Class Photographs and Blog 2021-2022

Well done to everyone in Kestrels and Eagles for their hard work in today’s baking competition. The children have worked hard over the past few weeks, to research the market for biscuits that fit the Fortnum and Mason design brief in week one of our DT unit. Their biscuits must:

1. Taste great.
2. Be easy enough for people to recreate at home.
3. Be inspired by the Queen.
4. Be well decorated.

During week two, once they had decided on making the ‘Empire Biscuit’, they designed how their biscuit would look and how to link their design to the Queen. The Year 6 children conducted some market research to see which icing people preferred: water icing or fondant. They then used this information to guide their planning. In week three, children did a trial run of their chosen design to check if it worked well or if any alterations were needed in their final product. In week four, the children then wrote detailed plans for their design, including safety and hygiene instructions. The Year 6 children extended this to include information about how to store their biscuit to avoid it going stale. This week, week five, was the long awaited big bake off day! The children have worked very hard all day to follow their plans, including their hygiene and safety advice, then make, roll and cut their dough. During the baking and cooling period, the children thought about how to present their product, making it appealing to our guests by designing and making their own origami boxes and baskets. The children were extremely pleased to showcase their finished products to the rest of the school as well as their parents. Our very own star baker, Mrs Moss, chose a winner from each year group and presented the trophies to the children. Well done Kestrels and Eagles!

National Story Telling Week 31^st January – 4^th February 2022

Eagles have spent the past fortnight learning how to write a play script, then writing their own to create a shadow puppet theatre show to perform to the other classes in school. They used some fantastic vocabulary and imagery to create a vivid description of their setting: Bear Island in the Arctic Circle. Based on our current Book Club and English text, ‘The Last Bear’ by Hannah Gold, the children wrote their own section of the story where the main character, April, goes out on her own on an intrepid adventure to search for the only surviving polar bear on Bear Island. Some of the children created an exciting cliff hanger, leaving their audience in suspense as to whether April did find the illusive bear or not, while others managed to engage their audience to participate by getting them to shout out ‘It’s behind you!’, if the bear came into view. All in all, the children thoroughly enjoyed the experience, whether they were performing or part of the audience and we are very proud of them all for the RESPECT and care they showed towards each other.

2/2/2022 – Geography – map skills

Today we learnt how to read, find and give 6 figure map references on an Ordinance Survey Map. We then went on to learn about lines of longitude, latitude, the equator, prime meridian and the topics of Cancer and Capricorn as well as the Arctic and Antarctic circles.

20/1/2022 – Author Online event with Sam Copeland

We were very privileged to join this brilliant event today. We were very excited to have received a copy of the first chapter of Sam’s new book, ‘Greta and the Ghost Hunters’ even before it was released! We read the chapter in Book Club yesterday so we could really enjoy the online session with Sam today. We loved listening to him reading more of the book to us and found it, and him, really hilarious! We also loved his strange and disgusting facts quiz and were very proud to know lots of strange and disgusting answers! Some of us were lucky enough to be able to order a signed copy of the book to be delivered as soon as it is released – we can’t wait to read the rest! It also prompted us look for other books by Sam Copeland as he was so funny!

Read more about Sam here: https://www.sam-copeland.com/who-am-i

14/1/2022 – Landscape art

This half term, we are using the work of Oliver Jeffers to inspire our landscape art project. In our first lesson, we studied his book ‘This Moose Belongs to Me’. We identified the medium and techniques he uses, looked at how he uses colour to reflect the mood, how he combines realistic landscapes with cartoon style characters and how he uses words and pictures together to tell the story. We watched a brilliant clip about him and all thought he was very funny!

Find out more about Oliver Jeffers here; https://www.oliverjeffers.com/

12/1/2022 – Geography mapping skills

We had a lovely fresh start to the new year today by going out in the FREEZING cold to assess the best areas around school to plant different flowers that require different light conditions to thrive. Using an aerial, satellite map of the school grounds, we designed our own key then marked the areas of light, shade and partial shade. Back in the classroom, we transferred our information to a street map of the same area and researched which plants would be best suited to each area.

