Following Christ

We looked ahead to the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) this week and the famous account of Jesus calling the first apostles. He says, "Follow me." We heard how, without hesitation, the fishermen responded immediately to Jesus' invitation.

This reading can be a powerful reminder of the precious gift of freewill that God bestows on us. There are a thousand different ways that the disciples could have responded: "Why?", "Yes, I'll be there in a minute", "Nah, you're alright - I'm fine." The instant conviction with which the disciples respond is a beautiful witness.

In the same way, we have been looking to reward and celebrate children this week for their readiness to quickly follow instructions and requests from staff.

B - 3rd Ordinary

Out of this world!

This week, Year 5's creativity has been out of this world! Quite literally, with the solar systems that they produced for their homework. We have been amazed at all the different ways they have interpreted the solar system and shown it through paper mache, baking, mechanical models and so many other ways. Their interest and excitement didn't stop there... In Science this week they were able to use some unusual items to create simple models of the phases of the Moon. Who would have thought that Oreos and ping-pong balls were just the right medium to showcase this?!

Doctor, Doctor

This week Reception have been learning about how doctors and nurses help us. The children loved pretending to be doctors/nurses themselves and articulated well when they have been to the doctor's surgery or hospital before.

They also learnt how they can look after themselves by washing their hands. With a special 'glitter bug potion' and torch, the children could see how well they were washing their hands. Can you remember how long you need to wash your hands for?

How does our hand work?

This week in Science, Year 3 have been learning how our hands work. First, we thought about what we already knew before discovering new facts. Did you know the hand has 27 bones? It has three bones in each finger, but the thumb has only two!

The muscles from your arm and palm pull on the tendons, which are attached to your finger bones, and our fingers move. It is amazing!

We made finger models to show the process. First, we cut out the model and bent it into a finger shape. Next, we tied the string representing our tendon to the top of our finger and threaded it through. Our fingers bent forward at the hinge joints when we pulled on the tendon. We joined more fingers to make our hand if we were quick enough. It was great fun.

The lesson ended with a quiz (which we aced!)

Tasty Words!

In English, Year 1 have been exploring the book 'Handa's Surprise'. After identifying 'who' is in the story (lots of animals) and coming up with adjectives to describe them, we looked at 'what' was in the story (a whole range of fruit!) To help us to describe the fruit, we had the opportunity to experience seeing, touching, smelling and tasting the fruits in the story, including banana, orange, tangerine, pineapple, passion fruit, mango and avocado. Having this experience really helped us to come up with fantastic adjectives for our writing. We created word banks during this experience lesson which have since been used to help us create exciting sentences with expanded noun phrases.

Not only has this given us a whole bank of vocabulary to support our writing, it also gave us an opportunity to try some new fruits! Some children predicted that they wouldn't like the passion fruit or avocado but were pleasantly surprised by the tastes and said they can't wait to eat more of it!

Ship Shape!

This week Year 6 have been exploring the properties of 2D and 3D shapes and investigating nets. We looked at a range of three dimensional shapes, even a dodecahedron, and described them in terms of their faces, vertices and edges, as well as which of these faces had parallel and perpendicular lines. We also made sure we were confident differentiating between pyramids and prisms and found our understanding of 2D shapes could help us here too! We explored this further by looking at a range of nets for a cube, deciding if these would work or not. Interestingly, we found that some children had a knack for spatial awareness and could imagine the outcome of the shape from the net, whilst others - teachers included - needed to physically make the net and fold it to see if it would work. Piotr and Nathaniel in 6J were particularly good at visualising the shapes and were able to reason why a given net would or wouldn't work (usually sides that would overlap) - brilliant mathematical thinking.

Is there room on the broom?

This week Nursery had some unusual visitors; Tilly the tarantula, Turbo the cockroach, Splat the tree frog, Slowmo the African land snail, Pudding the Snake and Pip Squeak, Wilmer and Dora the baby rats. We were very lucky to have Zoo Lab come in and read us a story called, Zoo on a broom. Throughout the story, the children were able to see the various characters from the story. This was a lovely way to bring the story to life and give the children first hand experience of seeing (and occasionally touching) some unusual animals. In addition we learnt that tarantulas have eight eyes and that frogs use their eyes to aid their eating and digestion.

A delicious way to divide

Moving on from multiplication, Year 4 enjoyed an unusual introduction to division this week. Armed with a willing partner and a bowl of Cheerios, the children investigated the various ways of dividing up their stash of cereal. A very open ended lesson, this led to lots of discussion about which numbers could be divided exactly and which ones had some left over. Most of the children realised that there is a very strong link between dividing and the times tables facts which they have been trying so hard to learn. We were very proud of the focus and learning which took place, particularly around their vocabulary; "There are 5 lots of 9, so we have 45 in total", "How many groups of 7 can we make from these?", "Every multiple of 100 must be divisible by 4 because I can make 25 groups of 4 from 100 Cheerios''. We will move on to consolidating their learning using partitioning and place value counters in preparation for learning the formal "bus stop" method in Year 5.

Know your town

What an exciting time we had in Guildford this week! Continuing our Year 2 depth study, we rode the public bus in to Guildford and walked around the town, looking at the historical places we had learned about last week.

We had great fun feeling the different stones that the castle was made out of, including chalk and flint, as well as seeing how the river flows between the two hills, the treadmill that was used to load cargo on to boats travelling to London and the oldest church in Guildford with a 1000-year-old tower!

St Vincent's Class

Our thanks to St Vincent's Class for an amazing class worship this morning. The children explained with confidence and imagination the pressure on us all of the time to use our freewill carefully. There are influences that are good and healthy to follow but there can also be temptations to follow behaviours that don't lead us to God. The children shared how they have to take great care in their role as siblings to ensure their younger brothers and sisters have a role model to follow - excellent advice 4V - thank you and well done!

Follow me, follow me

Congratulations to this wonderful collection of young people, who have been our star witnesses this week - promptly following instructions and responding to staff requests, just like the first disciples. School can be hard work at times - so many rules and instructions - but being ready and willing to respond as an active citizen is essential in helping the community to run harmoniously.

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