Welcome to Class 3
Here we are settling in well and doing our handwriting – look at those lovely smiles!
We are practising our joined handwriting and spotting which letters are formed in similar ways.
School Blog
A Collaborative Classroom
It has been lovely to welcome Class 4 back to Levens! This term, much of our curriculum has a focus on collaboration and working together. It’s the theme for our SCARF unit of work, the purpose of our PE lessons and even comes up in Computing as we explore how computers connect and work together.
To kick us off, we have completed two teamwork challenges and thought about how well we worked as a team and how what sorts of things make working in a team more effective and more fun.
Settling into life as Reception!
A huge well done to all our new Reception starters who have settled in brilliantly! They have had a wonderful week exploring our newly organised classroom, enjoying lunchtime, parachute games and playtime!
Community Art Project at the County Show
This week, our collaborative art project based on the theme of community was celebrated in our display in the ‘Learning for Life’ tent at the Westmorland County Show’.
Huge thanks to the Michelle Jurd Trust for making this incredible opportunity possible for our all our pupils and to local artist, Sophie Martin, for helping us to develop our skills and experience art in the outdoors on such an exciting project.
The Art of Landscape
Years 5 + 6 have been exploring different techniques used by different artists to create movement, fluidity and texture in the landscape taking inspiration from our local area, and particularly our recent visit to Ullswater.
We have taken a closer look at mark making by Vincent Van Gogh and watercolours by William Heaton Cooper.
Portraits using collage in Class 2
Class 2 have been learning about shape, line and proportion through portraiture. They have explored facial details using a range of media taking inspiration from other artists.
After exploring the work of Guiseppe Arcimboldo who created portraits of people using images of fruits and vegetables, we have created our own fruity faces!
Exploring the work of Henri Rousseau
Class 3 have been enjoying experimenting with colour, shape and pattern through the incredible work of French artist Henri Rousseau. His work reminds us of the Amazon landscape (a link to our geography studies during this term) although the places that he painted do not actually exist. Each of his compositions – many of which look like tropical jungles – are actually imaginary places conjured up from the studies he did of plants and animals observed in zoos and gardens in and around Paris.
We have been using a range of media, including watercolour, ink pens and pencil crayons to create our own studies and details of foliage.
We then developed our learning further by exploring Rousseau’s use of colour, line, pattern and texture in details of his inspirational work.
Wheels and Axles
Class 2 have ended the year in style with a fantastic design and technology unit called ‘Wheels and Axles’. During this unit we have learnt about the parts that make a wheeled vehicle move and then experimented with ways to create axles, wheels and axle holders and how to attach them to a chassis. Finally, we designed and made our own moving vehicles. This project has been a great way for the children to develop their resilience and problem solving skills.
Scrawlers!
What can you make if you have a cup, some sellotape, felt-tip pens, a motor, a rubber, a battery and some crocodile clips? That’s exactly the question which was posed to class 4 last week! It wasn’t much to go on, but then they were given a prototype of a “Scrawler”
A Scrawler is an automatic drawing robot! A motor on top of the robot spins with an offset weight, causing it to vibrate. As it vibrates, the pens making up the “legs” of the robot wobble across the page and draw patterns as they go.
Class 4 wasted no time in taking the prototype to pieces to discover how it worked. With no further instructions, just some reverse-engineering, small teams got to work building a Scrawler of their very own!
Once we had perfected and tested our own versions, we took them apart for a further challenge. Was it possible to teach Class 3 how to make one of their own, without using our hands? That meant no pointing or touching, and no getting frustrated when somebody else was doing the wrong thing! With only 20 minutes to complete the project time was not on our side, but I think the gallery below proves our success!
Electric Posters in DT
Class 3 have been bringing together this year’s history and science knowledge in producing a special electric poster for a museum display to inform visitors about the Romans. They considered where to place a light bulb to draw people’s attention to an aspect of their poster – some are on the titles, others incorporated into their illustrations and others by their facts. It was great to see pupils helping each other to problem solve when circuits didn’t work as expected – this is certainly an important aspect of the job of a designer and engineer.