Another surprise visitor! 16/12/2021

We all loved our surprise visit today from Mr O of Amber Valley School Sport Partnership and his friend Ozzy, who came to tell us about a very exciting opportunity: next Thursday, 23^rd December, there will be a FREE holiday club at our school with Christmas arts and crafts, sports activities and a Christmas disco! The day will run from 9am until 3pm and a packed lunch, snacks and drinks will be provided. Register here to join the fun: Holiday Camps – Amber Valley School Sport Partnership CIO (avssp.co.uk)

WWII Tea party 13/12/2021

Kestrels and Eagles loved having their parents in to enjoy a WWII tea party, similar to the street parties held to celebrate VE (Victory in Europe) Day back in May 1945 when the end of the war was declared. We listened to Neville Chamberlain declaring the start of the war in September 1939 as well as Winston Churchill announcing the end six years later. We listened to some children read out their incredible WWII descriptive writing and poetry as well as showcasing the brilliant timelines drawn by the children in Kestrels. We all enjoyed a good old sing song to 'Poppies of Red' by Caroline Salloway, 'We'll Meet Again' by Vera Lynn and 'Hey Mister Miller'. This was a wonderful morning to share and celebrate the children's learning about WWII throughout the Autumn term. 

Sticky Knowledge Week Competition 9/12/2021

We loved putting our knowledge to the test to see how much we have remembered of our learning since September. It was great to work in our house teams too.

Wednesday 1^st December 2021

By Jayden and Ethan

Today was an exciting day as we started doing our colouring  for our next year’s calendar to take home!

After that, we used dictionaries to look up definitions of our spelling words. We are learning to add suffixes that begin with a vowel to words ending in –fer like refereeing.

In Maths, we carried on doing yesterday’s maths work as we all needed more practice at short division. With the extra time, all of us managed to get onto the dive deepers.

We had a really special treat today at morning break as William brought us all a cake to eat. We loved them so thank you to William and his family!

In Book club we learned about the disease called polio which used to affect children aged 5 and under. It can spread pretty easily but there was the first global vaccination campaign in the 1980’s and it is nearly eradicated now so don’t worry.

In English we started writing our first draft of our letters in the role of World War 1 soldiers, right after the unexpected Christmas Truce in 1914.

After lunch, we looked at our micro-organism, mouldy bread science experiment. Some of use chose to test temperature as our variable to see what difference it made to the development of mould (micro-organisms) so we placed bread in different temperatures: hot (radiator), warm (in the classroom) and cold (on the windowsill next to the open window. Other people chose to test how light affects the mould growth so their variable conditions are: light (on the windowsill) shaded (in a tray) and dark (in the cupboard. Each slice is in a plastic cover with a 100 square drawn on so we can count and record the percentage of the bread that has mould on. The only slice with mould today was the bread in hot conditions with 3% mould (3/100 squares).

In history, we are designing our own propaganda posters to show that we understand what they are used for by the government. Most of us chose to do one about either cop26 and climate change or covid-19.

In assembly we practiced our Christmas song: Hail Chime On by Kate Rusby.

Thursday 4^th November 2021

By Wilbland and Sydney

Musical notes:

Today in music, we got to play our instruments for the first time. We learnt how to take them out of their cases carefully so we don’t damage them and how to hold them properly. We also played a rhythm on the violin/viola/cello, which was really cool. Unfortunately, we didn’t use the bow to play,  instead we plucked the strings with our fingers!

We learnt these notes:

Violin:

Elephants (Arms up) Are (hands on head) Dark (hands on hips) Grey (hands on knees)

D = Do

A = So

 Viola + Cello

All (Hands on head) Dogs (hands on hips) Go (hands on knees) Camping (hands on feet)

A = so 

D = do

In English (Mrs Mee was really proud of us all) we wrote some amazing emotive descriptions using figurative language. We were describing the feelings and emotions of the characters from ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan. In fact, the character (the Dad) was leaving on a train so we will find out where he arrives next week.

Monday 18^th October 2021

This week’s Co-Jo mission was to build a shelter for the spies who had escaped from the Prisoner of War Camps last week, to keep them warm and dry while they made their way across the French countryside. Mrs Mee tested the success of each shelter by pouring water over each group to see if their shelter was truly weather proof! Luckily we were all fantastic at building our shelters so no-one got wet!

Tuesday 12^th October 2021

By Jayden an Ethan

In maths, we did subtraction we couldn’t quite finish the lesson though because we needed it to be explained more because we didn’t understand it!

In Book Club, we looked at our new book: ‘How To Change The World’. We looked at the front cover and blurb and found out a little bit about the author. It’s a non-fiction book but set out differently to normal ones with fun illustrations and is told a bit like a story.

In English, we tried to find action (doing) and being (emotion) verbs in the book called The Arrival. Here’s some examples: packing the suitcase, holding hands, worrying about the future.

After lunch, we did spellings. We looked in a dictionary to try and find word definitions.

