Friday 8th April
It has been the most wonderful end to the term this week and we have had an ‘eggcellent’ week full of Easter fun and treats. This week we have sorted animals in Science, went on a Geography local study and map investigation around Crawcrook and wrote some wonderful Spring poems in English.
This week I wanted to share with you all some of the wonderful art and design and technology we have complete in class. We had a fantastic afternoon on Wednesday creating some decorated Easter eggs for the competition. The children were so creative in their designs and it was so hard to choose a winner. I have attached all of their eggs below for you to see.
3rd Place – Penelope
2nd Place – Wilf
1st Place – Daisy
Today we took part in a whole school Easter parade outside showcasing our amazing Easter hats, caps and bonnets. It was so lovely to see everyone in their amazing creations and designs and so much time and effort had gone into each of their hats. Again, it was so hard to pick a winner but we decided that the wonderful Darcy had an amazing hat.
I also wanted to share with you all our amazing performance poetry winner Ellie B for her amazing acrostic poem of her name which she performed so well. She made us smile with her fantastic expression and actions. She also wowed the judges and won 2nd place overall for the whole school. I have left the clip below of her amazing performance.
Have a wonderful Easter everyone!
Miss McArdle.
Friday 1st April
We have had a brilliant Diversity enrichment week in England class this week. We have explored different languages around the world, how we are similar and different to peers in our class and created a class diversity tree which represented each of us.
In English we have been creating some fantastic acrostic poems all about us using our names. I was wowed when the children got up in front of the class to perform their poems about themselves to one another. Watch this space to see our class winner….
I wanted to also share with you the fantastic treat we had on Thursday Morning. We had a wonderful visitor called Sheila who came into school to teach us some Irish dancing. Sheila explained that dancing was a way that people could connect even though they might be different and we absolutely loved working together to create a little piece. I am sure you will be shocked and amazed that the children learned the full routine in just 30 minutes!
This week we have been learning the wonderful song 'Let love shine through'. I have been amazed and yet again wowed by the children performing the song. I wanted to share it with you all so please see the video below.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend ready for our last week of term.
Miss McArdle.
Friday 25th March
It has been a wonderful week in England this week filled with lots of fun learning outdoors given the gorgeous sunshine we have had. The children have loved making birds nests as part of our DT lessons, completing some geography fieldwork on our school and learning the green cross code as part of our healthy me unit in PSHE.
This week I wanted to share with you some of the fantastic work the boys and girls have been doing in Maths. We have been exploring weight and volume as our unit over the past few weeks and this week we explored further volume and capacity. We firstly explored volume and compared the volume of different containers by describing whether they were full, nearly full, empty or nearly empty. We also were able to say which had the most liquid in and which had the least. On Wednesday we took ourselves outside to have a practical lesson measuring the capacity of different containers using non-standard units of measure. We understood that each unit of measure needed to stay the same so we needed to use the same container when measuring. We had a go at this but quickly realised that we weren’t measuring accurately as we hadn’t made sure that the container was full of liquid each time we poured it into another and counted the number of times it took to fill. Once we began to make sure the containers were full, we became much more confident at measuring the capacity of bigger containers. The thing that made me most proud though of all the boys and girls was their teamwork and resilience. They worked so hard with one another, made sure to take turns and didn’t give up when they found something tricky to measure.
Miss McArdle
Friday 18th March
Happy Friday everyone! I can’t believe that we are half way through this term already and nearly approaching the Summer term. The children in England class have blown me away this week with their attitude to learning and effort that they have put in to each activity. We have created innovated stories, learnt all about Mother Theresa and completed some Yoga sessions.
This week I wanted to share the fantastic work that the children have complete in Science. We have been exploring the topic of animals including humans this term. We started off by learning all about the different animal groups that we have and then moved on to exploring how animals can be similar and different. This week we explored the diets that animals have and learnt 3 new key words associated with the diet of an animal. We found out that there are 3 main types of diet when we talk about animals:
Herbivore - an animal that only eats plants.
Carnivore - an animal that only eats meat.
Omnivore - an animal that eats both meat and plants.
