13.7.23

We have had a fun week!

One thing we enjoyed was PE, because we used a cricket bat and tried to hit the ball.

Yesterday, we met our new Year R buddies, read them a story and got to know them a little bit. They were a lot of fun to play with!

In Geography, we have been researching a city of our choice in North or South America. We have used Google Maps to discover features like busy Times Square and the fact that Sao Paolo is the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere.

In English, we have been writing a suspense story. We did some drama to rehearse our stories and are working on short sentences to build suspense. We are writing over several days to write a longer story!

We have enjoyed seeing Year 6 perform Matilda, which was so funny and they did such a great job!

In Maths, we are finding coordinates on a grid and this has been a lot of fun.

We really loved meeting Lucy Strange, who told us about her writing and about historical fiction. We found out that children used to work jobs from the age that we are now! We have been inspired by historical settings to imagine our own fiction. 

15.6.23

What is the most interesting thing you learned or did this week?

Osakpemehe: For the 24 hour clock you have to take away 12 to get to some of the 12 hour clock times. I also like the new sand pit for OPAL.

Erin: Writing a setting and character description.

Toby: Learning a new song on the guitar called Amazing Grace.

Ella: Learning a dance to You Can't Stop the Beat for the summer fair!

Enzo: Playing matches in a cricket lesson.

Anna: Learning the summer fair dance.

Charlie: Playing cricket matches in PE.

Myla: Also playing cricket matches!

Illia: I finished my library book, Horrid Henry, and enjoyed it.

Josh: Playing Danish longball to practise rounders throws and catches.

Rosie: In reading practise, I like reading The Iron Man.

James: Hitting sixes in cricket.

Rupert: Playing football on the field at break!

Camellia: Doing the dance for the summer fair.

Henry: Playing cricket matches.

Lizzie: I liked umpiring the cricket matches.

Lucca: I also liked cricket matches.

Jack: I really liked making animal classification keys in science.

Aida: Playing a song on the guitar as a group. 

Mollie: Playing Eye of the Tiger on the guitar.

Arrietti: Planning a setting description in English.

Sully: Learning Hall of the Mountain King on the guitar.

Zuha: Going onto the field at breaktime.

Joshua: Playing Hall of the Mountain King as a duet with Sully.

Eddie: Playing football on the field!

8.6.23

We have started our new topics and are very excited!

In RE, we have learned about achievements and milestones, and identified which ones we have had.

We have started learning new songs in guitar lessons playing Eye of the Tiger and Star Wars. We then joined in as a whole class with our teacher, Buster!

On our DT day, we learned how to make a torch! First, we made a circuit and then put it into a decorated cardboard tube. We chose our specific clients and specialised our torches for them. 

We have started a new book in English called Krindlekrax and are starting the term with a character description of the main character.

We have also started a new book in reading practice, The Iron Man. We have started to work on predicting and inferring from the first chapter already.

We have a lot to look forward to this term, including Sports Day, which we have been practising for!

18.5

We have been writing a story in English about Ahmet, the boy at the back of the class in our class read, who sadly had to leave Syria because of war and make the deadly, heartbreaking, treacherous journey to the United Kingdom. In our writing, we have been using a lot of features, such as expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials.

In PE, we have played a cricket match between four teams. We will continue this next week as well. We will also be getting ready for Sports Day.

We have been learning all about money in maths and have had a fun time starting this with Mr Godden! 

We have learned so much about Ramadan and Eid in RE; this week we compared them to other religious festivals. We discussed its similarities to Easter, which is also a celebration at the end of a long fast.

In Science, we have started learning about living things and habitats. We have sorted animals into different classifications and are also going to look at different leaves.

In guitar, we have continued to learn how to play songs from films.

11.5

These are our favourite things that we have learned and done this week:

Using new charcoals and coloured pencils to practise our sketching in art.

Working on detailed drawings of flowers and plants in art.

Learning all about decimals in maths.

Going on a walk to the woods and looking at the layers of the forest and seeing how our local woodland is used.

