Drama, gymnastics and diversity

Happy Children in Need day! The children looked great in all their spotty clothing and accessories. Let’s hope lots of money has been raised for the incredible cause. Talking of charities, how amazing was Dan with his sponsored swim of 120 lengths this week? He has achieved over an utterly staggering £1400! We’re so proud of him in Gwenver class!

Over the last couple of weeks, the children have been learning all about the story of Beowulf, immersing themselves through comprehension, drama and analysing features of a myth. In last week’s grammar test, the children did well. It has given us a good opportunity to see what we need more practise with. Our Viking raid Big Write this week was inspired by their learning of Viking long ships. The children sketched these last week, so we learned all about the raid of Lindisfarne in 793AD and did some fantastic whole class drama alongside music (It’s a shame that the video won’t upload to the website!) They then wrote some superb ‘slow writing’ where the children were tasked with writing six particular sentences in a certain order (fronted adverbial, expanded noun phrase, simile, using subordinating conjunction, relative clauses and questions). The results were great and so they copied them up on special tea-stained paper to show them off in their topic books.

In Maths, we completed our work on solving multi-step problems using the bar model and have turned our attention on reading and interpreting line graphs. The children took part in an addition and subtraction assessment which allowed us to see any gaps that may be missing in their learning. We will continue to work on these areas and ‘drip feed’ learning in where possible to ensure they are confident! Next week, the children will use data collected in circuits earlier in the term to create and draw line graphs independently.

In PSHE (JIGSAW), the children have been learning all cultural diversity and created beautiful STOP RACISM posters in the shape of bows (the ones you can buy in brooch form for various charities throughout the year). It has linked well with our R.E as Miss Brant has been teaching them all about different cultures in Sikhism and also what is important to us. They designed their own Gurdwara (a place where Sikh’s worship) and made comparisons to the Christian  church.

Our gymnastics sessions have been going SO well. The children are making so much progress and they’re absolutely loving it. Learning how to create different balances, how to do effective forward and backward rolls safely as well as jump over and through a vault has been our main focuses. Having our P.E Apprentice, Mr Trudgen, has been useful as it means we can split the class and the children are getting high-quality teaching. In hockey, the children have been learning how to pass effectively and they’ve also had a go at shooting using the ‘push’ technique. They’ll soon move on to playing whole games using and applying the skills learnt.

A massive well done to our recent Star Players. Last week (Bertie, Oscar S and Sam C) and this week (Isla and Ethan) who all showed great progress and determination to improve their skills in either gymnastics or hockey.

What makes an effective web page is what has been the children’s focus in computing. They learnt how to screenshot, paste, create text boxes and use arrows to annotate a mind map. Using Google sites, the children be will creating their own web pages linked to our topic over time.

Next week is our Viking day where all children have been asked to dress up. On Wednesday 21^st, they will wear their clay brooches, prepare and make food as well as create various crafts such as a Viking shield (thanks to those who have donated cardboard – it’s much appreciated!) It should be great fun!

A massive well done to Emma who became last week’s Star Pupil and this week’s Star Writer. And also to Haiden who has continued to work really hard in all aspects of class life this week achieving the coveted star pupil award.

Have a great weekend.

Mr Larter