirational.  Not only did we learn about the process of writing but we were intrigued to discover how authors research material for their books (through films and practical experience). For Phil Earle this seemed to involve eating a lot of Frazzles!  For M G Leonard this has included developing a deep understanding of the conduct of insects and birdwatchers!  I don't think that we will ever look a ladybird in the same way again!

In Science we are nearing the end of our unit on electricity which has 'sparked' lots of enthusiasm from the children, particularly in looking the practical implications of circuits and switches in the home, as well as the impact of adding or removing different components from the circuits that we have been making in class.  We have some budding future scientists in Year 6!

Talking of scientists, the children have been fascinated to learn about the brilliance of Ancient Greek engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, inventors and doctors.  Do not be surprised if you hear the word 'Eureka' every now and again as we recall the marvel that is Archimedes, the inventor of the claw that stopped invading ships in their tracks!

We have had a great half term, signified by the children's love of learning!  Well done Year 6.  

Year 4 Newsletter

Year 4 have been extremely busy over the last few weeks!

In writing we began our new speech unit where we are focussing on the extreme damage caused by air pollution. To help us write or speeches we researched about air pollution, only to uncover horrifying facts and figures. We then worked in pairs and trios to order the facts and think of fronted adverbials to use with them. The children have used their passion and concern on the topic to help craft their amazing speeches which they now will begin rehearsing (we cannot wait!).

In maths we have been learning about fractions and how we can spot them in everyday life, finding parts of different wholes all around us. This then helped us when learning about unit and non-unit fractions. The whole of Year 4 has been extremely motivated in this topic and have embodied all our agents here at Windhill21. Well done Year 4!

We were also lucky enough to be involved in the Festival of Literature, where we enjoyed our zoom calls with famous authors and illustrators. This even inspired some children to start writing their own novels or to illustrate their favourite book!

Year 1 Blog

This week in Year 1 we have been very busy!

In Maths we have been focusing on our number bonds to 10 by playing a fun shopping game!

In our Science topic 'Animals including Humans' we have been classifying animals and learning about the different characteristics on the animal groups.

In Art we have started creating our 3D African Masks. We created some 3D shapes to attach to our masks next week to build character to our masks such as eyebrows, mouth's and noses!

Year 2 Newsletter

 Year 2 have had a busy couple of weeks!

We have started a new unit in literacy looking at writing speeches all to do with our global goal 'No Hunger'. So far we have immersed ourselves with some experience days helping us to understand why this global goal is an issue not just around the world and our country but even within our own town! 

In Science we have been learning all about plants, becoming scientists and dissecting daffodils to discover the various parts of the plant! 

We have been learning all about Judaism in RE looking at several Jewish artefacts and discussing the story behind Passover. We even tried some Matzah (the bread that didn't rise) during one of our lessons!

Year 5 Newsletter

 Year 5 have had a very exciting week this week! We launched into our speech writing, focussing on women’s right to an equal education and the children have almost finished their passionate and persuasive speeches - it’s now time to start rehearsing! The children also had a great opportunity this week developing their cycling skills and we were very proud of all the children as by the end of the session, everyone’s confidence grew! In year 5, we also enjoyed our Zoom call with an author and illustrator, who focused of famous protests in history, from the festival of literature programme.