Newsletter

Nursery

This half term the Nursery children have been busy making pancakes, dressing up as their favourite book character and as superheroes. 

We celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite book characters and voting for our favourite book that we have read in Nursery. The book with the most votes was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 

We have been learning about plants and finding out what a plant needs to grow and how we look after them. We have planted mustard seeds and we are looking forward to watching them grow. 

In Maths we have been learning about repeating patterns and shapes and finding items around the classroom that are long and short. 

The children are enjoying being out in the garden in the warmer weather. Please could you make sure that your child's jumper is labelled.

Reception

In Literacy we have been reading ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. We went on our own bear hunt around the school, looking under, above, on, and in different places. We acted out the story in some very messy settings!

In Maths we have been finding out about doubles. We painted markings on one side of a butterfly, then repeated them on the other side to show the double. We can show doubles on our fingers and some of the doubles we can remember all by ourselves from playing games in class.

For Expressive Art and Design, the children have had lots of opportunities to create masterpieces! They have enjoyed creating art with money, by coin rubbing to create pictures as well as using their imagination to create their own stories (Helicopter stories) which were acted out by the rest of the class. They also worked with KS1 & KS2 to create doves for Peace Day which were hung around the school and tied white ribbons on the school gates as an act of solidarity and reminder of peace.

We celebrated Easter as part of our Understanding of the World this half term, and we also explored a bear’s habitat! Reception discovered where they live, what they eat and what their babies are called. In Physical Development we travelled through different terrains on a bear hunt; thinking about the different obstacles within the text and how we could imitate them e.g. the long swishy swashy grass.

Year 1

This half term we have been busy continuing our work on Space. The children have been learning all about famous Astronauts. They have learnt a lot about Mai Jemison in our Literacy lessons as we have been looking at the book ‘Look up’. The children have used all their knowledge about astronauts and other aspects of space to help them write a non- fiction book.

In DT this half term we have been looking at structures and building windmills for a mouse. The children built their structure and roof first. They then moved onto build their turbines and attached these using pipe cleaners to allow them to spin.

In Science we have been focusing on the weather. The storm at the start of the half term allowed us to have a lot of discussions about climate change and what this meant for our weather. The children completed weather diaries, we looked closely at how our weather changed and identified ways in which we could help slow down climate change.

Year 3

This half-term we have planned and written our own Egyptian diary entry as adventurers. We edited and then wrote up our work on ancient papyrus! This is displayed in the Year 3 corridor to share with our fellow pupils.

In our History lessons, we have learned about the process of mummification in Ancient Egypt. We became embalmers for the day and mummified a tomato with our partners. To celebrate all our Ancient Egyptian learning, we had an Egyptian day. We dressed up as members of society and took part in fun activities. We wrote in hieroglyphics, made papyrus, and learnt an Egyptian dance.

This week, we visited St Mary’s Church and learnt about the festival of Easter. We were detectives, took part in a scavenger hunt and raced flipping pancakes.

In our Science learning, we explored the parts of the plant by getting our hands dirty and dissecting flowers. We role played the process of pollination and made presentations on Chromebooks about the importance of bees.



Year 4

Spring 2 has been another great term for Y4. 

The Problem With Plastic

In Literacy, we have been learning about the story of Isatou Ceesay and the story 'One Plastic Bag'. From this we have created our own persuasive speeches, poems, and reports on what we can do to help with the plastic problem. 

The Water Cycle

In Science, we have been learning about the water cycle. We have carried out investigations on melting chocolate, freezing water and created our own water cycle with ice, hot water and cling film! This brought our learning to life as we could see the process happening before our eyes. 

Cooking Cookies

In our DT lessons, we have been looking at cookies. After thinking about the ingredients, the packaging, and the recipe, we designed our own masterpiece and had plenty of fun mixing, sifting, and baking. The final products were very tasty! 

We hope everyone has a restful Easter and we are very much looking forward to the Summer Term. 

Year 5

Our topic in Geography in the Spring Term was The United Kingdom and Brazil. We chose these two countries because we wanted to learn about similarities and differences between the places in two different hemispheres. We used atlases to locate cities, mountains and rivers in Brazil and the UK. Exploring new potential travel destinations was very exciting! The best part of our new learning was exploring Brazilian biomes and creating a persuasive brochure to visit a place in Brazil, which was our end product.

By Ismaeel

On the 29th March, all of the Year 5 children participated in the Great British Spring Clean. We went to Valance Park to pick up rubbish in order to make the place cleaner. We made sure we did it safely by using litter pickers and disposable gloves. Great British Spring Clean was an amazing experience. We had lots of fun and at the same time helped our local natural environment become greener and healthier.

By Riley

Year 6

This half term, Year 6 pupils went to the park or the school hive to look for invertebrates. We recorded what we found in a tally table, then converted it into a bar chart. This was all part of our Science topic Living Things and Their Habitats.

Peace day

The day before Peace Day we held hands with pupils from Reception and taught them how to tie white ribbons on the school gates and the rights ambassadors taught Nursery  how to tie it too. Then on Peace Day everyone held hands all throughout the school. After that, we passed on a clap.

 

Reminders

●    The week commencing 25th April 2022 will be mock SATs week. We will practise our SATs tests this week.

●     Starting from the 9th of May to the 12th May will be the real SATs week so attendance is required!

Make sure to revise over the Easter holidays and most importantly -  have fun!

By Bhoomi.D , Skylar.M ,Lewis.T and David.N

Trip to Brentwood Preparatory

Yesterday, me and three other pupils (Eiyyan, Sanjana and Jasrah) went on an able writers trip. This trip was held at Brentwood Preparatory School.

My day at Brentwood Preparatory was amazing. I have never had such an experience. Matt Whyman, an author who has written thirty books, took us through the journey of journalism. It was so much fun to learn about journalism and ‘become journalists. Matt made up a few bystanders who were present at the scene. We were given the job to interview them and learnt that we had to use open-ended questions instead of closed questions to get the most from our interviewee. The teachers from other schools were acting as the characters so we could interview them. Sometimes they spoke a bit too fast and we couldn’t keep up. Matt taught us that it is like we have a remote control and we could tell them to pause, repeat themselves or carry on. After a while, everybody got the hang of being journalists which made it even more fun. 

I loved meeting other children from different schools and all the teachers were extremely kind. This will be an experience that I will never forget.

By Isra Uddin 

Our Trip To Brentwood Preparatory School

A few children got picked to go to a creative writing workshop, the children were: Eiyyan, Isra, Jasrah and Sanjana. We travelled to the Brentwood Preparatory School and arrived at 9.30 am. We met a famous author called Matt Whyman (he has written 30 books). He explained to us about journalism. We met many students from different schools. 

He told us that we were no longer students, but ‘journalists!’ Matt explained that we would be writing a report about pupils blocking a construction site. He picked four teachers to act as some characters and we had to interview them and take notes. At first the teachers were talking really quickly. But then Matt said the key was to talk politely and imagine we were holding an invisible remote and controlling them.

When we finished our note taking (it was exhausting!) we had lunch. The food was scrumptious. After refreshing ourselves in the sunshine, we gathered our notes and shaped them into a story. Matt had created an online news website and we were called the Daily Biscuit 8/5’.

Later on when we finished shaping our facts, we had a deadline to make our real report. It was fun, but we also had time pressure! After that, some people went ’live’ and read their reports out loud with confidence. It was time to go and we set off, back to our school.

This is an experience all of us will never forget!

by Sanjana and Jasrah