Look who dropped into our guided reading session this morning! Shadow enjoyed listening to the story (although it must have been a bedtime story as he fell asleep afterwards!)
Throughout the autumn term, the children in Language Unit 2 were learning to design and make electronic Christmas cards in their Design Technology lessons. Look at the fabulous cards they created to take home for their families!
On 21st October, Children in Language Unit 2 were learning about describing characters in English. They were left a few clues as to who they would be describing next – can you guess who it might be?
On 6th October, Language Unit 2 children had a surprise in store with an ‘unbirthday’ party! They are currently learning about stories set in imaginary worlds so they followed the clues to guess the story. They correctly guessed Alice in Wonderland. Mrs Thu. Wasn’t too impressed with the mouse in the teapot when she went to make the tea!
The autumn term has been jam packed in year 3 . We have spent some glorious days at farm school learning about where our food comes from and learning how to care for animals . We researched packaging to help us create our own packaging . We have become more skilled during our drumming classes and enjoyed exciting Pe sessions including one with Lucy A GB champion . We have investigated types of rocks using systematic testing to decode if they were igneous , metamorphic or sedementary . We also wrote our own poem to support the reach out nation wide theme for anti- bullying week.
We are working really hard in French assemblies to prepare for our French Café! French Club are producing some language videos for children and adults to watch to help with their ordering in French.
Reminder – French Breakfast Café for children in Year 3, 4 ,5 and 6 and their Parents/Carers at 8.45am on Tuesday 7th March.
Please click on the link below to watch.
We are delighted to announce that we have achieved an Artsmark Silver Award!
Our Statement of Commitment and Statement of Impact have been assessed and we’re pleased to share this feedback from our assessors with you:
‘It was positive to read about the wide range of arts and cultural experiences pupils have had access to such as annual theatre visits, trips to the Baltic, Great North Museum, Durham Cathedral, Laing Art gallery, Sunderland Winter Gardens and South Shields Customs House. Following the COVID restrictions it is really good to hear your choirs are back to full strength and able to take part in performance opportunities including, the Big Sing, ‘Different voices in Harmony,’ where pupils visit venues including the SAGE and Customs House. A specialist has led Art and DT planning, leading to a significant increase in lessons being deemed outstanding across all year groups. Art was also showcased as a school strength in the OFSTED inspection of 2022. Unfortunately, during COVID connection with your local music hub was severed, which left your students without a valued area of the curriculum. However, you counteracted this by providing remote learning opportunities to continue to immerse the pupils in the arts curriculum, whilst funding a music trolly with a full set of keyboards and glockenspiels to allow class teachers to provide instrumental lessons to their classes. Teachers now have access to the Charanga platform to support music lessons. During COVID you also adapted your Christmas performances to be shown on DVD and invited parents, outside of the school, to hear your Christmas Carol service. Since restrictions lifted events such as ‘Cultural Week’, ‘Craft Fayres’ and ‘Enterprise Week’ have been reinstated and involve musicians and the local community by extending the route and advertising the Cultural Parade to involve members of the community. These events appear to be very successful and help to keep the Arts in high profile. It was positive to read how you make links between the Arts and possible career paths, with pupils regularly relating their learning to possible jobs they could acquire when they leave school. Perhaps you may also want to consider the diversity of role models pupils explore to enhance this area. It will be interesting to see how your after schools clubs develop as opportunities expand for pupils. You have identified appropriate areas for development in your Statement of Impact, and you may also want to consider building a bank of case studies which could be shared with schools locally or regionally to support their engagement with the Arts.’
Congratulations on your Artsmark Silver Award!
Wow Reception! You were all amazing today, showcasing your superstar balancing and jumping skills!
The children in year 4 had an amazing day at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. They had the opportunity to explore the gallery and learn about all of the different paintings that were there. We looked particularly at landscape paintings as we are studying Paul Cezanne’s mountains in class.
Whilst there we also took part in a very useful workshop. We learnt all the different techniques for painting with watercolours. We learnt how to blend, blotch and build up colours and then used our new skills to create our own landscape paintings. We will also use these new skills throughout our topic and we cannot wait to create some masterpieces that may someday be on display in a magnificent gallery!
Year 6 have studied evolution and inheritance recently, looking at adaptations as part of their science enquiry. Learning more about how animals adapt to their environment, groups created their own experiment and set about testing different beak sizes. The investigation used theory from Charles Darwin’s finches and they used practical items to simulate a bird’s beak.
Would a spoon give a better result than a straw? Would skittles be easier to pick up than wheat hoops? Only Year Six have the answers! As scientists, they carried out the investigation using predictions, recording accurately, created a results table before evaluating their findings.
Here are some photographs to show what they did.
