This week's learning

W/C 27^th July 2022

The end of another week and closer to the summer holidays! This week Monday became DT day and the children designed, created and evaluated a slingshot car. The ideas and variations that were discussed and created by the children amazed me and a lot of fun, and hard work, was had! We then raced the cars on the playground. Photos are attached.

Maths this week had the children interpreting data in the form of pictograms and charts and within Literacy the children watched a short movie clip called Luna and became the main character. From this they wrote their own diary accounts.

Art was fun and the children loved studying and drawing their own teddies. Some examples of their fantastic work are attached.

Well done to Jessica and Finlay for their certificates in the assembly today and Table of the Week went to Opal.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Thomas

W/C 13/6/22

Wow it has been a busy week! We began the week with the Language Leaders from Sandon school coming in to teach French in a variety of different ways. The children loved working with the older pupils who had planned tasks for them to complete. We then ended the week with our Drumming Day when Dan came in with an enormous amount of drums for each class to have their own drumming session. It was loud but so much fun!

Time is our topic in Maths this week and we have focused on reading the time to 5 minute intervals, recognising AM and PM and the relationship between hours, minutes and seconds. We went outside and created a human clock and counted in fives to show the amount of time between each number using our minute hand.

In Literacy we have continued our text of ‘Escape to Pompeii’ where the children have been writing descriptive paragraphs about volcanic eruptions and have started planning their own stories to be continued next week.

In Science we looked at sound vibrations and continued our work on SCRATCH in Computing.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the sunshine.

Mrs Thomas

W/C 9/5/22

Good afternoon,

We have come to the end of week 4 and I can honestly say the class have been fab this week keeping quiet for the year 6 children. Well done Kingfishers!

We began the week working on money in Maths and have looked at making amounts, subtracting amounts and using part whole models to help us.

In literacy today we created our own Kennings poems about Volcanoes. The children were fascinated by the videos we watched and came up with some fantastic lines.

In Science we continued our changes of matter unit by drawing up an investigation to find the best temperature of water to melt chocolate.  We will keep you posted next week with the results. The children have become very good at demonstrating the particles of a solid, liquid and gas. Ask them to give you a demo!

Our Islam unit continued in RE where we focused on Mosques and the children enjoyed listening to the call of prayer which some of the children have been lucky enough to hear when on holiday.

Well done to Alfie and Jessica for receiving their certificates in assembly today and also to Ruby table for achieving Table of the Week!

Have a great weekend everyone.

Mrs Thomas

Week commencing 25th April 2022

This week in Kingfisher Class we've been enjoying a short story set in Victorian times and looking at how the author gives the reader clues that it is set in the past.  The children have been showing great empathy for the two main characters in the story by thinking about the emotions they would have felt at different points in the story.  Next week, we will be writing the next chapter, ensuring we include lots of suspense and descriptive language.  

Congratulations to our table of the week, Sapphire table, who have worked well as a team to earn table points.  

W/C 28/3/22

We have made it! I can’t believe how quickly the last 6 weeks have flown by. I can safely say I think all the children are looking forward to their two week, well-earned break.

We have been Charlie and Chocolate factory obsessed this week. It started with writing character descriptions and describing settings, and ended with predicting outcomes and discussing how we would love an Oompa Loompa as a friend!

Maths continued with dividing a single digit by 10 and 100 where we made good use of our place value grids to help us when we got stuck.

Our Science unit came to an end by investigating with magnets and discussing how they work. If you need a time filler in the holidays I recommend grabbing magnets from around the house and letting your child play with them. They have all become fixated with magnets!

On Thursday we had a class Easter egg hunt. Although it turned out to be the coldest and windiest day of the week and the eggs, that Mrs Wilkinson kindly hid, all blew everywhere we had fun! The children laughed so hard when one of the letters flew over the fence, above a house and disappeared into the universe somewhere!

Our movie morning went well and the children loved the film. Photos are attached.

Congratulations to Violet and Maddison for your certificates today and well done to Table of the Week that went to Opal table.

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter break!

Mrs Thomas

W/C 21/3/22

It is hard to believe that we only have 1 week left of the Spring term!

This week has been a busy one for Kingfishers starting off with a visit from athletes Dan Putnam and Jessica Tapin who came into talk to the school about the Commonwealth games. Each class were able to have a workshop with them competing in different sporting tasks. The children loved it! 

Literacy has taken us into the world of Charlie and the Chocolate factory where we have been describing the chocolate room and inventing our own ‘truly scrumptious’ sweets! The children amaze me with their creativity and imagination from chocolate covered gummy bears of any flavour you could wish for to rainbow coated mickey mouse bon bons!

Maths has included turning tenths into decimals and dividing 1 digit numbers by 10 using a place value grid.

In Science we have been investigating magnets and the children have enjoyed trying to make paperclips hover and finding the strongest magnets. 

Congratulations to Edith and Finlay for getting your certificates this week and to Emerald who gained the most points for Table of the Week!

