Class News

Ducklings  - Nursery 

Ducklings have continued to learn all about Autumn. We went on an Autumn walk around the school  environment and began to notice some changes to the leaves. Our new story is  'We are going on a leaf hunt'. The story is all about three friends who go on a big adventure, hiking over a mountain and through a forest to collect leaves of all kinds and colour. We went on our own adventure and using our maths skills, we were able to match the numbers on the different leaves and begin to identify some of the numbers by name.

During phonics we have been singing a new song called silly soup. The children added potatoes, carrots and a pumpkin to the soup to make it nice. Leading on from this, we made our own soup. This time it wasnt silly soup but pumpkin soup. The children used the vegetable peelers to prepare the vegetables and then using the safety knives, were able to chop the vegetables into smaller pieces to place into the soup maker. The children enjoyed tasting the soup and thought it was yummy! 

Robins - Reception 

Robins have been learning about Harvest and Autumn. Last week our learning was based around the story, 'The Little Red Hen'. In the story, the hen harvests and mills wheat into flour before using the flour to make bread. Unfortunately no other animals helped the hen so she ate the bread herself! Robins talked about the importance of teamwork and helping each other. The children then worked in groups to make dough for our very own bread rolls. 

The children also learnt about the fruits and vegetables which are harvested in the autumn. They enjoyed exploring and naming parsnips, sweet potatoes, swede, garlic, spring onions and butternut squash. Later in the week we chopped the vegetables and made vegetable soup to go with our bread rolls! The adults were so impressed with the children's cutting skills!

In phonics, we have introduced our first letter sounds, we have learnt s, a, t, i, p, n so far! Once the children have built confidence with these sounds, we will send home books with words. 

In maths, we have been exploring capacity. We based our maths learning around the book, 'Dear Zoo.' We have been exploring the size of different containers and which animals will fit suitably in them. We have further explored capacity in the water tray by investigating how many cups of water will fill a bucket. 

Sparrows - Year 1 

Sparrow class have become historians as they explore their inquiry, 'Understanding people’s personal histories helps us connect to others'. We have been looking at the King and Queens of England through the ages and explored some of the differences between the past and now. There was a real surprise in the class as we used pictures of 500 year old paintings from King Richard 3rd's banquet to research the food that was eaten then. The children didn't think that Peacocks and Swans should be on our school menu! 

Pupils have also been learning about the rules of succession and who is next in line for the throne. Our research into the Royal Family and its history has also taken us into the world of Castles and Knights. This has brought us to our new design and technology project to build a castle from card with the key features of battlements, towers, turrets and walls to protect it from attack. The children have shown some impressive skills joining card together with flange and slot joints and we predict some very fortified castles will be built next week!  Castles and knights have also been key themes in the children's writing with their amazing retelling of our class story 'Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure' by Kristina Stephenson. 

In our maths inquiry,  Sparrow class have been using the number line to support their counting. The children drew giant number lines on the playground and practised counting as we landed on each number.  Sparrow class have been learning how the number line will be a useful tool as we move on to adding and subtracting numbers. 

Blackbirds - Year 2 

We have been preparing for the World Food Festival at St Martin's Church next Friday. We have linked our inquiry to our World Food Festival research. Our inquiry is 'understanding and celebrating differences can help bring people together'.  We used our research skills to find out how many nationalities are in Blackbird class and then we created a tally chart to show the data. From this, we decided to look at Ukrainian food and look at what types of food they eat. We are currently creating diagrams of the recipes and some of us are looking at what ingredients are in them!

We have had fun-filled lessons in maths and we have used lollipop sticks to learn different skills! Some of these are counting in 2s and understanding tally marks. This has helped us understand that one tally mark represents one and we need to make sure that we close the gate to show five. 

We have finished our life cycle of a penguin writing. Miss Brandon was really impressed with how pupils decided to create a story of a penguin after. We used the scientific vocabulary that we have learned before and included it within our writing. Next week we will be using adjectives to create a poem about Roy and Silo. 

Woodpeckers - Year 3 

Woodpeckers continue to work hard to understand different cultures around the world and are showing such commendable open minds. We were fortunate enough to have a visit from a local Imam to give us further understanding of the Islamic faith. The children were inquisitive and respectful and learnt a lot. from the experience. The children were also fabulous risk takers when trying some new food. We will be using these ingredients to create some energy balls for the character of Tom in our class reader. He is taking on an epic quest and needs the energy! This has also allowed the children to reflect on what makes a healthy lifestyle including diet, exercise, sleep and time on devices.

The children contiue to work so hard in their swimming sessions. As well as being fabulously behaved, they are showing that they are risk takers and brave enough to give things a go. The progress they have made is inspiring to see. 

Blue Jays - Year  4

Blue Jays have been continuing with their inquiry People can express their critical and creative thinking through language, literature and the arts. We are focusing on the why and how stories are told through different media. We have begun investigating pop-up books in order to do this. There are many interesting and imaginative pop up books that use different mechanisms to help tell the story, create shock or suspense and to give greater depth of detail. We investigated a range of pop-up books and asked these questions as we did: What is the purpose of these mechanisms? What is the mechanism that helps move each picture? Why would children want to read these books? Think about interesting design and aesthetics. How does this help create an effective story? We had lots of fun looking at the different mechanisms and effects they created. 

The next step will be to plan our own pages to create a pop-up book based on our text Oliver and the Seawigs. We will create story boards give an overview of a story and help sequence the plot. They will also include the mechanism needed to create the pop-up effect. 

Kingfisher - Year 5 

Year 5 have been doing some really exciting work planning and creating our own eco cities. Each child has thought about some of the problems we face in towns and cities today and come up with some amazing sustainable solutions. Children have used a program called Tinkercad to explore creating 3D digital art and are now using this program to create a 3D model of the sustainable city they have created. We have also been learning about the Chinese Moon festival which is a harvest festival celebrated in China and other parts of Eastern Asia. We are very excited to share our learning with you at next Friday's harvest assembly at the church. We have almost finished our class book "Floodland". Please ask your children about their thoughts and opinions on the book. It touches on themes of climate change and possible future issues and the children have come up with some really insightful and thoughtful discussions around these ideas!

Year 5 also welcomed Reverend Joyce into class on Thursday. She was returning the art which had a focus on climate change that pupils created for the her as she led the Canterbury COP 2023. 150 people saw the brilliant printing from Year 5 pupils and also read their descriptions about what their images depicted. We are very proud of pupils' work representing our school at this event. 

Chaffinch - Year 6

Year 6 have continued with our inquiry 'Engagement with the Arts allows people to better understand themselves, others and the world'. We have used our geographical and IT skills to determine human characteristics of the population of Syria - the nationality of the main character of our class text, Aya. Using Google Earth to observe the types of buildings and landscape, we were able to comment on the; density, religion, size, affluence and the main employment sectors available to people in the area. We also looked at the movement of Aya and her family from Syria to the United Kingdom, showing empathy for refugees and the conditions that they endured.

In preparation for our visit to St Martin's for the world food festival, we have been researching how North America celebrates 'Harvest' and shows gratitude to farmers for their hard work and crops. We are ready to share our knowledge on Thanksgiving at the church and look forward to wowing you all with our information and fun facts - did you know only male turkeys can gobble?!

The past week has seen Chaffinch participate in their first assessment week as Year 6s. They have applied themselves impeccably and are already showing improvements on their learning outcomes from year 5. Fabulous work everyone!