Two weeks into Term 2 and everyone has been working really hard. The assessments that everyone in KS2 took this week will form our planning and help us all to understand what our children know and if we need to address any misconceptions or gaps in knowledge. I am tremendously proud of our children's tenacity in getting these done this week. Well done.
Mrs Cleall and I have been really impressed with the quality of homework that has come back this term. For our first piece of homework, we gave two options: either complete a piece of work based on Remembrance or to produce a poster to promote What Would Jesus Do? Thank you for supporting our homework policy - I believe that our children need to be able to complete short research tasks by themselves and have the opportunity to present their work in their own style. It's lovely to see personalities showing through the work.
Homework set on 12th November is:
Design and make an Egyptian Mummy Sarcophagus
Research the importance of the River Nile and how it was used by the Ancient Egyptians.
This piece of work is due in on Thursday 22nd November (one day early as there is no school on 23rd November).
We've been learning that every fail is one step closer to success.
Producing excellent writing takes time and lots of effort. As you cans see from Elliot's work, we write a first draft and then check the work against a checklist, adding and changing as we go along (pink pen). We learn that reading our writing aloud can help us to spot errors. Later, when the work has been marked in green pen by the teacher, we respond to comments in a purple pen. We can then see what we changed by ourselves (pink pen) and what we changed when prompted by an adult (purple pen).
Edited work will always look a little messy because it isn't the final draft. But just wait until you see the final versions: beautifully presented work like this takes time and effort!
This week, pieces of Moon rock were delivered to the school for Years 5 and 6 to investigate. The rocks, which included specimens from the Moon, Martian meteorites and other pieces of Space rock, were stored in a secure unit in Miss Robinson's office because they are priceless! Collected by NASA and currently held by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, we were not allowed promote the fact that we had them until they had been collected!
Learning Science through hands-on experience has been amazing this week and we have all had tremendous fun, as you can see from the slide show. More Science next week but sadly no Moon rock ... if we could just get our hands on a real-life astronaut!
In Maths, we've also been consolidating knowledge of numbers and calculation through word problems, reasoning and practical experience.
As we reach the end of our first week of the school year we should all look back and feel really proud. We're all learning new routines and working out how each day should go, learning new songs and exploring new subjects. I'm not so sure about the children but I am exhausted!
Today, Friday, everyone wrote a story based on the Moon and this will be our first writing to go on our writing wall. Once or twice every term we will put new pieces of writing up to showcase our talent. It's going to look fantastic and the progress everyone makes will be evident for all to see.
This afternoon we enjoyed some cross country running across the school field, then up the zig-zag path and back down the steps, along the KS1 adventure trail finishing with 10 press-ups before starting another lap. Everyone ran with their school house - the teamwork was good to see and is certainly a strength in this class.
The cake sale was a tremendous success, raising around £160 to go towards the cost of our planetarium experience next week. Thank you so much for your support, both in baking cakes and then in buying them back again!
We've started to investigate the Planets (as you can see from Harry G & Elliot's and Leo & Isa's work below) and had fun making up mnemonics to remember their names and order from the Sun.
What would you come up with?
What a fantastic 3-day week we've had! The children have settled in really quickly and every adult who has popped in to see has has commented on what a lovely class we are. I couldn't agree more!
If you would like to speak with me please see me on the playground after school or make an appointment via the school office. I am keen to meet all parents and carers and to have an open door to you.
A few important details:
Next Thursday (13th September) Upper Key Stage 2 will be holding a cake sale after school in the Dove room to raise money for a indoor planetarium experience. We would welcome contributions of home made cakes to sell. Please do come and say hello and show your support.
Here are this term's spellings. Spelling tests are every Friday. I have attached some strategies to support with the learning of spellings which I have taken from the No Nonsense Spellings program.