Poppy Art competition

Please see the news section for details of our poppy themed art competition.  This is part of our annual programme of house competitions and all entries will earn house points.  There will be 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes awarded in each class.  Closing date - Tuesday 7 November 2023.

Poppy stationery

A selection of poppy themed stationery items will be on sale at morning break next week.  The items cost between 50p and £1.00 and all proceeds go to the Royal British Legion.

House football tournament

Next Friday afternoon (27 October 2023) we will be holding our house football tournament.  The children will be playing a combination of competitive and fun matches and we would like as many children as possible to participate in the event. Please can all children bring their PE kit and a pair of sturdy trainers or football boots in to school next Friday for this event.  Thank you.

Harvest Festival

Our Harvest Festival will take place in the Village Hall next Thursday (26 October 2023) at 2.30pm.  This event will follow a slightly different format to previous years and will be led by the School Council and CREW and Charity group as opposed to featuring performances by each class.  We are delighted that we will be joined by Rev David Morris and Lieutenant Hannah Turnbull from Worcester Salvation Army.  This year we are asking for donations of non perishable food items which will be passed to the Salvation Army in Worcester to support their work with the homeless and vulnerable families.

We have been thinking about harvest this week in Wrens. We learnt what the word harvest means and why we celebrate harvest at this time of year.  Our story this week was "Pumpkin Soup" and Mrs Lightfoot brought in a huge pumpkin that she had harvested from her garden!  We talked about how the animals in the story should have been kinder and helped one another rather than falling out.  Our role play transformed into a fruit and vegetable shop and we made our own pumpkin (and other vegetable) soup in the mud kitchen.  

On Wednesday we braved the stormy weather to collect lots of different coloured autumn leaves which we will be using to create some woodland animals for our autumn themed display.

In maths this week we have been looking at patterns and had great fun spotting patterns in the world around us. I wonder how many patterns you can spot at home?  We learnt that a repeating pattern does the same thing again and again.  We found lots of different creative ways of making repeating patterns around the classroom and also looked carefully to spot and identify where there was a mistake in a pattern.

This week has been consolidation week in phonics and we have used the time to carry out assessments of the sounds we have covered so far.  We have been very impressed with the progress the children have made and they should all be very proud of themselves.

This week in English, Year 2 have been learning how to use apostrophes for possession and omitted letters. They then used our book 'The Day the Crayons Quit' to identify the crayons' concerns and come up with solutions for these. Using this work for ideas, they have been writing a letter of apology to the crayons as Duncan, the main character.

In maths, Year 1 have been focusing hard on adding numbers together in different ways and using stories to help them. Year 2 have learnt about related facts and how they can use simple facts that they know to help them solve trickier calculations. Year 2 have also been identifying multiples of 10 bonds to 100.

In art this week, we continued with printmaking. The children used plasticine and ink pads to create their prints. They experimented with printing different natural objects, such as shells, seed heads and pinecones. Their prints turned out fabulously!

This week we have been getting to grips with addition and subtraction. We have worked hard at subtracting 1's across 10's and 10's across 100. This has re-introduced the concept of exchanging which will come into our maths going forward more regularly.

In English, we have begun to research our Stone Age facts to go into our non-chronological reports. The children have been looking for facts to put into their reports under different sub-headings.

This week in science we looked at classification of vertebrates and how we use classification keys to do this. We have also recapped the five different groups of vertebrates. 

In history, we looked at what life was like in the Bronze Age and how it differed from that of the Neolithic period. Britain changed a lot during this time and technology particularly progressed at a much faster pace than before. The children analysed how these new introductions changed the lives of the people living at the time.  

In PSHE, the children have been learning about how groups come together to make decisions and how people can work together to make an effective team. They were then given the opportunity to put their ideas into practice with their group activity to create a poster on how to work together effectively.

In computing, the children created SMART posters to show their understanding of all the information they have accessed to keep themselves safe online. It has been rewarding to see how much of their prior learning on this topic the children have remembered and been able to use to help them this half term. Knowing how to keep themselves safe online is essential for our children, now and in the future.

In music this week, we have composed a 4 bar rhythm and used percussion instruments to perform our composition. 

In English this week, the children have been working hard to finish their recounts based on how the Krindlekrax came to be living in the sewers beneath Lizard Street. They have focussed on using a range of literary devices including fronted adverbials, relative clauses and 'show don't tell' to enhance their writing. The children have also been using a thesaurus to help them improve their word choices to make their writing more interesting to the reader.

In maths, we have continued with our focus on formal subtraction. The children have been working with questions where they need to exchange over two place value columns in order to answer the question, which can be a difficult concept to master. We have also been solving addition and subtraction word problems which meant the children had to think carefully about the vocabulary used to decide on the correct operation to use to answer the questions correctly.

This week in Merlin's class, we have continued to discuss the picture book Tuesday by David Weisner. Through our own questioning and the evidence presented in the book, we have come to our own conclusions as to what has caused this mysterious sequence of events. This week, children have taken on the role of reporters and have begun writing their own newspaper reports on the mysterious flying frogs. So far, We have focused upon the orientation paragraph which answers the key questions what, who, where, and when.

In maths this week, we have been identifying prime square and cubed numbers and have moved on to solving reasoning and problem-solving questions based on our new learning.

In science this week, the children carried out an investigation to see if the distance between an object and the light source affected the size of the shadow. They were then encouraged to use the correct scientific language to explain their findings. Carrying out investigations is a great way for the children to test their knowledge and understanding of the topic and put their theories into practice.

In history, we had our final lesson on World War Two and the Blitz. This week we examined the roles of women and their contribution to the war effort. Each of us was offered a letter of employment to either a munitions factory, the women's voluntary service, the women's land army or a position as an air raid warden. The children learnt more about what these jobs entailed before writing a letter home detailing what their job involved, how much they were paid, what they had to wear, what their duties included and whether they were enjoying it or not.

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