Taking quizzes on the independent books we are reading and seeing our points grow!

Going to the library every Friday and getting out new books!

27.4.23

This week, we enjoyed learning:

How to play a cricket match

Bowling in cricket

Hundredths in fraction and decimal form

Hurdles

Film songs on the guitar

Changing colours on photos

Names of classroom objects in French

More about The Boy at the Back of the Class, especially writing a poem about the boy being looked at in the shape of an eye

All about Eid and Ramadan

The layers and locations of tropical rainforests

20.4.23

This term, we are excited to learn about:

Rainforests

Cricket

All of our PE being on the field

Animals and Habitats

Our book The Boy at the Back of the Class

So far, we have learned:

A song called 'Drunken Sailor' on the guitar

Tenths in decimals

Celebrations and we came up with our own ideas for a new celebration

New common exception words

Sprinting in athletics

Words in French for classroom items

Inferences about characters

30.3.23

We have finished learning about fractions and enjoyed it a lot! Next, we will look at decimals.

In English, we loved making crafts and then writing instructions. Next term, we will be reading a chapter book and are so excited!

In history and reading practise, we have learned about the Greeks. We enjoyed acting out the Trojan War!

We have been enjoying making sculptures in the style of Yinka Shonibare and will finish adding patterns tomorrow!

We have loved all of our scientific investigations around sound.

Everyone has worked so hard and is looking forward to a restful and fun Easter holiday!

23.3.23

Some of our favourite things from the last couple of weeks have been:

Mollie: I enjoyed junk modelling in English!

Charlie P: Junk modelling in English!

Bella: Learning how to make cookies in DT.

Enzo: Practising shooting in our lacrosse lesson.

Rosie: Lacrosse lessons!

Toby: Learning the song Neoclassic Picking on the guitar.

Osakpemehe: Learning what makes a sound louder in science!

Sully: I liked the British Museum Virtual Visit we did about Greek temples.

Illia: Adding fractions in maths.

Erin: Making cookies with Miss Llewellyn.

Arrietti: Adding fractions!

Jack: Reenacting the Trojan War in our history lesson.

Lizzie: Learning different types of running in health related fitness.

Lucca: Reenacting the Trojan War in our history lesson.

Zuha: Learning about different Greek myths.

Joshua: Learning new songs in guitar.

Ivy-Rae: Times tables practise on the ipads.

Henry: Adding fractions in maths.

Josh: Sprinting techniques in health related fitness.

Anna: Junk modelling in English!

Archie: In science I liked learning that sounds are vibrations.

Myla: Making cookies in DT.

Eddie: Playing duets on the guitar.

Camellia: Learning how to add fractions in maths.

Emily: Making cookies in DT.

Lexi: Junk modelling in English.

Ella: Playing Seven Nation Army on guitar.

James: The virtual tour of the British Museum and designing your own temple.

Aida: Playing Neoclassical Picking on guitar.

Charlie R: Practising shooting in lacrosse.

Rupert: Adding fractions in maths.

9.3.23

In DT we have been making cookies and learned that you can adapt your ingredients to make your cookie sweeter or spicier!

In History we have loved learning about the Greeks, especially Greek gods. The gods were created to correspond with different aspects of life.

In computing we have been typing our biographies of earth heroes, learning how to change font and create impact.

We have loved learning how to play songs from around the world and duets on our guitars!

We have worked hard on our times tables and are now practising answering questions to a timer, like in the multiplication check. We are also learning about fractions in maths!

In PE we are loving lacrosse and health related fitness, where we complete different activities in a circuit.

We think that myths are a lot of fun and have enjoyed them in reading practice lessons!

Finally, we have been working really hard on our class assembly in every spare minute we have, and are very excited to share it with you tomorrow!

9.2.23

We have been working hard to use multiplication and division to solve problems! We have also worked hard at our times tables and Mrs Irle is very proud of our TTRS work during the NSPCC competition, where our school came in 64th place out of over 2600 schools.

