Comic Relief

We will also be holding a Comic Relief themed house baking competition.  All entries will receive a house point and the top 3 entries in each class will earn additional house points.  We will be selling all the lovely creations in a cake sale after school and all the proceeds will be donated to Comic Relief.  Please bring your bakes into school on the morning of Friday 15 March 2024.

We will also be selling red noses in school at breaktime during week beginning Monday 11 March 2024.  The red noses cost £1.50 each.

NSPCC’s Speak out. Stay safe. programme

Next week,  I am pleased to inform you that we are participating in the NSPCC’s Speak out. Stay safe. Programme. Speak out. Stay safe. is a programme for children aged 5-11 which aims to help children understand abuse in all its forms and to recognise the signs of abuse. Children are taught to speak out if they are worried, either to a safe adult or Childline.

This child friendly programme is aligned with the curriculum and consists of age appropriate virtual assemblies and a supporting classroom based activity. The content is delivered in an engaging and interactive way with the help of the NSPCC mascot Buddy. If you would like to know more about the Speak out. Stay safe. programme visit Speak out Stay safe programme | NSPCC Learning

This week in Wrens we have been having a very interesting time finding out all about the continent of Africa.  We discovered that as well as savannas, it also contains the world's largest hot desert (The Sahara) and the magnificent Victoria Falls.  The children have made great progress in their writing since Christmas and it was lovely to be able to share this with you on parent's evening.  This week we have been busy writing sentences to form a non-fiction book containing facts about Africa. We are also encouraging the children to form and write independent sentences as part of their weekly rainbow challenges.

In maths, we have been looking more closely at the composition of numbers to 10.  The children have grasped this concept really well and are now beginning to record their work as an addition number sentence.  

We have started new topics in RE and PSHE this week.  In RE, we are beginning to look at the Easter story and discuss why Easter is an important festival in the Christian calendar. This week we explored the events of Palm Sunday and discussed why the people treated Jesus as a King.  In PSHE, we are studying "Healthy Me" and learning about how to keep ourselves healthy and safe.  We started by looking at the effect exercise has on our bodies and talked about the different sports activities we enjoy doing.

In English this week, the children identified the features of a news article ready to write their own. They have also been exploring the key events of the story and of all the ways that Traction Man saved the day. Year 1 spent time writing questions that they would ask a witness to Traction Man's antics, before hot seating a partner to ask them. Year 2s looked at direct speech and the elements needed to write speech accurately. 

In maths, Year 2 have been doing really well with their learning on multiplication. They have learnt how to use the multiplication symbol and what this means. They have also been writing multiplication sentences accurately and used and drawn arrays to help them solve calculations. Year 1 have been subtracting by finding the difference and by counting backwards. They have also been identifying related facts for calculations up to 20. Year 1 finished this week by using their knowledge of inverse operations to solve missing number problems.

In history, we began learning about significant explorers. The children started by naming explorers they already knew of such as Neil Armstrong. We then discussed how we can find out about the past. Afterwards, the children looked at 5 different types of explorers such as mountaineers. They had to think about where these people explored, why they might explore these areas and whether they need special equipment.

In music this week, we continued to look at pulse. We sang My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean adding in a drone using the glockenspiel. We learnt another folksong called Round and Round. We added in a drone and used untuned percussion instruments to maintain the pulse and begin to explore the different effects of texture in music.

In English, we have begun to write our setting description focusing on Castle Grotteskew. We have written the opening paragraph and we will be editing improving the final piece next week.

In maths, the children have concluded our study of length and perimeter. We will be introducing fractions and working with these over the next couple of weeks. 

In PSHE this week, we continued with our Healthy Me topic and focussed on different foods. We looked at food labels and how these can show us quite clearly what the items contain using a traffic light system. The children shared some of their favourite foods and we looked at the labels and discussed how much of these foods would be healthy to eat. In groups, the children then had to decide how much sugar is in different foods which was quite illuminating!

The children looked into the causes and consequences of the Hyksos and Nubian invasions on the Old Kingdom in history. The study of history is, as often as not, a study of human conflict and the effects this has on ancient and modern civilisations. The children delved into the realities for both the ordinary people and the Ancient Egyptian royalty during this period. 

The children were looking into the different features of plants. They discovered that all plants have the same features to identify them as plants.

In RE, we are continuing to look at the traits of the people of God. We looked in more detail at the specific traits demonstrated by Noah that made him a person of God and we will continue to develop this in the coming weeks. 

In English this week, we have continued reading 'The 1000 year old boy' and the children have been using this to write their own diary entries. We have been identifying the key features of a diary entry, including first person, past tense and chronological ordering. The children have been focusing on "show, not tell" to become the character to express the emotions.

In maths, the children have been learning how to add fractions. The Y4s have focussed on adding two or more fractions with the same denominator and have been using this knowledge to solve problems. The Y5s have been adding fractions where the denominators are multiples of each other. The children quickly realised how our previous work on finding equivalent fractions helped them answer these additional questions.

In Merlins this week we have been building up towards writing newspaper reports on the strange events that have been taking place in Camberwell. Ade is watching chaos unfold around him as the mysterious plants that have been sprouting have begun destroying the buildings in this borough of London. This week, the children have been using the passive voice, the subjunctive verb form and they have been using journalistic, formal language. 

In maths, we have continued our topic of decimals. This week, we began by adding and subtracting decimal numbers with different decimal places.  The children had to accurately add or subtract any two decimal numbers making sure they lined up the decimal point. Later in the week, we began multiplying and dividing decimal numbers.

In science, the children were learning about classification keys this week. We started by creating a classification key for some liquorice allsorts and discussed the different questions the children used to identify the different sweets. The children then used this knowledge to create a classification key for 8 different animals.

in PSHE, as part of our Healthy Me topic, our focus was on keeping our bodies healthy. It was interesting to hear from the children how keeping their minds healthy was as important as keeping their bodies healthy. We talked about drugs and how these can be split into different categories. The children were then able to separate given drugs into these categories and were very sure about which were good for your body and which were not.

In computing this week, the children had the opportunity to experience working with Stop Motion Studio. They worked collaboratively to create a short, stop motion clip which uses still images which are replayed in quick succession to create the illusion of a moving image.  The children throughout enjoyed using this app and they have already shared some of the fun they are having with it at home. 

In history, the children have learnt about what crime and punishment was like in the Victorian era. They learnt about the invention of the prison system and the conditions prisoners experienced whilst being imprisoned. We looked at primary sources which showed us how the crank and the treadwheel were used as punishments within the prison.

In DT this week, the children have begun using their design to start constructing their playground apparatus. We have used a wide variety of materials such as egg boxes, cardboard, wood etc to create at least 3 playground structures.

Please see below information from within the community and independent of the school