Well, what a busy couple of weeks it has been! Our teachers often take on a whole host of different roles and over the last fortnight we have felt more like a doctors surgery at times! We’ve had a nasty stomach bug doing the rounds which has affected the staff as well as the children (including me!) and last week we had the dreaded chicken pox! It really is important that children are fully recovered before returning to school otherwise infections spread like wildfire in such a small environment.

All of our classes have been working hard and we’d like to share some of their achievements with you. Last week was, of course, Shrove Tuesday and Class 1 really enjoyed learning how to make pancakes. I believe they were delicious! Here is Miss Cubach showing them how it’s done..

This week we were lucky enough to be joined by an engineer from Siemens, Alex Maxton. This is as part of an initiative to encourage children to look at engineering as a possible career in their futures as it is predicted there will be a huge shortage of them. It was really very interesting and particularly relevant when Alex shared that at their age, his own reading ability was 3 years behind where it should have been. This didn’t stop him though and having now completed his university degree, he has successfully been accepted onto the Graduate training programme at Siemens and they are allowing him the time to inspire the next generation! We are entering a competition where the children have to think of a new idea that could help people – it’s that simple! The winner actually gets their design made in real life. Alex worked with all the classes to help them decide which of their many ideas to enter and we have some really fantastic ones. Watch this space for updates.

Mrs Fisher advises me that Class 1 have been using persuasive language within their letter writing. Apparently, they are writing to me – I dread to think what they will be asking me for! Watch this space for an update and we will share some of their work with you at a later date. Fractions have been the order of the day in Maths lessons with our Year 6 pupils learning how to find fractions of a number. We always aim to give our Maths lessons a real life context and highlight to children that Maths is all around them, not just in school.

During DT lessons (Design Technology), Class 1 are going to be making their own bird houses. Before they can get going with designs, it’s been important for them to address the safety issues first. They have been learning about the tools they will have available to them and how to use them safely. You can see Leo practising using the hacksaw here and Harvey using the hammer and nails. Watch that desk Harvey!

If you come into school, please find time to have a look at the display outside Class 1. In Art, they have been learning about Claude Monet. They have been painting pictures inspired by Monet and the impressionists, trying hard to mix colours and to create light effects. Haven’t they done a super job?

Class 2 have also been busy in their Art lessons and are looking at the work of Andy Warhol. As part of their research, they went to visit the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester to see an exhibition of his work..

In Maths, Class 2 have been working exceptionally hard focusing on calculating the area of compound rectilinear shapes; arrays within compound rectilinear shapes and investigating different shapes with the same area. You can see the boys solving these problems on these photos..

Class 3 have also been finding out about the work of Andy Warhol in Art. A very dusty cylinder arrived in school and Mrs Pulman reliably informs me that this will become a soup can like the one in Warhol’s famous image. At the moment we are just enjoying hiding in the cylinder and giving people a fright as they enter the room..

So far we have learnt how to use Warhol’s blotted line technique as you can see from these photos..

We are really enjoying doing fractions in Maths, Xavier has made fraction pizza and Kyle has amazed us with how quickly he has been able to work out equivalent fractions..

In DT we are planning to make lamps, we have transferred the things we learnt last week, when alarming our classroom to prevent Mrs Hollingsworth pinching our chocolate! Instead of a buzzer being on the circuit we have now placed a switch for our light.

Class 5 continue their learning around the theme of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are going to be designing and making their own chocolate bars but before they could start this process, they had to see what was already out there. To help with this, they braved the rain and headed round to the Co-op to do some research. They used their Maths knowledge to work out how much things cost and to find the coins they needed to pay..

In English the children have really enjoyed doing some role play as the characters in the story. Here you can see Conor, Harry and Szymon padded out as Augustus Gloop..

Szymon has shared his work in Maths. He has shown a lot of confidence in using arrays to solve some number problems. Using concrete apparatus like cubes/counters/numicon allows the children to work more independently, boosting their self-esteem as well as deepening their understanding of the Maths work they are doing..

Finally, to Class 6! Their Maths work has concentrated on addition and subtraction, also using concrete apparatus. You can see how they are using numicon to help them..

.. although if you look hard enough you can see they’ve also been using Smarties to do some sorting activities!

For the first time, they were able to travel over to Hollinwood Academy to use the soft play area. This isn’t just a chance to play, although that’s important too. The soft play can be used for all kinds of learning activities and also gives the children the chance to practice a whole range of social skills like speaking, listening, sharing, turn-taking etc..

As well as the children improving their own skills, it’s always really special when we see them helping each other. This week, Luke has been receiving help from both Kaiden and Emily. Kaiden supported him to complete an alphabet jigsaw..

..and Emily took the time to read to him about one of her favourite topics, Minecraft. How lovely!

I hope you all have a lovely week,

Toni Thomason
Head of School

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