The Nursery children have been developing their creativity skills at the craft table and through junk modelling. Inspired by their story of the week, Julia Donaldson’s The Go Away Bird, they recycled materials and used their imaginations to make their own unique representations of the various bird characters, as well as nests for them to live in.
Sam Forster, Head of Nursery
Forest School A Family Affair For Happy Reception
The Reception children were this week delighted to be joined by parents and grandparents at Forest School. Working as a team, the children, dads and granddads whittled sticks, built nests and toasted marshmallows over a campfire. The children had so much fun spending time with family and sharing their woodland experiences.
Natasha Jacklin, Reception Class Teacher
Friendship Bonds Get Stronger As Year 1 Get Arty
Teamwork, listening and creativity were key as Year 1 were challenged to create a piece of art based on their current ‘superheroes’ topic. Working together, the children listened to each other’s ideas before agreeing how best to complete the collaborative art task, using their creative skills to incorporate natural resources into their artwork. The outcome was not only beautiful art but a building or cementing of friendships while consolidating an understanding of the people who help us.
Rebecca Lane, Year 1 Class Teacher
Behaviour And Consequence Discussion So Rewarding For Year 2
On the topic of rewards and consequences, Year 2 were set the learning objective of listening to other people and contributing their own ideas during discussions as they got to grips with understanding the connection between behaviour and consequence. After learning what ‘consequence’ means and understanding that every behaviour has a consequence, the children suggested good choices that can make the classroom a safe and happy place to be and discovered that rewards are a positive consequence of such choices.
Lindsay Langrish, Year 2 Class Teacher
Year 3 Focused In The Forest Making Stone Age Tools
After exploring replica Stone Age artefacts, the avid Year 3s were tasked with making their own tools of the period at Forest School. With a focus on staying positive and aiming high, the children used strategies to help them stay calm when challenged with tying knots while demonstrating deep focus and careful hand-eye coordination when shaping pieces of wood. Their perseverance and attention to detail paid off, resulting in some creatively crafted hand axes, spears, awls, bows and arrows.
Henrietta Platt, Year 3 Class Teacher
Year 4 Place Much Value In Rounding Numbers Up And Down
Year 4 are looking at place value this term and this week focused on rounding four and five-digit numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000. The children used their listening skills as they were encouraged to remember the rounding rule rhyme of ‘four or less let it rest, five or more let it soar’ and their problem-solving skills as they worked out the rounding calculations. Armed with fresh knowledge of rounding numbers up or down, the children can hone their new-found skills during worded problem-solving later in the term.
Louise Doven, Year 4 Class Teacher
Lesson Takes A Comic Turn As Year 5 Tackle The Twits
Year 5 were this week tasked with exploring one of Roald Dahl’s characters in greater detail and focusing on the genre of comedy in a performance. They used the essential skill of creativity to portray Mr and Mrs Twit and gain a greater understanding of these characters. The children honed their script-reading skills, applying their knowledge to a character and then using their imagination to answer questions ‘in character’ through a hot-seating activity.
Sarah Baird, Head of Drama
Pigs And Prepositions Are All In A Day’s Work For Year 6
Year 6 have this week been completing their journey through Latin prepositions – in, super and sub to name but a few – with links to English again at the fore. With the meanings secure, the pupils went on to express their creativity by effecting visual reminders involving a pig, a house and a lake. As ever, the outcome was a mix of serious linguistic material with a bit of fun along the way!
Alex Walker, Head of Classics
Year 7 Refuse To Fold In Face Of Origami Challenge
In wellbeing time this week, after our usual meditation, the children turned their hand to origami. It is a wonderfully creative and calming activity that really focuses the children’s minds. It was fabulous to watch the determination to succeed in each and every child as, on occasion, they had to start over several times to make the right fold in the right place as per the instructions. It was a real chance to develop the skill of staying positive and working out exactly what had gone wrong each time before spotting the solution. The end result was very rewarding.
Zoe Thesiger-Pratt, Head of PSHE
Year 8 Scientists React Well To Chemical Experiments
The past few weeks, Year 8 have been learning about different chemical reactions as part of their chemistry syllabus. This week, they channelled their skills in staying positive, teamwork and listening to discover how metals react with air, acid and water – with some particularly explosive reactions with sodium! After receiving instructions on which specific pieces of apparatus to use, the children worked together to identify the gases produced from some of the reactions, staying positive if the experiments didn’t get the desired result first time around.
Ollie Hamilton, Head of Science