After we learnt about the 3 main types of diet, we begun to sort and group the different animals into each diet using a Venn diagram. We were shocked to find out that a goldfish is an omnivore as we didn’t think it would have eaten meat as part of its diet.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss McArdle.
Friday 11th March
We have had a wonderful week this week in England class learning lots of new things such as measuring length and height in Maths, learning how to keep our bodies healthy in PSHE and creating some artwork in the style of Matisse.
This week I wanted to share the amazing work we have completed as part of our English and Oracy sessions. We have been learning this week the story of ‘Whatever Next’ and challenged ourselves to learn the story with actions so well that we could re-tell the story to some of the older boys and girls in school. Yesterday, we met with the Year 3 classes and paired up to re-tell the story. We loved showing the Year 3 children what amazing storytellers we are in England class and they complimented all of the children for their fantastic speaking skills.
Keep it up England!
Friday 18th February
Happy Friday everyone! It is the end of the week and an end of another super half-term for England class who have been working their socks off. It has been lovely to see their progress over the year and especially over the past 7 weeks since Christmas. They have wowed me with their super growth mindset in everything that they do.
This week I wanted to share with you the work we have completed in RE as part of our big question of ‘Was it always easy for Jesus to show friendship? We have been exploring for a number of weeks now what it means to be a good friend and explored the ways Christians believe Jesus was a good friend. As well as this, we have explored times when it might not be easier to show friendship to someone and looked at some of the stories in the Bible where it might have been hard for Jesus to show friendship. After exploring these stories over the past term, we reflected today on the people in our class who are good friends to us and make it easy to be friends with them. We began with a piece of string which we passed to the person we thought was a good friend. This created our web of friendship and it showed what amazing friends we have in England class. Additionally, we discussed how sometimes it is hard to be friends with people and show friendship such as when they hurt our feelings but we reminded ourselves that we should always be a good friend and show forgiveness because people can make mistakes.
Have a lovely half-term everyone filled with lots of fun and adventure!
Miss McArdle
Friday 11th February
We have had an absolutely amazing week in England class this week learning about Queen Elizabeth I in History, exploring online safety on Tuesday as part of our school internet safety day and performing some rolls such as a barrel roll in gymnastics.
Our fantastic week has been topped off today by our lovely well being day that all of school have taken part in. The children absolutely wowed me in their outfits for ‘dressing to express’. Firstly, we had a yoga session to calm our body and mind. We then went on to watch a fantastic assembly presentation created by our amazing Year 6’s. We really enjoyed exploring and thinking about how we want to grow in the future. The children then went onto make some absolutely outstanding support network hot air balloons. We thought about the people who are in our support network and who help us to try new things. It was lovely to hear the children sharing how many people are such a great support to them. After that, we created some beautiful pom pom hot air balloons which the children found so relaxing to complete.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend filled with lots of fun!
Miss McArdle.
We have had yet another fantastic week here in England class this week. We have been learning all about numbers to 50 in Maths, exploring letters in English and testing properties of materials in Science.
This week in our Geography lessons we have been exploring all about the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. We found out that the Giant’s Causeway was located in Bushmills on the Northern coastal stretch of Northern Ireland. After that, we had a look at how scientists believe the Giant Causeway was made through a volcanic eruption over 50 million years ago which formed the interlocking basalt columns. However, some believe the Giant’s Causeway was built by Giant’s Finn McCool and Benandonner who wanted to battle against each other. The children loved exploring the myth about the 2 giants and this led into our design and technology lesson where we had to build a causeway out of 2 materials for the giants to cross without going into the water. Have a look at some of our information booklets about the Giant’s Causeway below.
Have a fantastic weekend full of fun everyone!
Miss McArdle.
Friday 28th January.
We have had yet another amazing week in England class this week learning all about Martin Luther King in History, exploring properties of materials in Science and writing some super non-chronological reports about caterpillar in English.
