To celebrate Languages Day Y5 explored the Greek alphabet. We learnt that we use lots of Greek words in English today. Some say there are over 150,000 English words that come from Greek words! Once we learnt the Greek alphabet we used it to have fun cracking linguistic codes. When we joined up with our Y2 buddies we taught them how to write their name using the Greek alphabet and then used what we had learnt to play hangman.
Y5 were inspired by the artist Hundertwasser this half term and created pictures of nature in his style. Hundertwasser often depicted tress as lollipops and the children’s designs focused on this.
To create our pieces we used oil pastels practicing and perfecting the following different techniques: mixing and blending, stippling and cross-hatching.
Year 6 have been using ‘World of Languages, Languages of The World’ resources to discover the fascinating etymology of our days of the week. Children compared our days of the week to French and German days, looking for similarities and differences. We explored and investigated the links between Norse and Roman Gods and thought about the connections between languages throughout the world. Children loved looking for clues and cracking codes in order to understand other languages as well as finding out about how many different languages are spoken amongst the year group!
Inspired by the rest of the school’s Curriculum Day, we also had our very own Year 6 Art Challenge linking to Belgian artist Ben Heine’s pencil versus camera work and using the base of the Eiffel Tower as a starting point. It was great to see the creativity of the children and see them engage so well with this task.
Creation and Science: Conflicting or Complementary? Year 6 have been exploring this ‘Big Question’ in RE and have had some very insightful and mature conversations in response to it. Children have discussed the Christian story of creation in Genesis as well as The Big Bang and Evolution theories and thought critically about how the two can be both in conflict and complement one another. Using topic-specific vocabulary, they have produced some high-quality pieces of work to visually represent the main ideas of both religious and scientific perspectives. Children have demonstrated great reflection skills whilst also considering their own thoughts and beliefs.
This week, Year 4 visited Norwich Cathedral where they learnt about some important features of Christianity and the building of the Cathedral.
We also visited the mosque on Rose Lane where they learnt about the Five Pillars of Islam. The children asked many thoughtful questions about Muslim beliefs.
In addition to this, we spent time with Edith Cavell who told us all about her life and how she became a nurse, helping injured soldiers. We then visited her grave which is located at Norwich Cathedral.
It was a very busy but enjoyable day!
Our Year 6 Guinea Pigs have settled into their new home and the children have loved learning to look after and care for them. Our furry friends have even been going home with children over the weekends!
Thank you to our wonderful community volunteers who gave every Year 6 pupil the opportunity to read aloud! The children loved being able to share their favourite stories with our visitors.
To launch our new history topic, Ancient Greeks. Y5 had a day of cooking. We prepared and cooked Melomakarona (which are Greek honey-spice cookies), chicken kebabs with roasted vegetables and tzatziki dip and a Greek salad. The children worked tirelessly in the kitchen all morning to prepare this wonderous feast. In the afternoon we wrote up our recipes with a detailed method including modal and imperative verbs.
Finally, once all the work was done we sat down and ate all of the wonderful food that was prepared.
To mark the end of world book week, Miss Hicks organised for local author, Nigel Lungenmuss-Ward, to join our school for the day. He visited all of the classrooms today, to read his story and inspire others to write their own book. Nigel’s books: Freddie’s Impossible Dream and What’s That? were illustrated by his son Robbie, who was 8 years-old when he drew the pictures for their first book. The books are about the power of imagination, chasing your dreams and never giving up.
A big thank you to Nigel Lungenmuss-Ward for joining us. You can find out more about his books on his website: www.thatbookguy.co.uk/books
We sent four of our young mathematicians to represent Queen’s Hill at a county wide mathematics challenge, held at Norwich School.
They were given a set of letters and numbers and worked through the ‘equations’ allocating the letters values. They then attempted to make the total indicated using six values provided while only using the four operations. The final challenge was to solve questions to test their lateral thinking and problem solving.
All four of them worked extremely hard and represented Queen’s Hill with pride – we are so proud of them!