In science we have continued to learn about electricity and used bulbs, cells and wires to create circuits. We have also had an investigation about conductors and insulators. We also were excited to have a guest teacher this week who taught us about the symbols used in electrical diagrams.

Buster has been teaching us a duet in our guitar lessons, which we are continuing to enjoy!

In English, we are writing a story about a volcano, which is nearly finished. We have learned to use expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials, prepositional phrases and punctuation for direct speech in our stories.

Today and tomorrow we are having a day and a half of art, exploring a range of printing techniques!

In English we are writing about volcanoes and it has been a lot of fun! We have been using personification and prepositional and noun phrases to make our stories more interesting.

We have moved on to our 12 times tables. This can be a challenge but we are doing well!

In rugby we have played mini rugby. We also have practised passing the ball properly. We had a good time doing this!

In maths we are working on a range of multiplication and division methods. Many of us like the bus stop method for division!

We also have enjoyed both lunch clubs, magazine and art club.

We have learned a lot about electricity. Last week we learned about which materials can complete a circuit and conduct electricity. We also found that some materials are insulators and not conductors.

26.1.23

Here are the highlights of what Kingfisher class has enjoyed this week:

Mollie - We learned how to make a light bulb light up!

Jack - Our 11 times tables!

Osakpemehe - We have learned about the parts of a mountain - the summit, the foot and the slope.

Lucca - Our 11 times tables!

Enzo - I liked the bus stop method for division.

Ivy-Rae - We are starting to write our own story in English.

Toby - Our 11 times tables!

Erin - Writing a story in English!

Josh - Learning about a poet called Benjamin Zephaniah.

Arrietti - We have started a new book called When the Giants Stirred.

Rosie - in PSHE we have learned more of our rights.

Rupert - Learning about a poet called Benjamin Zephaniah.

Charlie P - Our 11 times tables!

Anna - I have enjoyed writing about Pompeii.

Eddie - Our 11 times tables!

Emily - in PSHE we have learned more of our rights.

Ella - In guitar we learned how to play Frere Jacques.

Bella - We are starting to write our own story in English.

Henry - Our 11 times tables!

Lexi - We are starting to write our own story in English.

Sully - In PE we are playing rugby!

Lizzie - We are learning a duet in guitar.

Illia - Learning about electricity in science.

Myla - Playing rugby!

Aida - Learning about mountains and volcanoes.

Charlie R - The bus stop method of division.

Camellia - In guitar we learned how to play Frere Jacques.

Joshua - The bus stop method of division.

12.1.23

In Reading Practice we have started to read poetry. We have really enjoyed the poems Tossing Pancakes, The Chinese Dragon and a selection of poems about winter. We have also read some poetry from a book by Michael Rosen, which is a selection of funny science based poems. The book is called Centrally Heated Knickers.

We have enjoyed a challenge using factors and factor pairs to help multiply longer numbers. We like drawing a factor bug to help us out!

In English and Geography we are learning all about volcanoes! This week we wrote an explanation report and we located volcanoes on maps.

We are reviewing our 5, 6 and 7 times tables and Mrs Irle is very impressed with our progress!

We love outdoor learning and made clay models of insects and woodland creatures this week! Last week we made shelters for wild animals.

PE this term is Rugby and orienteering, where we are reading map clues. Both are outside so we are getting pretty muddy this term!

In computing we are learning how to collect data.

This week we are very excited for Christmas and have made hats for our Christmas party! 

We are finishing up our DT topic and are excited to design and build models of Roman chariots.

We are continuing to be times tables superstars and had our best class score ever!

We answered our big history question, ' How did the Romans change Britain? ' We were able to choose how to show our answer to this question. Mrs Irle is really impressed by our creativity and knowledge!

We are all very excited for our Christmas holiday after a term of working very hard!

8.12.22

In DT we started to make prototypes of Roman chariots! We are excited to build the chariots next week.

We have also been working on enclosures for animals in a zoo based on their needs. We enjoyed researching what they will want and need! We are working in groups for this.

We are all really excited for our school trip tomorrow and have practised how we will walk sensibly at the train station. We know that we have to stay safe around trains and on roads.

