Brailes Church of England Primary School Number 5 - 29th January 2020 BRAILES Newsletter
BEAST OBSERVERS ART AND MUSIC OF THE MONTH Each month, the Art and Music Curriculum Team choose a piece of art and a piece of music for children to learn about and appreciate. For January, the artwork is ‘The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch’, better known by its shorter title ‘The Skating Minister’, an oil painting attributed to Henry Raeburn in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. It was practically unknown until about 1949, but has since become one of Scotland's best-known paintings. Robert Walker was a Church of Scotland minister who was born on 30th April 1755. When he was a child, his father had been minister in Rotterdam, so the young Robert almost certainly learnt to skate on the frozen canals of the Netherlands. In fact, the painting is reminiscent of seventeenth century Dutch art works. He was a member of the Edinburgh Skating Club, the first figure skating club formed anywhere in the world!
The music of the month is ‘Zadok the Priest’ by George Handel, who wrote the piece for the coronation of King George II in 1727. Amazingly the piece has been performed at the coronation service of every British monarch ever since. The words are taken from the King James Bible. The piece is majestic and the orchestral introduction builds and builds before the choir bursts into song. Handel wrote this piece hoping that the sound would fill the huge space of Westminster Abbey. If you're a football fan you might recognise this music as a version of it is used as the theme of the UEFA Champions League.
It has been fantastic for Badgers class to be able to observe and learn the life cycle of 27 mealworms from first hand experience, as part of the Beast Creator topic. At present, the mealworms are still in the larva stage, growing daily by molting to remove their old exoskeletons. Daily observations over the next few weeks will hopefully show changes from larva in to pupa, before finally changing into a darkling beetle. http://www.brailescofeprimary.org.uk/ and @brailesschool Brailes Church of England Primary School Number 5 - 29th January 2020 FROM THE CLASSROOM SQUIRRELS NEWS by Mrs. Salmon Happy New Year! The topic we are exploring in the Spring term is focused around woodlands and we will read a variety of texts to include ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Stick Man’ and ‘Spinderella’ by Julia Donaldson. We began the term with lots of webs… the children were exploring different ways of joining and creating webs in the classroom and adding them into their play.
We have consolidated the sounds that we met last term in our phonics sessions and work on forming letters using cursive script in all of our writing. Reception children will continue to meet new digraphs and trigraphs for reading this term. In our Maths sessions we continue to look carefully at numbers and addition and the relationship between numbers and we have also been revising 2D shapes, linking this with cutting activities to create shape snowmen pictures and Chinese New Year dragon masks.
The children are also enjoying gymnastics sessions in the hall with Nick Hibberd, using the mats and equipment and improving their control over their bodies in space. We have enjoyed one Forest School session so far this year and the children discovered fairy houses that the children in Rabbits class had created and were able to mend some that had been weather damaged and create some of their own.
I hope that you all had a fantastic Christmas and have made a good start to 2020.
http://www.brailescofeprimary.org.uk/ and @brailesschool Brailes Church of England Primary School Number 5 - 29th January 2020 FROM THE CLASSROOM RABBITS NEWS by Ms Host Happy New Year!
We are all really enjoying our Enchanted Woodland topic and have spent lots of time outdoors observing our beautiful surroundings and the habitat we share with all sorts of creatures. Fairy houses have been made, clay boggarts have sprung from the trees and woodland crowns are still in the process of being finished!
The children have done some super writing over the past few weeks. We started off with a creative narrative describing an adventure featuring a magical tree. At present we are in the midst of writing up our non-fiction writing about woodland animals. All the children have really impressed us with their writing stamina since coming back to school following the holidays. Their growing independence and enthusiasm for learning is super to see.
Science and Design & Technology have played a big part in this topic and we have enjoyed planting seeds and bulbs, labelling plants, classifying living things, creating new habitats, investigating changes in the world around us and discussing our findings; making predictions about what we might discover next.