In PSHE, we did something called a Kindness Token. You give it to someone who’s been kind!

Monday 11^th October 2021

By Elise and Alfie

Today in maths we did addition and we had four Dive Deepers to do. In English we did modal verbs and questions about the new book that we have in our class.

After lunch we read our library books, did spellings then did a Commando Joe mission, which was to work as a team to rescue spies who had been captured and put in a Prisoner of War camp. Like the great escape, we had to build a tunnel for them to escape without being seen by the prison guards.

Then we did science: we cracked an egg and looked at all the different parts to help us understand the life cycle of a bird and fertilisation. We investigated the shell, membrane (a thin layer between the shell and egg white), yolk (it was slimy) and egg white which is called albumen. We couldn’t see the germinal disc (which is where the sperm can go into the yolk to fertilise the egg) or the chalaza (cords that keep the yolk held in the middle).

In assembly we learnt about the first Guru, called Guru Nanak who taught people about Sikhism and then, as usual, it was home time.

Tuesday 5^th October 2021

By Kie And Wilbland

Today at school…

Maths: We started a new topic in maths today: we are doing negative numbers which can sometimes get a bit tricky yet sometimes it’s easy so I would say it’s just right for the class.

English: We typed our final draft for our recounts of our Eden Camp trip so that was really fun. We corrected our work to show everyone’s improvements.

Book Club: We had a poem to read called Autumn Fruits’ by Julie Sheldon (local author). We clapped all of the syllables for each line of the poem and looked at the structure: that the last word of each line becomes the first word of the next line.

Spelling: We wrote the definition of our new spelling words.

PSHE: We did the zones of regulations again and, as always, PSHE made everyone calm. We were talking about how and why you might be in the yellow, blue, red and green zones.

PE: For our last lesson of the day we did athletics for another week.

But today at 4pm until 6pm 8 people have been chosen to represent Ironville and Codnor Park Primary School in an athletics tournament at Alfreton Leisure Center.

Tuesday 28^th September 2021

By Alicia and Vicky

Hello this is our class blog!

Today in maths we read and partitioned numbers to 10,000,000!

In English we used yesterday’s expanded noun phrases and preposition sentences to write a diary entry for the day Anne Frank arrived at the annex.

Then we had our lunch: sausage rolls, mashed potato, peas, carrots and gravy.

After lunch, we read our library books for 10 minutes then did spelling. We searched for definitions of our words in the dictionary and had to write the word class, synonyms and antonyms.

We then had PSHE with Mrs Grundy and watched Newsround before going to do PE with Miss Naylor.

Monday 27^th September 2021

By Sydney and Thomas

Today we started off by doing maths. We did a recall on the board with Mrs. Mee which was halving and quartering numbers in a pattern. After that we started doing our chillies (that’s what we call our math questions!).

After maths we went out for break (we all thought it was going to be wet play but it wasn’t!). Everyone was freezing since it was so cold and wet this morning!

In Book Club we did Superspeed 1000 (a fast reading task), then we read Rose Blanche and got straight on with our VIPERS questions. If you finished the questions then you did a book review.

After that we did English which was to make expanded noun sentences and prepositional phrases to describe the pictures of Anne Frank’s annex. We also went on a virtual tour of the annex which was super cool!

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/secret-annex/

After Lunch we did Cojo which was a real conundrum (Oliver got very stressed!) We had to communicate using Morse Code with torches to send and receive messages between us and our partner. It was extremely difficult and time consuming but still lots of fun. We took so long doing this that we ran out of time to complete our science lesson but Mrs Mee says we will find time for that tomorrow. It’s amazing how a plant can make offspring on its own with no pollination (asexual reproduction).  We hope our strawberry and spider plantlets grow now they have their own pots.

Last but not least was assembly, to reveal who was voted as the school council chair … it was Ffion!

Wednesday 22^nd September 2021

by Ffion and Kyla

Maths: We did chilli questions again today. We were saying and understanding the place value of the numbers then adding them using this.

Book club: We finished off yesterday’s questions and we read the end of our book called Rose Blanche, which is about a little girl from WW2 who helped children that were in a concentration camp by feeding them and helping them stay alive. We think she is very brave to do this and shows how kind and caring she is.

English: We finished our diary entries about how Anne Frank felt when she went into hiding at the secret annex. We had to use strong emotion words and relative pronouns to add extra information.

Monday 20th September 2021

Jayden and Ethan

In maths, we solved problems and patterns with numbers up to 1,000,000. The easiest part was probably Chilli 1, 2 and 3 because they were finding patterns, but the dive deeper challenges were much harder. We’re allowed to talk to each other to try and work things out though so that is good.

