We started the week by looking at the poem ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten me at all’ by Maya Angelou. We started by matching the poem’s lines with the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiet and then arranged them in the order we thought they would be in. Following this, we started to learn the poem by doing different actions we worked on our voice projection and applying emphasis on certain lines. Throughout the rest of the day, we practised our samba piece as well as creating our own Jackson Pollock inspired pieces.

On Tuesday, we spent our first day in the art studio with Mrs Johnston. We started by sketching our own self portraits and learnt lots of top tips on where our different features appear on our faces. After we created our initial sketches, we used watercolours to add the different tones to our faces. Although we found it difficult to begin with, we showed our resilience to create some great pieces. 

Miss Patchett worked with us to begin choreographing a dance performance. Again, we struggled to grasp some of the more complex dance movements but following some practice (at home as well) we ended Thursdays dance lesson much more confident. 

We also learnt about the poetry style known as kennings which combines two nouns per line to create some really imaginative pieces. We wrote poems about different fears we might have. Special mention to Grayson who wrote an excellent kenning about nightmares: 

Mind-controller                             

Brain-biter

Night-lover

Fear-planter

We ended the week in the studio learning about the poem ‘Caged Birds’ by Maya Angelou. We talked about how sometimes our fears and worries can cage our dreams. We then created our own bird templates using the book ‘Migration’ as a stimulus. We also finished off our Jackson Pollock pieces by adding our kennings using newspaper. We really enjoyed the process and hope you enjoy them as well.

On Friday, we took part in our third P.E. lesson this half term. Although it was cold, we all enjoyed the different activities. This half term, we are focussing on handball so we spent the lesson practising our catching and throwing skills through a variety of games. It was great to see all the children taking part and enjoying their learning. A special mention goes to Robin who sowed excellent resilience during the session.

Congratulations to Phoebe who is once again our TTrockstar of the week and to Lukas who is our Lexia Legend. I was over the moon on Friday as the class finally reached 100% attendance for an entire week. We have been so close but we now have achieved it. Well done everyone!

It has been great to see everyone back at school and enjoying their learning. 

On Thursday, we started our new Beats, Bones and Bodies project which is focused on the central theme ‘Free to be Me.’ We welcomed a new dance teacher Bobak – who taught us loads of amazing new moves. We began the session by doing some stretching and looking at different strength and conditioning exercises. Following this, we worked on several different break dances moves such as top rock and used this to choreograph our own short routines. 

A special shout out to Phoebe who is both our TTrockstar of the week and Lexia legend.

A great final week was had by all in 4A!

In History, we have been working on our enquiry question, ‘what was the impact of the Roman Empire on Britain?’ We started the week by having a retrieval relay to find out about the Romans influence in Britain. We used this knowledge to test each other throughout the week. Finally, we wrote some excellent paragraphs explaining all we have learnt. 

We also created an amazing video to showcase all our great learning. The children loved taking part and really enjoyed embodying the Celtic spirit as we took on the might of the Roman Empire. We then used the footage to create our own movies using an app called imovie on our ipads. 

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a great Christmas if you celebrate, and all the very best wishes for 2024!

On Tuesday, we had a visit from Sam the sound man. We learnt so many amazing things about sound from how echoes work to ways we could make our own instruments. We all really enjoyed the session and it really helped deepen our Science learning for this half term. A couple of cool facts we learnt were: hard materials produce more echoes, there is no sound in space and the bigger the object the lower the sound it will make.

We finished our samba topic in Music by collating all the rhythms we learnt this half term to create a final piece of work. I have been really impressed with the children’s perseverance in the subject as they are now a lot more confident at playing as part of a group or as an individual.

What a week it has been in 4A!

During our R.E. Learning this hard term, we have been looking at the 5 pillars of Islam. This week, we learnt about each one specifically and played a game to help this knowledge stick in our minds. We really enjoyed it and some pupils were amazing at providing extra information about Islam to support our learning.

In Spanish, we have been learning about different shapes. The children have all really enjoyed this part of our learning particularly the games we have been playing with Mr Ash. Here are some of the words we have learnt if you want to test the children at home:

• Una estrella
• Un pentagono
• Una linea
• Un cuadrado
• Un triangulo

In Maths, we have been looking at factors and factor pairs. We used counters to help create arrays and work out the factors for different numbers. The children initially struggled conceptually but are now very confident at giving the factors and factor pairs for different numbers.

Our TTrockstar of the week is Phoebe and our Lexia legend is Sienna. Book club was hosted by Matas. He chose the book ‘True Ghost Stories’ by Paul Dowswell and Tony Allen.

