We have now completed the final week of the Autumn half term with a host of curriculum aspects to talk about. This half term has presented challenges for all which have been tackled well by everyone. The perseverance, hard work and understanding shown throughout this period has been amazing and makes me proud to be part of this school community. The children return on November 2nd using their current start and finish timings.
Curriculum:
Reception classes have been exploring healthy lifestyles through the foods we eat, physical activity, sleep as well as our overall mindset. The children discussed in detail why some foods were good for us to eat daily and why other foods were only good to eat on special occasions.
While we enter the half term break, where Halloween is just around the corner, the year 1 pupils have been exploring different textures, shapes and traditions. They done this by decorating pumpkins using colouring pencils, tissue paper and other collage materials. The children loved it! They have also decorated masks in the same way.
During this week year 2 have shown how much the children have improved in their studies since the start of September with a focus on assessments. All children scored better than they did when we conducted the assessments at the start of the year. With October bringing the focus around to Black History Month, the year 2 children have been focusing on famous people such as Elisha Ongere and Mary Seacole. During art lessons they have been looking at the work of Elisha Ongere and the children have used this as inspiration and created their own pieces of art work to celebrate African art. The children have also been reflecting on their Geography topic which was ‘Where Do We Live’. They were fantastic with the L (what they have learnt) part of the KWL (what they Know, what they Want to know, what they have Learnt). They recalled all of their learning and even related it to the explanation text they’d written about British Values in Literacy.
Within year 3, they have planned and written a Rainforest Travel Brochure. The children were able to write imaginatively, introducing descriptive phrases and adverbs of time to hold the reader’s attention.
Our remote learning platform has been underway for the past week and has been very successful in engaging the children and the participation in the various activities. The teachers have been working hard to mark and return individual feedback to those children. As part of the Year 4 geography topic, they designed posters of volcanoes. They made paper hats for their art lesson at home. For science, they learnt about the water cycle and designed posters and made their own lakes in the bags to carry out an investigation to learn about the process of the water cycle.
Year 4 have also started a new focus in PE and it appears they are enjoying the first hockey lesson. They were excited to learn skills like how to dribble the ball and participated in some games too.
While studying Art and DT, year 5 have been exploring nature and sketches as part of Black history Month. They have also designed and created puppets that has been cross curricula.
This week children in year 5 were also able to write in depth, emotional piece during Literacy, where they wrote letters and dairy entries in role. Within mathematics during reasoning week, Y5 classes were tackling problems, gaining new skills which allowed them to become more confident mathematicians
Year 6 have been doing exciting experiments within science. They were covering microorganisms in science. They had an exciting lesson having ‘yeast races’ to see how yeast makes dough rise. They found that adding sugar and having a warmer environment, both made dough rise faster.
Daily Mile:
We have been conducting the daily mile for the past academic year and have refined it even further with a yellow trail in the playground, which you may have seen. Throughout the trail there will be key bits of geographical information informing children of the distances to places they may know around the local, regional and national areas. This will help their understanding of distance and Geography as well as encourage more talk about the trail, please speak to your children about this and the key information they may have seen.
Home reading:
Reading in general is very important and raises achievement in all other subjects using the skills learnt. Developing a love for reading will aid in your child’s future development in this area and others. A letter was sent home detailing home reading expectations, a copy of this letter can be found below.
Home Reading – LH Letter to parents Oct 2020
I have been immensely proud of how well the school community have pulled together in making this term, with all of the challenges, go smoothly. The dedication and realisation shown in regards to the ‘new norm’ measures has been greatly appreciated. I wish all of our community a restful, happy and well deserved half term break.
Sincerely,
Mr Jacob