In English, we started writing a diary entry in the role of Anne Frank, saying how she felt in the secret annex and about leaving her cat called Moortje. We had to use emotive language like angry, devastated and heartbroken.

In Book Club we’re reading a book called Rose Blanche which is about life in WW2. Today, we had to compare how the atmosphere has changed from the beginning of the book to now. We found evidence like the fact that the soldiers aren’t singing, waving or cheering anymore.

In spelling we’re doing –tious and –cious spelling rules. We searched for the words in dictionaries. Mrs Hallsworth’s group are learning the short i sound spelt with y, but not at the end of the word.

In PSHE we did the zones of regulation (red: anger, green: happiness, blue: sadness, yellow: worried).

Friday 17^th September 2021

By Ellenore and Ffion

Maths: Today we were solving number questions up to 1,000,000. We also did some problem solving where the numbers were letters (a,b,c, d) and we had clues to work out the numbers!

Book club: Today in book cub we did a comprehension about a brave dog called Judy who helped in WW2: she became a loyal friend to Frank Williams. She helped the soldiers find water and she barked if there was enemy aircraft due to her good sense of smell and hearing!

DT: Today was our research and investigation phase of our project so we cut apart some old, used bags to see what’s inside, what they’re made of and how they were made. It was really fun cutting them open and seeing what’s inside! We looked at the material: most of them were made of false leather. We are going to make smaller versions of knapsacks so that will be good.

Thursday 16^th September 2021

By Alfie and Elise

Today in maths we have learnt numbers to 1,000,000. We used the bar model to partition the numbers in lots of different ways. We had to continue a pattern.

In English we finished our letters to Anne Frank. We had to include parenthesis to add extra information, contractions to show joined words and missing letters and include a question in our letters. We read  an opening of her diary and then watched a video about how her life changed before and after the war. You can watch the clip here:

Finally, we did tag rugby with Mr Adams. We practiced using our side throw in a game situation by running around and throwing the ball as we went past. It was really good and Mr Adams said our catching and throwing skills were improving.

Thursday 15^th September 2021

By Wilbland and Alicia

In maths we partitioned numbers and we learnt that a number can be partitioned in many different ways.

In Book Club we read Rose Blanche and we answered questions about the text. We had to use our viper skills, mostly inference because we had to think how the characters felt by considering what had happened to them. We also had to retrieve vocabulary from the book and find synonyms for the word immensely: extremely, very, enormously, incredibly, massively, exceptionally.

In English we wrote a letter to Anne Frank. We had to use brackets to add extra information (parenthesis).

In spellings we had to find as many words that end with cious or tious and then we did a kahoot quiz about word and sentence types.

In history we listened to the speech by Neville Chamberlain when he told everyone that we were at war with Germany and then researched why WWII started and why Adolf Hitler invaded Poland.

Tuesday 14^th September 2021

By Thomas and Sydney

Today in class we first started off by doing maths. We did a recall of things we already knew then some partitioning of numbers up to 100,000 and some problem solving.

While out at break, Thomas found some cool leaves that were in the shape of a heart so we researched what type of trees they were from and we found out they were called lime tree leaves. We think they have come off the trees over by the church.

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/large-leaved-lime/

After break we did book club and we read a book called Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti and Ian McEwan. We thought about the atmosphere that was created by the words of the book and compared it to the pictures which looked a lot more miserable than the words sounded. We think the author was trying to show that the people still felt positive by using positive words.

It was wet playtime at lunch and we had a great time playing games.

In the afternoon we did PSHE with Mrs Hosie. It was about emotions and the different colour zones. We played emotion bingo and only two people won though.

In P.E with Mrs Naylor, we did a warm up to help us get started but the main P.E lesson is fitness so that was hard work!

Monday 13^th September 2021

By Tyler and Oliver

Today we started to do a new thing in math’s it’s called chillies. At first we did a recap so we can remember what we have learnt in the past, then Mrs Mee gave us a question to talk about together before she talked us through it. She stuck her example up on the wall so we could look back at this in the lesson for support. We used our mental maths skills to add 1, 10, 100 and 1000 to four digit numbers.

Today in Book Club, we started reading Anne Frank by Josephine Poole and Angela Barrett. It is a short version of Anne Frank’s life.

In science we have been learning about the male and female sex cells required to reproduce: gametes. These are in plants and animals. Some plants can reproduce alone so they don’t need male and female gamete to join and fertilise. This is called asexual reproduction. We have a strawberry plant and spider plant in the classroom to show this.