In writing, we finished off our shared writing using a film called ‘Alma’ as inspiration. We began planning our final write on Thursday and Friday. To start with we held a silent debate looking at 5 strange items that Mr Ash brought in including: a trumpet, a spooky King Lear poster and a projector. We had some amazing ideas and I can’t wait to read the children’s work next week.

During History, we learnt about how many attempts it took the Romans to conquer certain parts of Britain, weaving in Geography elements and understanding the timeline of events of when this took place. We even create some cool stop motion animations to show the three attempts. 

We are hosting a film night to watch Horrible History: The Rotten Romans on Monday 11th December in the hall. This will start at 3:10pm and finish at 5pm. Tickets to this event are £2 and will go towards the cost of our mosaic Art project that we are currently undertaking. You will need to sign up for this event on ParentPay. (This is a PG film; signing up on Parent Pay gives permission for your child to watch this)

Our TTrockstar of the week is Keilan and our Lexia legend is Zara. Book club was hosted by Maidah. She chose the book ‘Interview with a Kangaroo’ by Andy Seed, who visited us last week. It was great to hear that the visit had inspired Maidah to read more non-fiction books.

On Tuesday, we were incredibly lucky to be joined by Andy Seed, who is an incredible children’s non-fiction writer. He inspired us with his knowledge of animal facts and it was interesting to understand how he presented his animal factual books in a question and answer interview format. We can’t wait to read some of his books and use this style of writing in our own writing. We even brought our magpie books into the hall to steal great ideas and facts!

In Maths, we have been working extremely hard on our multiplication and division topic. It has been fantastic to see the way the children’s times table knowledge has paid dividends as we were all confident at using these facts to support our learning. 

During Art this week, we made Roman mosaics. We learnt how to clip tiles using tile cutters. We used these pieces to create wave patterns and arranged the tile pieces to fit a pre-existing pattern. We worked incredibly well in our groups and produced some fantastic pieces of art.   

In Music, we continued our samba topic. We consolidated our knowledge around the different types of instruments. We then played several different call and response rhythms. Mr Ash started by playing the call part for us to respond. Then different children in class took on the call section. We hope you like it!

Our TTrockstar of the week is Annie and our Lexia legend is Amelia. Book club was hosted by Myra. She chose the book ‘When the Fishes Flew’ by Michael Morpurgo. We also once again achieved a magnificent 99.3% attendance, let’s see if we can get 100% next week.

This week we have been completing our NFER tests. The children have all worked really hard and tried their best in each test.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank parents and carers who have helped the children with the real life Maths journal or the Reading box. Both have allowed the children to extend their learning as well as creating a buzz around both subjects. 

Throughout the week, we have been producing work as part of Anti-bully Week. We spoke about the different kinds of bullying and the importance of being upstanders if we see bullying taking place. We all created anti-bullying posters and took part in a school wide picket. Even though we got a little wet, we certainly proved that we could make noise around bullying. On Friday, we also took part in odd socks day which was to show that we should always celebrate our differences. 

During our History learning, we looked at the Celts. We started the lesson by writing down all the things we knew about the topic. Some of us really struggled with this. We then undertook an activity in which we worked in teams to complete a series of retrieval questions about the Celts. It was great to see that by the end of the lessons we were all able to write lots more things we knew about the topic. 

Our TTrockstar of the week is Amelia and our Lexia legends is Zara. It gives me great pleasure to say that we once again achieved the best attendance in LKS2 with a staggering 99.2%.

Wow! We have had such a jam-packed week in 4A. 

This week has been Parliament Week across school. We started our learning by looking at the differences between the two chambers in parliament. We learnt that members of the House of Commons are elected by the British public whereas the House of Lords is made up of experts across different fields and is not elected by the British public. We then made our classroom into the House of Commons to debate an issue. We all took part in a (mostly) civilised debate with Mr Ash taking the role of the speaker. 

On Wednesday, we were incredibly lucky to host a live music concert from a local group of folk musicians. We learnt about lots of different instruments from a cello to an accordion. The experience allowed us to listen to a different type of music and we even had the opportunity to join in the performance. We all really enjoyed this opportunity – which was shown by our beaming smiles throughout. 

In Art, we worked on gestural drawings to represent a Roman soldier. We initially started our Art sessions by creating our own drawings, making sure to use our whole arm and ensuring our drawings weren’t too detailed. The technique allowed us to create pieces that showed the motion of the images we were capturing. We held another session in which we redrew our images but worked on a collective piece to create a tapestry.   

Our TTrockstar of the week is Phoebe. Our Lexia legends are Zara and Tahha as both completed their next level on Lexia. Book club this week was hosted by Enes and Emila. They chose ‘Savitri’s Tales’ by Anthony Horowitz and ‘Why do Snakes Slither’ by Miles Kelly.