Monthly archives: September 2021


Reflections of Light

In Science, Class 3 are learning all about light. This week we explored mirror images and how changing the shape of a mirror changes the image in very funny ways! We experimented with mirror writing too and finding ways to send messages to a friend.

You might be surprised to discover just how many mirrors (or surfaces that act like mirrors and reflect your image) that you have in your house. You may well have more than 30 especially if you include those in a car too!

 


Arts Week – pen drawings and watercolour

Class 4 have really enjoyed the opportunity to work with local artist Sophie Martin recently.

After a demonstration from Sophie and the opportunity to see her work, we went out into our community to complete a range of observational drawings of different aspects of Levens Village.

We have been developing our ink drawings back in school with the use of watercolour.


English in Years 5+6

We have been using our knowledge of our solar system (linked to our Science topic) to plan, draft and write a non-chronological report on the Moon.

After looking at a range of non-fiction information texts from our library to identify the features and completing some thorough research on the topic for homework, we tried to sort some of examples of sentences so that we understand how to give our writing cohesion and make sense to the reader.

In groups, we began organising the information according to whether it would be appropriate for the introduction, one of the four main sections, the glossary or Did you Know?

This has helped us make sense of our research so that we can organise our writing into paragraphs under some suitable subheadings that we developed such as: ‘Physical Features’,  ‘Moon Exploration’, ‘Phases of the Moon’.


Saving Water Assembly

On Wednesdays, class teachers take it in turns to lead key stage assemblies and this term we are having an environmental theme based on appreciating and doing our bit to look after God’s wonderful world.

This week, we have been exploring how to save water when cleaning our teeth. Do you leave the tap running while you brush? Well, we discovered that over 2 litres of clean, fresh, drinking water goes trickling down the drain unused if you do!

We had 2 willing volunteers demonstrating good brushing that used about a quarter of a cup full to do the job well. Let’s try to make a small change and make a BIG difference.

 


Times Tables Rock Stars!

After Mr Dean and Class 4 demonstrated Times Table Rock Stars in Celebration Assembly last week, Class 3 have been super keen to get going themselves. This week everyone has been hard at work speedily beating their times and sharpening up their quick recall with great enthusiasm. Keep up the good work and next week we’ll be exploring the shop to spend your well earned gold coins!

Here are some of the class hard at work.


Storytelling and place value

We’ve made a super start to the new term in Class 3. We have had great fun learning to tell the story of “Why dog is friends with man” inspired by a local storyteller Taffy Thomas. If you’d like to hear the tale, do ask anyone in Class 3 and they’ll spend a happy 5 minutes with added actions and sound effects to entertain you!

We have also been working hard on representing numbers in different ways. Year 4 have proudly worked out lots of representations of 4 digit numbers here from a range of images.


Welcome from Class 2

Class 2 have been busy creating speech bubbles and shields to share information about themselves. We are proud of the display we have created.


Superb Shelters!

A big welcome back to everyone in class 4!

It’s been so nice to see all of your smiling faces this week. Everyone has come back with a whole bundle of enthusiasm, and it sounds like everyone has had an amazing holiday! We’ve been up to plenty of fun things in class this week (as well as just a little bit of maths!), and we’ve finished everything off with a trip to our forest schools area.

Buzzing with enthusiasm, we all made the short trek up the hill to learn that we would be building shelters! In teams of 4, with nothing more than a tarpaulin, rope and 4 pegs, our task was to design and build a shelter that would protect our group from the elements. We learned how to elect a suitable site, thought about how we could use the natural world to our advantage, made a plan and then got to work.

Most groups settled on a nice, simple ridgeline design, creating a tent shape with a line between some trees. Some amazing teamwork was spotted, with people teaching each other the skills they had picked up from activities outside of school and playing to their strengths. Take a look at our shelters below. One was even big enough to keep the whole class out of the rain!

Keep your eyes peeled for more shelter blogs coming your way soon as we bring our knowledge back to class to write a set of instructions for building your own shelter. Who knows – maybe you could give it a go at home!