In times tables lessons we have been doing our 8s. It was hard at first but we are getting better and better.

In PE we have worked on gymnastics and hockey. This week we passed and shot the ball in hockey and have done bridges, arches and shoulder stands in gymnastics.

We have read Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Mrs Irle was really impressed with our acting skills when we read the whole play together. 

It has been a lot of fun to learn some Christmas songs on our guitar! We sound great! 

Finally, in maths we have worked with negative numbers!

25.11.22

Here's what we enjoyed learning this week!

How the Roman baths work and the order of the different pools. - Mollie

A new song in guitar! - Eddie

Composition B on the guitar and some more Beatles songs in music. - Leon

Some new times tables facts like our 7s and 9s. - Zuha

Counting in our times tables. - Lucca

Times tables facts and spelling. - Illya

Writing a summary on our Leonardo da Vinci book. - James

How to write a persuasive letter. - Aida

Correcting our own work in English. - Osakpemehe

Our new times tables facts and methods. - Rosie

Editing for improvement in English. - Lexi

How to write a persuasive letter. - Arrietti

Songs by the Beatles in music. - Sully

I liked singing to the Beatles songs. - Charlie P

Writing a persuasive letter to stop the dad in Zoo from making bad noises! - Enzo

Writing a persuasive letter because it was fun and you got to stop the dad from doing bad things! We were making a change! - Myla

Friction with toy cars and ramps of different materials. - Ella

Balancing and turns in different ways in gymnastics. - Josh

Learning about how different religions can link and compare to each other. - Lizzie

Forces, twists and different turns in our fun science lessons! - Jack

17.11.22

One really exciting thing this term is that we have Friday music lessons where we are learning ABBA songs! The main song we are learning to sing is Mamma Mia, but we have also enjoyed listening to and comparing Dancing Queen and The Winner Takes It All. We were excited to also see footage of ABBA Voyage, which looks very realistic in our opinion!

In DT we have started to research the lives of inventors of cars and batteries. We will use this research to inform our making of a Roman chariot.

In History we continue to learn about the Romans. We have compared Roman and Celtic housing. This week we became archaeologists and dug up some artefacts and used them to learn about Roman society. 

We enjoyed learning about area and used our knowledge to draw pictures and calculate their area in our books. We have now gone on to study multiplication and division. This week we are looking at our 3 and 6 times tables. Our 6 times tables song is to the tune of Shake It Off!

Our teachers are so impressed with our guitar skills. We are learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and other songs. We have worked so hard on playing songs that include string changes. We are learning a new song called Composition B, which will be a good tune to play with Buster providing a harmony. We are also learning more about music in Computing where we are learning about digital music and creating different rhythms at different tempos, changing the BPM to see how that impacts the feel of a song. 

Some of the children in the class are organising a sweepstake for the World Cup! We are excited to see who wins!

20.10.22

We have had a great Term 1!

Some of our highlights included guitar lessons with Buster because we learnt a lot of new songs on a new instrument. Mrs Irle thinks we are getting really good! One song we are very good at is the James Bond theme.

We loved playing netball with Miss Dodsworth, especially because we all got a turn to try out each part of it and play all of the different positions.

One of our favourite lessons was junk modelling in English! Everyone in Kingfisher class is so creative and worked together to create a beautiful display.

History has been a lot of fun because we have been choosing our learning and deciding how to demonstrate our knowledge in our books. We also enjoy that this unit helps us to review some information about the Celts and add in information about the Romans, which is really exciting. We will continue the Romans next term too!

We liked learning about Henri Rousseau and recreating his famous painting 'Surprised'. We have also followed tutorials to draw toucans and tigers, which look fantastic.

We are looking forward to half term and then returning to school to continue in more of our fantastic learning!

13.10.2022

In Kingfishers this week we have been working hard on our times tables! We have challenged ourselves and done a great job of our four times tables and done a lot of dancing to the Numberblocks version of this!

We have learnt a whole song with Buster, the theme from James Bond. We are getting really good at the guitar!

