Year 4 Prayer Journals

In Design and Technology this half-term, we have made our own prayer journals. We stitched designs before covering our book with felt.

We will be adding prayers to our journals as we journey through Lent.

News from Year 1 – a week of weeks!

What a way to end the half term! We have had lots going on in Year 1 this week. We started the week by having an intruder in our classroom. We used the clues left in our classroom and descriptions from eyewitnesses to create a wanted poster for the beast.

It was Safer Internet Day on Tuesday and we enjoyed creating our own avatars for an online game, including usernames and passwords. We discussed why we have to keep certain pieces of information private whilst being online.

It was also Children’s Mental Health Week this week. This year’s theme was ‘Growing Together’. We used the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to show how the caterpillar grew both physically and mentally, into a beautiful butterfly. We also created some stars to show our goals and aspirations for when we grow up.

After half term, we will be focusing on toys in History. If you have any older toys you wish to share with the class, please feel free to bring them in. Here’s the curriculum overview so you can check out what else we will be learning about in Spring 2.

Have a restful half term and enjoy the break,

Miss Battams 🙂

Wellbeing in the playground

As part of Mental Health Week as well as our learning in science and RSE, we have been thinking about the different ways in which we can keep our mind and body healthy. We know how important play is to our wellbeing, so we have been planning how we can use the playground as a space where we can keep fit and build our friendships as we share books, draw pictures and have fun together.

We created a wish list and have been using our Cake Sale money to buy some more things that we can use in the playground together. We have bought lots of new balls, outdoor games and cars for the picnic table as well as a feast of felt tip pens that we will enjoy drawing with. We will post some more photos when all of these things arrive!

Class Worship Visitor

Year 3 have had another busy week! They had a lovely visitor in the form of Mrs Hayes to lead an in class assembly from Galatians on the Fruit of the Spirit. The children then updated or wrote a plan to lead their own in class assemblies each week and I look forward to assisting them as do so.
For Safer Internet Day they created their own, named, Gaming Guide, instructing him or her as to what advice they should give gamers, and then designing an avatar for their gaming Guide.
In Art and design they finished their water colour paintings in the style of pop art to great effect.

As you can see they have worked carefully and precisely to create colourful images of everyday items, not forgetting to include the iconic Ben Day dots.

Night at the Museum with Year 4

We’re awash with Roman artefacts as Year 4 have learnt more about life for people in Roman Britain.

As well as an impressive array of weaponry, the children have created replicas of everyday items such a cutlery, earthenware and coins. We also have some beautiful mosaics along with brilliant recreations of a Roman hypocaust and baths.

Great learning, Year 4! (And a big thank you to mums and dads who helped with this challenge).

Safer Internet Day – 8th February 2022

Safer Internet Day takes place every February. It’s a great opportunity to celebrate all the amazing things we all do online; and also to find a different way, each year, for everyone to safe online. This year the theme is being respectful and maintaining good relationships when playing games online.

As a show of hands in the morning’s “kick-off” assembly showed, nearly everyone in the school loves playing online games: there was palpable excitement as the children thought of it! And every device is used to play games on. All the more reason to make sure we can all enjoy a favourite hobby while keeping ourselves and everyone else safe!

We want gaming to be a fun, respectful way of spending some time, according to each family’s rules. What we do online should make our online friends post emojis like these

We discussed the questions “Should you behave as well towards your friends online as well as you do offline? Why?“, “If you’re online and no-one knows your identity, can you behave how you like?” and, perhaps the most difficult one, “If someone else makes the wrong choice and doesn’t show respect, what can -or should – you do in response?”

Following are some photos of children completing activities in their classrooms and a few photos of the sharing assembly at the end of the day. As well as developing understanding of online safety, the activities provided opportunities for collaborative learning and creative writing.

There are lots more resources from the organisers on the website – https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2022.

We hope you enjoy finding out about what the children have learnt about the essential topic of internet safety.

At the end of the day the children shared what they had learnt with the rest of the school.

Reception learnt the Smartie the penguin song which tells us, “Before you click, click, click, make sure you think, think, think – and tell someone.”

Year 1 learnt about what it’s OK to share online and what not to. You can share non-personal things, such as the colour of your socks, or your favourite fast food, but not your full name or where you go to school.

Year 2 wrote “spells for internet kindness”. They learnt that whenever we play online games, we need to be prepared to show respect even if other people make wrong choices.

Year 3 wrote “gaming guides”. Some advice about what you can do online is the same as what you can offline – for example, don’t give out personal information like your address to someone you’ve never spoken to before or met.

Year 4 played “roll a story”, where they acted out given scenarios – such as your friends have fallen out during an online game – and then found ways to resolve the problem.

Year 5 discussed good and bad decisions in online behaviour, including how hard it can be to make the right choices. 

Year 6 also considered the different scenarios in “roll a story” and made posters informing people how to resolve situations, based on these predicaments.

All the activities provided the children with opportunities to discuss the issues, focusing on solutions and remembering that online games are a source of fun and communication for nearly everyone.

Year 4
Year 2

Year 2 wrote some spells for a kinder internet.

We all stirred up the spells in our cauldrons and recorded them. Here are some of our spells. Can you think of any other ingredients we should add?

Year 2 spells for a kinder internet
Year 6 presenting at the end of the day.
Year 4 presenting at the end of the day.

Numbers are fun

We have had a fun filled day raising money for the NSPCC and also celebrating numbers. We learned more about the 5x table and also used stopwatches and counting to see how many actions we could do in a minute. This was a great way to see how we use numbers in science, PE and maths!

This week, we have also been taste testing lots of different foods as we explored the Eatwell Plate and considered what combinations of food would be healthy as well as tasty. We are looking forward to designing and making our own wraps next!

Numbers in Science

Year 6 came into school dressed in their own clothes with a numbers theme. Some children had customised their clothes to be as numerate as possible.

We then combined our Numbers Day with science.

The children set up investigations to find out which forms of exercise increase their heart rates the most.

To begin with the children took their pulse rates whilst they were resting and then compared their heart rates after they did a variety of exercises.

Once the children had collated their results, they produced graphs to represent their data.

We will discuss next week, what these results show us about how our heart responds to different exercises.

Numbers Day in Year 3

This Friday, bones and numbers featured highly. Year 3 practised their times tables by playing a “four in a row” dice game. They all looked great in their number-themed home clothes

We also played a quick game of “The product is…. what’s the equation?” You had to find at least two multiplication equations (excluding 1 x ….!) to make the answer. Products used included 24, 36 and 30. How many possibilities can you find at home?

We continued to learn about skeletons in science, this time the human skeleton. On seeing an image of a human skeleton on the whiteboard, a very astute member of the class asked, “Is that an adult or child skeleton? Because an adult has more bones than a child.” What a fantastic science question to ask! We learnt the Latin, or scientific versions of the names for different bones. Can you remember which one is called which name?

We also practised the mostly commonly mispelt words from the spelling assessment, so well done everyone for learning these as home.

As well as snowing, there were cakes at the end of the day. What a fantastic Friday!

News from Year 1 – Number Day!

This week in Year 1, we celebrated Number Day. As we have been looking at shapes in Maths this week, patterns fitted in nicely with our learning. We made lots of different patterns using things around the classroom, patterns which included both different shapes and colours.

In English, we have sadly finished our book ‘I want my hat back’ by Jon Klassen, writing some excellent stories with our own innovated versions. Next week, we will be starting our new book, ‘Billy and the Beast’ by Nadia Shireen.

Thank you for the children who have handed in their RE homework. If you haven’t already, please could it be handed in by next Friday (11th February).

Have a restful weekend,

Miss Battams 🙂