Friday 10^th September 2021

By Lexi and William

This morning we did some maths then we learned how to use brackets as parenthesis to add extra information, for example: Robin’s hair (which is red) is very long. The sentence must still make sense on its own if you take the out the extra information, for example: Robin’s hair is long.

This afternoon we began learning about knapsacks in D.T. Soldiers carried tins in these bags for food in the war. We will be taking some bags apart to understand how they are made then plan how to make our own bag.

We also did French today and recapped what we had learnt last year, like how to say hello, how old we are and describe ourselves.

 Thursday 9^th September 2021

By Kie and Kyla

We started off the day by reading our book called the Breadwinner. It is really sad because they are starving as the Taliban soldiers took away their father and women and children are not allowed out on their own. We are very glad that we are free to make our own choices in our country.

Next, in English, we wrote sentences with modal verbs and conjunctions about artefacts we had from a long time ago. Then, we went out for a fun break and then we had music with Mrs Hallsworth. We sang ‘Poppies of Red’ by Caroline Salloway as we are learning this in time for Remembrance Sunday and because we are learning about WW2. For dinner, we had sausage, beans, peas and hashbrowns, which was delicious.

 After lunch, we did spellings and topic corrections, then, not long after, we went on TTRockstars to improve our times table skills. Finally, for our last lesson, we did Tag Ruby with our new coach called Mr Adams and it was amazing! After a very long day we all went home. J

Wednesday 8^th September 2021

By Jayden and Ethan

We started our day listening to Mrs Hallsworth read The Breadwinner, then looked at historical artefacts to see what we could learn about them and the people they belonged to.

We had ice lollies at morning breaktime because it was so hot again (28°C!) and everyone was getting tired from the heat!

We did our first Co-Jo Mission, which was to protect our own team’s secret information and try to steal secret information from the other teams. In 4^th place was the Red Team with  25 pieces of information, 3^rd place was the Blue Team with 33 pieces, 2^nd place was the Green Team with 40 pieces and in 1^st  place was the Yellow Team with 42 pieces of secret information. It was a really fun mission but very hot!

Finally, we did a Kahoot Quiz to see what we knew about WW2. Here’s the top 5: Sydney 5^th, Jayden 4th, Wilbland 3rd, Thomas 2^nd and Kie 1^st. We really love doing Kahoot quizzes!

Tuesday 7^th September 2021

By Ellenore and Ffion

When we came in this morning, Mrs Hallsworth read  The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, which is about war and Pakistan. Next, we did some eagle drawings for the display, as we are in eagles class. We sketched and then shaded four different eagles. Four children drew one of each: an eagle sitting right, an eagle sitting left, an eagle flying right and an eagle flying left! We both did the eagle flying left. It was really nice!

After we finished our eagle sketches, we started finding information about eagles to create fact sheets. Did you know that most eagles build their nest 125 ft. above the ground and that their diet consists of lots of food including deer, mice and really any small animals they can get their claws on! Did you know that 50% of their diet is fish!

PSHE

In PSHE, we learnt about emotions. We were given some emotions on a piece of paper and acted them out – it was really fun! We learnt about the different zones:

blue zone: sad, sick, tired and bored.

green zone: happy, calm, relaxed and proud.

yellow zone: frustrated, worried, silly and exited

red zone: out of control, elated, angry and terrified.

PE:

Today in PE with Miss Naylor, we did some running races and played a game of seaweed and sharks which is the same as tag, but when you get tagged, you become seaweed. It was quiet fun but it was really hot (28°C!), so it tired people out a lot!

Can you guess what any of these emotions are in the photos? 

Monday 6^th September 2021

By Elise and Alfie

Today is the first day back to school from the six-week holiday.  We have had a lot of fun now that we can do things we couldn’t do before because of covid like: playing with siblings at break and lunch, eating together in the hall and having assemblies together back in the hall.

Today, we have listened to each other’s recount of their summer holiday, learnt about our new timetable and we have used chalk and pastels to create individual feathers for a huge 3D Eagle.

We started reading our new class reading book called The Breadwinner, by Deborah Ellis. The book is about people living in Afghanistan and being ruled by the Taliban soldiers so we think this book will help us to understand the problems happening in Afghanistan again now.

Finally, we all voted for who we would like to represent our class as School Councillors and as our Anti-Bullying candidate. We voted by ticking their names on our voting slip then putting it in the ballot box. We are looking forward to finding out who wins once the votes have been counted.