Have a wonderful weekend and lets hope the sunshine continues.

Mrs Thomas

W/C - 14/3/22

What a week! The children have all been amazing this week especially with the dreaded ‘tests’ going on! We referred to them in class as “working in booklets instead of our normal books.” This seemed to put the children at ease and they settled well and worked hard.

One part that the children did look forward to was the class assembly. Thank you for helping them to learn lines and, to those that were able to make it on the day, we hope you enjoyed it too. The children loved performing in front of an audience and did so well. There are definitely some Hollywood actors and actresses in the class set for stardom in the future. Watch out Tinseltown!

Well done to our certificate achievers today who were Logan and Jhensen.

Table of the Week went to Amethyst. Well done!

Here’s to a sunny weekend.

Mrs Thomas

W/C 7/3/22

Happy Friday everyone.

The children all looked great today in their yellow and blue clothes to support Ukraine. Thank you so much for all the donations. The library was full to the brim with your kind contributions!

News from the rest of the week:

In English the children were very excited when they found out our author review was going to be Roald Dahl. It was lovely to see them discuss his stories, bring in books they have at home to share and enjoy learning so many new facts about him. Did you know he was a fighter pilot before he began writing stories? We looked at some of the descriptions he uses for his characters and the children’s favourite was definitely the description of Aunt Sponge as ‘a great white, soggy, overboiled cabbage!’

In maths we have continued our fractions unit by ordering, comparing, adding and subtracting using fractions with the same denominator. We have also been continuing our times tables practice.

Within our foundation subjects we have looked at the layers of the ocean in Geography and created posters to encourage people to stop polluting the seas with plastics in PSHE. In PE we were lucky enough to have Chelmsford Sports Partnership in to teach the children a session on tag rugby. The children thoroughly enjoyed this especially when they got muddy!

Well done to Isla and Violet who received certificates in assembly today and Table of the Week went to Opal table so well done to you all.

Don’t forget our Class Assembly next week is on Thursday 17^th March at 9.10am in the school hall.

Have a lovely weekend. Fingers crossed for the sunshine. 

Mrs Thomas

W/C 28/2/22

I can’t believe another week has flown by! This week we have been creating our non – chronological reports about the deep sea creatures we discovered last week on our trip to the Mariana Trench. The children have become well acquainted with the features used within a non-chronological report and have made good use of them.

We had a busy day on Wednesday which started off with a trip to the Church for an assembly with Canon Christine. She told us about Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and the children were able to have a cross painted on to their forehead using the ash of palm trees from the Holy Land. They thoroughly enjoyed this especially when the rain smudged them on the way back to school!

The day continued with our class family lunch which I hope you enjoyed as much as the children did. It was so lovely to see lots of smiling faces and watching the children show their adults how to get their dinners. A special thank you to Mrs Jacques and Mrs Ruffy in the kitchen for all their hard work in preparing 64 meals for us!

In maths we have continued our fractions unit where we have looked at equivalent fractions, and fractions that make a whole. We have made good use of our fractions wall to support our learning. We even had a human numberline in the classroom to help us!

In computing we have been finishing off our Powerpoints about Coral Reefs and the children found a variety of pictures to insert into their work.

Today we celebrated World Book Day and looked very cozy in our PJs and costumes. The children shared their chosen stories with each other and wrote book reviews about them

Certificates this week went to Ellie and Holly. Well done to both of you and keep up the good work.

Table of the Week went to Sapphire table so well done to you.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Thomas

W/C 21/2/22

I can’t believe we have come to the end of the first week already. The children have settled back in really well and have already got used to any slight changes in the classroom. Well done Kingfishers!

This week we have started looking in to the ocean at the deep, blue abyss. In Literacy the children and I went on an adventure to the Mariana Trench in our specially designed submarines to look at any life living down there. The children discovered brand new creatures that have never been seen before and made drawings of them. They then took part in a hot seating activity where they were interviewed by journalists from the BBC! The children have come up with some great vocabulary when describing the blue abyss and their sea creature. They will begin to write their non-chronological report about the unidentified creature next week.

In Maths we have begun our unit on fractions. We looked at fractions of shapes and numbers before we moved on to equivalent fractions. The children also took part in a times table challenge leading on to our TT Rockstars work next week. Please could the children continue practicing their tables and using TT Rockstars at home. The ‘soundcheck’ section is particularly useful.

The children will be bringing their homework home today ready to be handed in next Thursday. They have their spelling list in there too so please could they work on this throughout the week ready for their test on Thursday morning.  Many thanks.

The family lunch is next Wednesday and a big thank you to those of you who have sent me your option from the menu. If you haven’t managed to do this yet I would be very grateful if you could let me know on the class Dojo page as soon as possible. This way I can let Mrs Jacques know asap.

Well done to Harper and Gracie for getting their certificates this week. Table of the Week went to Amethyst.  Well done to you.

Enjoy the weekend.

Mrs Thomas