It's been a busy couple of weeks! In English we have been immersing ourselves in writing our play scripts about the plague arriving in Eyam. It has been interesting to see how the children have related this to the current pandemic and as always, we have been impressed with their thoughtful responses. 

In maths, we have been putting our decimals knowledge to the test by looking at the four operations in relation to money. 

In science, we have begun our new topic of Sound and we look forward to exploring this with Mrs Price over the next term. 

We finished the term's art and DT by decorating and evaluating our rather splendid Anglo-Saxon brooches (see below). 

We hope you have a happy and safe half term break and look forward to seeing you in June. 

It has been great to see the children's engagement with our Great Fire of London topic continue this week. Not only have they shown amazing creativity but excellent fact recall too! We have continued with Great Fire of London drama and music with Mrs Smith, worked on the next sections of our Great Fire of London dance in PE and have extended this learning into our continuous provision such as through making models of the boats that the people would have used to escape the fire out of stickle bricks. The excitement was at it's highest when we had an arrival of real flour to our Pudding Lane bakery role play area (which may explain why your children may have been slightly dusty on their return home)! Take a look at some of the photos from these activities: 

Although it has been a shorter week in school, we have still been busy producing lots of fantastic work in Windrush Class!

In English we have finished writing our own disaster stories based on extreme weather. All of the class should feel proud of the effort that have put in to these pieces of writing, they have worked hard on their presentation, as well as their ideas.

In maths, we have been learning how to add and subtract lengths; this was trickier when we had to convert between different units of measurement, but the children were Steadfast Squirrels and persevered! We also learnt how to measure the perimeter of shapes – I was very impressed with how accurately the children did this!

Our music lesson was very exciting this week as Mrs Davies taught us how to play some of the Star Wars theme tune. We played a simplified version and Mrs Davies played the full theme tune – the end piece sounded really good! All of the children have now been given their log-in details for Charanga which they can use to practise at home. 

In Science, we continued to think about how we can describe different rocks. We began by learning about permeable and impermeable rocks, and rocks with high or low density. We then carried out a practical investigation using lots of rocks samples to test the durability, permeability and density of the rocks. The children did a brilliant job of being really precise with their observations!

Dear parents and carers,

In our English lesson this week the children have started exploring "The Lost Words" by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. So far they've thought about the cover and scale of the book, explored collective nouns, made blackout poetry from the introduction and also experienced some of the poems. Today we looked in more detail at the Bluebell poem and the techniques that were used. We also talked about the different animals and plants in the illustrations, and how Jackie has used watercolour and gold leaf in the illustrations. Next week we'll be continuing with this, and looking in more detail at the poems and how they use different poetic techniques effectively, as well as learning more about our local flora and fauna.

In maths this week we have continued the work on fractions. We've moved on slightly to adding and subtracting fractions, including using knowledge of common denominators to find equivalent fractions. The children have been working hard on it and progressing well through the lessons. We'll be continuing with this next week, and moving on the subtracting fractions too.

We really enjoyed sharing some ancient Greek myths and legends today. Most of the children know some stories and some are very knowledgeable indeed! They kept me on my toes with some of the spellings- I did manage Hephaestus right the first time though (although there are variant spellings of lots of the names). We then used our knowledge of these stories to put together a pack of "Top Trumps" style cards. These need a little finishing off next week, but were very funny and also showed the children's knowledge off well. Next week we'll be taking what we've learned into some larger scale artwork based around these stories.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. Have you done your spelling shed homework?
2. Which is your favourite ancient Greek god, and why?
3. What's Mrs Barker's third law of fractions?

In Maths this week we have continued to focus on measures, particularly capacity and volume. We very much enjoyed the practical learning and became experts at using the key vocabulary to compare such as greater, less, most, least, full, nearly full, half full, nearly empty and empty.

In Science this week we focused on two different areas- deciduous and evergreen trees and growing our tomato plants. We went out to the back field to observe the trees that we have and used our scientist detective skills to identify whether the tree was a deciduous or evergreen tree by looking at their leaves. 

With our tomato plants, we learnt how to transfer them from their pots into grow bags which gave us a great opportunity to look at the roots of the plant. We have been checking our plants each day and remembering to water them too. 

​It was great to have Danny Taylor in school with us this week to lead Archery sessions with Year 1 Evenlode Class and also for staff training. Danny is 7 times National Champion in Archery and it was great to learn from a true expert. We are looking forward to Danny coming back into school over the next few weeks to lead sessions with Years 2-6. Take a look at some of the photos from the Year 1 session and the staff training.

Dear parents and carers,

What an brilliant week we've had in year 5! I have been so impressed with the children this week. they've all worked really hard and the standard of their work is improving really quickly.