Thank you for all that you do to support your child’s learning in home and school. It’s great to see you are using the children’s home/school diaries to log their learning at home. I check the journals at least once a week to count up how many times the children have been heard read that week. The children are encouraged to receive house points for all the reading they’re doing so please do continue to keep up those great habits!
As a school, we are regularly reminding the children to have a respectful and kind attitude in all that they do. Examples of behaviours we are praising the children for include: holding the door for someone, looking their teachers and friends in the eyes during conversations, giving a friendly greeting to start the day, listening to the speaker in an attentive way, encouraging others and joining in celebrating each other’s successes.
If you notice these (or similar) behaviours at home, please do log them in the home/school diaries and I will be sure to celebrate them in the classroom!
http://www.brailescofeprimary.org.uk/ and @brailesschool Brailes Church of England Primary School Number 5 - 29th January 2020 FROM THE CLASSROOM OWLS NEWS by Miss Wilson The Owls have made a flying start on their Predator topic this month, writing play scripts, building food webs and classifying creatures.
The children have used Fantastic Mr. Fox as inspiration for some exciting play scripts. They used their teamwork and drama skills to create short play versions of the start of the story, before converting these into real scripts. They have had to look carefully at existing scripts and think about how to help their actors by including stage directions and character descriptions.
After the plays, we have moved on to look at predatory poems! The Owls worked on some fantastic dramatic performances of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Eagle which they learnt by heart and then bravely performed in front of the rest of the class. I’m looking forward to reading their own poems at the end of the month!
In science, we have been focussing on biology. The children have used their knowledge from previous topics to start looking at food webs. We enjoyed creating a whole-class food web with string in the hall! Next month, we will start to gather together all our new knowledge from this topic to tackle the Innovate challenge – creating a whole new predator adapted for an exciting new environment!
Congratulations to the Year 3 and 4 children who took part in the recent cluster dodgeball tournament. The children played very well indeed, finishing 4th overall.
TOP LEFT: class food web. RIGHT: dodgeball team in action. MIDDLE/BOTTOM LEFT: performance poetry and play scripts.
http://www.brailescofeprimary.org.uk/ and @brailesschool Brailes Church of England Primary School Number 5 - 29th January 2020 FROM THE CLASSROOM BADGERS NEWS by Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Childs What a fabulous start to the new year and our new topic: Beast Creator.
The focus in Book Talk and English on poetry during the first week of term has been vocabulary rich, resulting in the writing of some amazing insect invertebrate poems which show great precision and conscious control of vocabulary.
In science, learning has involved the children retrieving and using learning from Y3/4 science to go deeper with a focus on classification of invertebrates, exploring similarities and differences between creatures and expanding the use of scientific vocabulary for different invertebrates. During Geography fieldwork, different arthropods identified in the school grounds were recorded on sketch maps using keys. The class were really surprised to find so many invertebrates at this time of year and attributed this to the relatively warmer winter weather at the start of the month.
Now in the Develop stage of the topic, the class are fully immersed using knowledge of invertebrates to create 3D sculptures of invertebrates out of willow. Practical estimating, symmetry, measuring maths skills combined with DT designing and joining materials with precision and plenty of imagination, resourcefulness, collaboration and patience have been shown.
The class are really proud of their sculptures so far, with the willow structures now created that will soon have papier-mâché added to complete our larger-than-life 3D beasts. Throughout their DT work, the children have been reflecting, evaluating and modifying their designs in response to how the making process is going, considering different levels of force present in different thickness of willow and how structures can be strengthened.
Being proud of yourself, being proud of others and being proud of our school has been our whole school PSHE new year focus alongside continuing work on resilience and showing kindness to others. There is much to be very proud of all the children in Badgers class and we hope they continue to keep believing in themselves and aspiring to be the best they can possibly be.
Many congratulations to the Year 5 pupils who successfully completed the Level 1 and Level 2 Bikeability course this month.
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