This week, year one and year four pupils buddied up for an afternoon session of African animal research on the iPads. It was wonderful to see such polite and caring partnerships between our older and younger students. Our year ones went away with lots of interesting and useful facts about meerkats, lions and giraffes which they will use to help them with their writing next week. We look forward to them sharing this work with their older buddies at the end of term.
This morning the Year 2 children came into their classrooms and found all of their chairs had been taken away! Luckily this week they have been learning how to use their writing skills to persuade someone so they quickly wrote letters and made posters for their teachers to convince them to give their chairs back. Because of their excellent work, the children were able to get their chairs back and have a comfy rest of the day.
To kick-start their new English unit: Romeo & Juliet, Year 6 enjoyed participating in a variety of Shakespeare-related activities! Children took part in a scavenger hunt, collecting the answers to questions about the famous playwright and his works. They had to match symbols on their sheet to answers hidden away all around the playground. They discovered Shakespearean language and had to decide if phrases given to them were Shakespeare or ‘Fakespeare’. They explored the ancient grudge between the two feuding families in Romeo & Juliet: The Montagues and The Capulets and learnt about their household crests. Children were then tasked with creating their own crest, focusing on the significance of its design, colour and symbols. It was great to see how enthusiastic everyone was about our new topic and we look forward to seeing how they get on with their writing over the coming weeks.
This morning Year 2 and Year 3 spent some time together sharing their writing. Year 2 read their buddy their fairy tale and Year 3 shared their persuasive posters. They all had a great time listening to their buddy’s work!
Children have been working hard and enjoying learning new sounds everyday. We also welcomed parents in this week for an ‘Introduction to Phonics’ meeting to help understand how we teach phonics using the Read, Write, Inc scheme.
This week, Year 6 have continued exploring emotive character descriptions based on the key text, ‘Rose Blanche’. They have learnt all about figurative language and its effect on the reader. Working as a class, they compiled everyone’s ideas to create a shared write based on a specific point in the text. We think they have demonstrated excellent creativity and teamwork to produce such a powerful image of Rose in the reader’s mind. See if you can identify excellent examples of similes, personification, alliteration and ambitious vocabulary in their paragraph below.
‘Her tear-filled, sorrowful, sapphire-blue eyes were like neverending waterfalls. Broken and fragile, her heart sank down into her malnourished, rumbling stomach which screamed in pain. Rose’s once golden hair was now as dark and gloomy as the forgotten forest. Slow shivers pulsed through her body as she looked over the empty clearing. Her cold, pale hand clutched a wilting blue flower; the only thing alive in this barren wasteland.’
Year 3 have been exploring Greta Thunberg. They are looking at sustainability and the book ‘Greta and the Giants’.
Today, they showed great independence when researching their own facts about her in order to create a biography next week.
Over the last few weeks, Year 4 have been learning all about what makes a great speech. They were then set a task by Mrs. Suffield to help her decide whether she should move her family to Queen’s Hill or the centre of Norwich. Y4 have been working incredibly hard to collate their ideas and come up with a convincing argument for why Queen’s Hill is the best place to live. This afternoon, Y4 gathered in the hall to present their speeches to Mrs. Suffield.
This afternoon Year 2 met up with Year 3 to share their versions of ‘Julian is a Mermaid’. Year 2 were very excited to read their stories and show Year 3 all the hard work they had put into writing them.
Year 1 had a visit from the Garlic Theatre Company for a production of Jack and the Bean’s Talk. The children also got the opportunity to see the puppets and find out how it all works. They were incredibly inspired and we can’t wait to see how amazing their own stories are when they write them in a few weeks.