In English the children have spent this week writing, editing and revising their short nature narratives. I've read them all today and they're super- they all have lovely details in about their settings as well as their character's senses. It was quite a short and simple piece in some ways, so this gave them room to work on their vocabulary choices. We also worked hard on avoiding the trap of starting lots of sentences with "I" when using the 1st person by using different fronted adverbials as sentence openers. The stories work really well so I'm really pleased with the outcome. Next week we're moving on a bit to delve in "The Lost Words" and to start exploring some poetry.

In maths this week we've continued to focus on fractions, and we've been working hard on finding equivalent fractions, changing improper fractions into mixed numbers (and vice versa) as well as comparing and ordering them. The children found this a bit tricky at first, but they were all real steadfast squirrels and they completed nailed it in today's lesson! Their confidence is continuing to build, so I'm really pleased to be able to continue with fractions next week. We'll mainly be looking at adding fractions next week, including within 1 and adding 3 or more fractions.

In our history lesson today we used a special educational version of a video game set in ancient Athens to explore the buildings and temples on the Acropolis. It worked brilliantly on the HUGE touchscreen that we are currently testing in the classroom (although my steering of the character was a bit wobbly!).  Some of the children were interested in downloading it themselves at home (it will work much better on a gaming PC than my old laptop!). You can find out more information about the game here: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed/discovery-tour
IMPORTANT: you need the Discovery Tour NOT the main game (which is PEGI 18 so not suitable for children!). The Discovery Tour is PEGI 7+ so suitable for KS2.  It's currently £17 but I got it on sale for £7, so it's worth keeping an eye on the website to see if another sale arises.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. What was the best thing about the huge touchscreen that we had in the classroom this week?
2. What did you learn about ancient Athens in your history lesson?
3. What different clubs did you use in your tri-golf lesson?

​We have had another great week in Windrush Class!
In English we have finished our sentence stacking using Flood by Alvaro F Villa, and we are now planning our own disaster story based on extreme weathers. In maths, we have been working hard on measuring lengths in centimetres and millimetres, as well as converting between the different units. 
In PE we continued to practise our basketball dribbling; we learnt how to dribble under our leg and behind our back. We also learnt the main three passes used in basketball: the chest pass, the bounce pass and the overhead pass. I was so impressed with the focus and determination the children showed to master these skills!

​We enjoyed our music lesson with Mrs Davies again this week; we continued to revisit some of the pieces we had learnt in the Autumn, as well as developing our understanding of pulse. It was also very exciting to be able to take our instruments home!

​In Science, we started to think about the different ways that we could describe rocks. We thought about the size, shape, colour, texture, and then thought about how the rocks might have changed over time. We went on a rock hunt on the field and thought about how we could describe the rocks we found.

What a fabulous start to the term we've had. We have all been very impressed with the children's enthusiasm and creativity in our writing for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

In maths we've been working hard on decimals - getting to grips with tenths and hundredths this week. What an amazing science experiment we did yesterday - modelling how our digestive system processes food and waste (photos below!).

We are few lessons in to our Topic work on the Anglo-Saxons and we have been impressed with the children's knowledge and thinking skills. In PSHE this term our topic is Changing Me so we have been thinking about our bodies and how babies are created. 

In PE we have been working on striking and fielding and developing our skills in cricket. 

This week's Spellings are on Spelling Shed and are homophones so the children need to learn the word meanings in context as well as their spelling. Keep up with your reading and TTT Rockstars too please. 

It was great to see everyone again after the Easter break and we have had a lovely first week back. 

There has been some excellent team work, sharing and creativity in our continuous provision this week. The Garden Centre role play area has been a real hit too! Take a look at some of the activities that we chose: 
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In Maths this week we have been focusing on measuring mass. We have enjoyed using non-standard units such as blocks to measure and compare the mass of objects in the classroom. One object that we measured had a mass of over 100 blocks! We worked hard on using the key vocabulary heavier, lighter, equal and balanced.

In Science this term we are continuing our learning about plants with a particular focus on growing plants. Our tomato plants have arrived and we are working as a team to help them to grow healthily. 

It was great to continue our outdoor learning at Forest School this week. The sun was shining and lots of fun was had. 

We have started our work on our topic for this term-The Great Fire of London. There has been lots of excitement about the new topic and we have started our Great Fire of London Dance in PE. It was great to see so much creativity and confidence as we started to choreograph and perform our routines. 

There was a big surprise in Year 1 Evenlode Class this week as the children received their Easter eggs from the Dunelm Oxford competition. The children thoroughly deserved a treat for working so hard and adapting so well to the changes that they have faced throughout the Covid 19 pandemic. A big thank you to Dunelm Oxford for making our children so happy, what a great way to support the local community.