This week I wanted to share the fantastic work that the children have been completing in PE. We are currently completing a unit of gymnastics in our PE lessons and the children have WOWED me this week with their fantastic balancing skills. Firstly, we explore how hard balancing can be when your body and muscles are floppy and we soon realised that you need to tense to help control the balance. We had a go at balancing with a bean bag resting on different parts of our body. The children were fantastic at each of the balances we tried. One thing that really wowed me was their fantastic modelling and teamwork with one another. If someone was struggling, they all made sure to encourage and help their friend through modelling and talking their friend through the steps. It really made me proud that we have such lovely friends in this class to one another.
Today we have enjoyed a well-deserved marble jar afternoon treat after filling our class marble jar. I am sure you will agree that our quote of the week is one that is perfect for all of the superstars we have in England class.
‘You’re a shining star, no matter who you are. Shining bright to see, what you can truly be.’
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss McArdle
We have had a wonderful week in England class this week celebrating World Religion on Monday, learning all about Washington DC in History and writing our innovated stories in English.
As part of our World Religion Day celebrations, we explored the world religion Hinduism. The children were intrigued to find out all about a new religion and loved learning about the different gods that were in the religion. We then explored in further detail the festival of Holi. Holi is a Hindu festival that celebrates spring, love, and new life. It is often described as the festival of colour. After exploring the reasons why it is celebrated, we had a go at creating some colourful paintings through the technique of blow painting. The children were fantastic at learning a new technique and thoroughly enjoyed making lots of colour on the page.
I wanted to share with you this week the fantastic work the children have completed in Science. We began learning last week all about materials as part of our new science topic. We explored the different types of materials that you can have including glass, plastic, metal and wood for example. This week we began to explore objects and the materials they are made out of. The children were fantastic at being able to identify the correct materials that objects were made out of. We looked at examples such as a window which has a wooden or plastic frame and glass panels. Once we had identified the materials, we challenged ourselves to find the odd one out. This included lots of discussion about the similarities and differences that objects have.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Miss McArdle
Friday 14th January
We have had another super week in England class filled with learning about materials, adding numbers up to 20 and looking at what makes a good friend.
This week I wanted to share with you all the amazing work the children have been doing in English. We started last week learning the story of ‘George and the Dragon’ and we have moved on this week to innovating the story. We came up with a class model of a baby ninja having to defeat a ferocious dragon however some of the class innovated their own stories. We had a range of new main character ideas such as a princess, dog and even a warrior! It has been so lovely to see how creative the children have become when wanting to innovate their own stories. After innovating our story, we created new innovated story maps and used them to re-tell the story. Some of us even created some stick puppets to help with the re-telling. I have been blown away at the retelling and language used by the children but most importantly I have been so proud of how confident each of the children have been when they were re-telling the story. It is hard to believe that they only learnt the original model last week!
Friday 10th December
It has been a fantastic STEM enrichment week in England class this week. We have had so much fun completing a variety of different activities linked to STEM such as Maths challenges, reading the until I met Dudley book and having a go at some coding games on the ipads. In addition to this, we also had the wonderful opportunity on Wednesday afternoon to go and watch the theatre performance of ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ at the Northern Stage in Newcastle. The children loved the performance and were a credit to our school in their behaviour outside of class.
One thing that I wanted to share with you all this week was our STEM challenge that we were set. We were tasked with creating a model of a beanstalk for the story Jack and the Beanstalk. Before we got started, we had to think about the mindset we would have when completing any challenge. We talked about how important it is to have a growth mindset and not a fixed mindset. After that, we brainstormed some ideas of how we could build the model including using cubes, straws, blocks and cardboard. It was then time to have a go at building the models. In small groups, we each tested 3 different ways to build the model and looked for which one was the most successful. The children were absolutely amazing at creating the models and more importantly they had curiosity and a fantastic growth mindset. They completely embedded the two key values of STEM and I know they will continue to apply this to any learning that they complete in the future.
I just wanted to share a wonderful quote that I shared with the children this week and I think it really sums up that fantastic growth mindset.
“Nothing is IMPOSSIBLE; the word itself says ‘I’M POSSIBLE!’.” – Audrey Hepburn
Have a wonderful weekend and rest ready for our final week before the Christmas holidays.
Miss McArdle
Before you tap and click…
You need to stop and think…
And TELL someone!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone full of Christmas cheer.
