Year 4 Iron Man Poetry and Art

Year 4 have started the new term to an incredible beginning. We began the week by exploring our focus for this half term, The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. In Writing, we have discovered figurative language such as alliteration, similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia. We have found examples of this in The Iron Man and created our own examples to write short poems about the Iron Man.

In Art, we explored sketching techniques and practiced hatching, contour hatching, cross hatching and smudging. Our final piece, is a chalk drawing of The Iron Man. See some examples of our work below!

Reception – Drawing into Writing

Each term in Reception the children do a piece of ‘drawing into writing’. They draw a picture of something they have done in the holidays and then write about with the help of an adults. We have been really impressed at the children’s communication skills and also their use of their sounds to write.

Year 1-Meerkat Mail

This week we started to read the book Meerkat Mail. We met Sunny the Meerkat who lives in the Kalahari desert. The children found out about meerkats, where they live, what they eat and how they survive in the desert. We also received a post card from Sunny. Sunny told them about his habitat and the children wrote down some of the things they learnt from the postcard. We also found out about the Jewish Creation Story and about the importance of Shabbat, which is the Jewish day of rest.

Y5 Art

We created artwork inspired by Chris Ofili’s ‘Paradise by Night’ painting. We used popcorn kernels, rice, split peas and different painting techniques to incorporate texture into our work.

Lost and found – big write

All of this half term we have focused our learning around the storybook of ‘Lost and found’ by Oliver Jeffers. We have been creating story maps, fact files and even our own books based on what we can remember from the story. The children have worked really hard to memorize and recreate the story in their writing with a focus on the three parts of the story (beginning, middle and end).

Year 2 Mice – Music

This term Mice class have been having Music lessons with Sistema and have been learning all about pulse, beat, melody and rhythm. They have learnt how to play different percussion instruments and have composed a Christmas song including writing the lyrics themselves!

The other two Year 2 classes are looking forward to their own music lessons in the coming terms.

Year 4 Roman Catapults

Last week, year 4 made Roman catapults. We worked hard in our talk partner pairs and learned lots of new skills including using a junior hacksaw and hot glue guns safely. When they were complete we tried them out!

Shadow Investigation

Year 6 carried out a Science investigation to discover how the size of an object’s shadow depends on the distance between the light source and the object. Before the investigation, children made a prediction, explained the method, noted the apparatus needed and drew scientific diagrams. They then drew up a results table and used this to plot a graph to show their findings as well as writing a conclusion.

What did we find out?

The size of the object’s shadow increases as the distance between the light source and the object decreases. This is because light
travels in straight lines, so objects closer to the light source block light travelling in a greater range of different directions. As a wide light source moves towards an object, the shadow’s edges become less sharp (as it actually consists of overlapping shadows due to different parts of the light source). We only changed one variable to make it a fair test.

Y5 Science

This half term Y5 have been exploring different forces and how these act upon objects. This week we focused on the force – air resistance. Children were set the task to redesign a parachute for the Super Skydiving Company. Children made and tested three parachutes to see which type of parachute falls the slowest creating the most air resistance.

Year 6 History

Year 6 have produced some wonderful double-page spreads to celebrate all of their hard work in History over the Autumn term. Children collated a range of different ideas under subheadings to show their understanding, including: rationing, the role of women, key dates and countries involved and VE Day. Have a look at these brilliant examples!