In PE we wrote and played our own invasion games! Now we have a lot of activities for the next time we have a rainy day on PE day.

We finished reading The Tin Forest and have even written several diary entries by the main character in the book.

In Science we have continued our learning on states of matter, watching wax turn into a liquid and back into a solid when the temperature is changed.

We have moved into addition and subtraction and are practicing our exchanging in maths.

What a great week!

06.10.2022

We have made some collages based on the painting 'Surprised' by Henri Rousseau. It was a lot of fun! We used different media to create different patterns and textures. These were cut out and made into a collage. We placed paper leaves on top to emulate the leaves in the original painting. Henri Rousseau never visited a jungle and never left Paris so a lot of his work comes from research and his own imagination. 

In PE we have continued netball and this week we started to shoot and played some matches as well! Yellow team won but we all had fun. 

Every morning we have been working on a Lego challenge this week to build a sturdy bridge. Our record is a bridge that can hold 26 dictionaries! Next week we will continue to build but using paper rather than Lego. 

We loved learning more songs on the guitar using more of the strings of the guitar than just string 6! Everyone is playing different songs, some of which are familiar and some of which are brand new to us!

In English we have been acting out parts of our story. I have been really impressed by the acting and storyteller voices I have seen in the class and we'll be sure to do many more drama exercises in the future. Thank you also to all who sent in recycling for our junk modeling. Our classroom has been transformed into the Tin Forest!

In French we continue to learn our numbers to 20 and we also can now say how old we are in French.

We are enjoying to learn about the Roman invasion of Britain with a rock/paper/scissors battle that showed us how the Romans invaded Britain and what methods they used. We are also beginning to choose how to present our learning in history and are enjoying a bit more freedom. Going forward, we will continue to have more and more choices on how to demonstrate what we have learnt. 

22.09.2022

We have had another fantastic week in Kingfisher class with a lot of new learning!

In maths we have been learning how Roman numerals use letters instead of our regular numerals. We learnt that the order of Roman numerals is also different with the order impacting whether you add the numbers or take them away.

We have been working really hard on our 3 times tables too! In our times tables we are always setting goals to improve and I have been so impressed by how well everyone has aimed high to meet their own targets.

In our rights assembly we saw some sign language and tried out some signs ourselves! We thought this was a lot of fun and discussed how important sign language is.

In English we have been working on our predicting and inferring skills– we wrote a poem together inferring the man’s feelings in our book and then performed it! 

In PE we have continued with netball and cricket. We have done activities to learn how to field in cricket and attacking strategies in netball. 

In music we have continued with the guitar and looked at how to play some other songs than the one we played last week. It was a lot of fun! 

In science we arranged counters to show how particles are arranged and bonded in different states of matter and discussed the properties of solids, liquids and gases. 

Have a fantastic weekend and I'm looking forward to another great week next week!

Class Blog from the Whole Class

Hello everyone!

We have had a fantastic start back at school and everyone has been learning a lot!

PE has been a real highlight as we are loving our extra hour this term with Miss Dodsworth! We are doing netball, cricket and dance, so there is something for everyone to enjoy. In dance we have tried out some dances from around the world, including a ceilidh, salsa, and a Bollywood routine. We have also practised passing and defending in netball. 

We absolutely loved our first guitar lesson with Buster! This week we learnt how to hold a guitar properly, which parts there are, and a little rock tune. Everyone did such a great job and we are really looking forward to it again next week.

In English we have started a new story, the title of which will be revealed soon. We have been illustrating the text and writing predictions of what may happen next.

We had a great time in History learning when the Romans were in Britain, putting it onto a toilet roll timeline to see just how long ago it was and how it fits into our prior knowledge of historical events. 

We have also discussed the Zones of Regulation, and which zones and feelings characters from the film Matilda are in at various points, and the causes of them being in those zones. We have regular check ins about our own personal zones as well, which helps us to consider how to self regulate.

Everyone has done a fantastic job this week and I am looking forward to continuing with all of our exciting learning next week!