Miss McArdle.
Friday 12th November
We have had another fantastic week in England class full of superstar learning. The children have loved learning all about Barcelona in our Geography lessons, re-telling Jack and the Beanstalk in English and exploring the sense of sound on a sound learning walk around school.
This week in PE we have been focusing on ball skills. This is a brand-new unit of work and the children wowed me on Thursday with their excellent ball skills. We focused this week at learning about the different ways hat we can move the ball. We tried throwing and catching, dribbling the ball with our feet and dribbling the ball with our hands. The children had fantastic growth mindset throughout the whole session when they were learning about the different ways we can control and move with the ball. The thing that impressed me the most in the session was their social skills of communication and supporting others. We had some fantastic praising of peers and it was so lovely to see everyone praising their friends for giving something a go.
It has been an amazing first week back in England class. I have been so proud of how quickly the children have settled back into class. It was lovely to hear all about what they had got up to over the holidays and what they dressed up as for Halloween.
We have been learning all about Florence Nightingale in History, our body in Science and how technology works in Computing. The children have particularly loved learning about why Florence Nightingale was such an important figure in history and they made comparisons to how she was a fantastic nurse like the nurses that we have in the NHS.
One thing I have been particularly impressed by this week is their writing in English. We are learning the story Jack and the Beanstalk as part of our talk for writing lessons. This has included thinking about some of the words that we might need to use in our writing. On Wednesday, we created some word banks full of words that we were going to need. We decided it would be a good idea to also add some pictures next to the word to help us find anything we want to spell. On Thursday, we then used our words banks to create some super sentences. The children created some fantastic sentences and made sure they were super sentence heroes! Their writing has improved so much since the start of the year and it is so lovely to see their beaming faces when they know they have made such improvements. Keep up the hard work!
We finished our week off today making some fantastic fireworks pictures. We gained some inspiration from watching some fireworks displays that have taken place in London. The children all loved the colours and shapes that the fireworks were. They have been very excited to see some in person over the weekend.
Have a fantastic bonfire night and stay safe!
Miss McArdle
A breakfast filled with chocolate waffles.
Summer sun shining.
Me and my little brothers playing,
Doing front flips of the highest buildings we can find,
Whilst 10 sharks are down below and
radioactive is playing in the background.
We finally fall asleep at night on a big teddy bear.
By Frankie Farmer
You are also in for a treat as the children have been learning the poem 'Rhythm of Life' by Michael Rosen. We have absolutely loved watching his videos where he gave us lots of hints and tips about how to perform the poem. We decided to add in some actions to help us remember the poem and I have been so proud of the children for their performance. They almost had me in tears yesterday when were practicing as I was so impressed and amazed at how they performed the poem. I hope you enjoy it just as much as me. Please see their performance below.
Miss McArdle.
It has been yet again another fantastic week in England, despite the rain and gloomy weather making an appearance. We have had lots of fun learning all about comparing numbers in Maths, writing our innovated ‘Biscuit Man’ stories in English and creating some still life art work in the style of the French artist Louise Moillon during our Art lessons. The children’s fantastic growth mindset has been so prominent this week and I have been so proud of all of their attitudes towards the learning. We really enjoyed one of our story books this week called ‘I am enough’ by Grace Byers which had a great message of always being the best version of you and trying your hardest.
We have been looking at what the word creation means in RE over the past few weeks and the environment around us. We started in our first week by creating something for our friend Abbey Owl. This week we thought about the big question of ‘How was the Earth created?’. We each took it in turns to share our responses if we wanted to and collated our ideas on a map. Afterwards, we talked about how Christians believe that God created the Earth which was similar to some of our own views. The children really impressed me with their respect towards people having different beliefs and views to others which is a value that is so important for everyone to have. Please see below our class mind map of views.
I also had to share our favourite book during story time this week which was ‘Avocado baby’. It has given us lots of giggles and the children absolutely loved reading how the baby became strong enough to fight off a burglar just from eating an avocado! I am sure they will be keen to tell anyone about the story if you ask them.
As I say every week, keep being amazing England class!