Year 4 Art
Mr Papps and his Year 4 artists were hard at work again this week. As you can see, a very natural and clearly calming watercolour lesson.
Mr Stevenson - Teaching and Learning
Quite a week!
As is always the case at Park Hill and, as I said last week, there are so many great examples of lessons and work that I could share with you. The quality of work that is already being produced is excellent, whether it be in the English and Maths lessons, the Science's and Computing lessons, or in Humanities, Art and DT, and RE lessons.
In amongst this, we have having a drive on times tables throughout the school. You may have seen the innovative use of Amazon’s Alexa in Year 5 to test tables, and each class is tackling these in different ways, either weekly tests, morning work, skills lessons, and games. Hit the button is a good game for practising tables.
As Year 6 will know (and probably remember), our internet cut out during this weeks assembly, but the message from Mr Bond got through. Year 5 and 6 are often caught red handed helping the younger children to join us on the playground, taking time from their own games and conversations to help. This is something that I frequently see, and is lovely that the children epitomise the idea of what it means to be a Good Samaritan.
During a walk around at the beginning of the week, I wandered in to Reception to catch the end of what had clearly been an exciting and informative lesson on the teeth, with moulds provided by Mrs Vaughan. In Second steps, the children have produced self portraits (personally, I think the resemblance is uncanny).
As many of you know, I have a slight interest in science: I was equally impressed, therefore, with one of Mrs Gibbon's displays on the skeleton using cotton buds. Always a pleasure to see science in the early years.
Poetry with Mrs Kilb produced some lovely work, one of which is below from Holly, and Mr Papps’ work in RE was producing some accurate and colourful drawings of Gurdwaras.
"If my doctor told me I had 6 minutes to live, I would not worry: I’d type a little faster”
My interest in science extends beyond the classroom and to one of my favourite authors, Issac Asimov. The creativity he utilised to produce some amazing pieces of work is something we share at Park Hill. Writing is carried out around the school. Our young writers have been hard at work and many have produced stunning pieces. Georgia in Reception with her labelling of the Gruffalo, Aidan in Year 1 has produced both a lovely cat and some outstanding writing, Abbie in Year 3 with her story based on a short film, and a typed non fiction page from Sarah, James, and Isabel in Year 6. Whether handwritten or typed, these are some great examples of the writing that happens every day.
Year 6 have spent this week looking closely at information texts and creating their very own about a topic. These are now completed and look fantastic, really showing a great understanding of their topics, and how how these pages should look and be themed. Not only this, but Year 6 spent a considerable amount of time planning their layout, subtitles, and content.
Even factoring in the immense amount of work in English, maths is still completed. The topic this week, Factors and fractions. Year 6 have developed their understanding of how to create factor trees and find prime factors of 2 and 3 digit numbers. In fractions, we reminded ourselves how to add and subtract them by finding a common denominator, and then solved problems around this.
In Science, construction has begun on our machines. The bases are ready and now the circuitry will need to be added for it is all sealed up and decorated. I sense a soldering iron next week…
In the Year 5 classroom this week, the story of how WW2 impacted those who remained on the mainland UK came to discussion. We have worked through events around the Battle of Britain, The Blitz and how these instigated the need for children to evacuate the big cities and head to the countryside. The children are taking their knowledge of WW2 and using it as inspiration to construct their own piece of fiction and to tell about different events from the eyes of a fictional character which they have created.
The children have started to present the findings from their own research projects in humanities. It was been truly fascinating to hear the children retell their stories about their family members and the experiences that they went through during WW1 and WW2. Thank you to the parents who have supported the children with their presentations at home, the personal nature of the presentations had a real impact on the children who were watching and listening.
Outside of the classroom, the children are really enjoying getting their hand dirty at the Park Hill Allotment. The team worked well together to prepare the ground with the big excitement coming on Tuesday when the children were assigned their own patch within the allotment to look after. Next week we will make our final soil preparations and finally get to put our lasagne-style planting plan into action.
As the mist settles on the week’s final lesson of STEAM, Year Four can reflect on an accomplished week where great progress was made in our Maths, English and other subjects.
It was a ‘tenths’ atmosphere on Monday’s first Maths lesson. Understanding the relationship of 0.1 and 1/10 was a breeze, before figuring out that 0.01 was equal to 1/100 underpinned most of our progress with fractions and decimals throughout the week. Using visual aids and a number line has cemented the knowledge and harnessed our ability to add and subtract decimal numbers, as well as place them accurately on a range of number lines too.
Our progress in English welcomed us in to the world of Daintree Rainforest and particularly the wonderfully presented book; ‘Where the Forest Meets the Sea’. The amazing artworks and hidden images of animals inspired our imaginations but also our inference skills in deducing what these ghostly images of dinosaurs, crocodiles and tree kangaroos represented, whilst also considering what images of hotels and houses strewn across the forest could mean too. This story will underpin our work next week as we prepare to argue against deforestation in Daintree and other unique rainforest locations across the world.
Our artistic endeavours have unveiled some rather superb work this week too. In Art we have made a very promising start with our paintings inspired by our photography. The key to good watercolour painting is to not apply dark paints too early, and that is just what Year Four achieved with their initial pale colouring of their compositions.
To add to our creative endeavours we have also been designing the outside of Gurdwara Temples. Analysing other temples inspired Year Four to create imaginative and respectful designs on a suitable place of worship for Sikhs.
Finally, our week came to a creative close in our STEAM session. Using the restrictions of rules to make art, Year Four Badgers produced wonderful, colourful pictures with five centimetre lines, and digital art using ‘numbers app’ consisting of limited reds, oranges, yellows, greens and blues on a one hundred square square grid. Further consolidating their understanding of fractions.
Excellent work again Year Four, we look forward to our penultimate week before half term with great excitement...well hopefully.
Thank you again for all your hard work and endeavours this week.
This week in Year 3 we have been looking at subtraction, mentally visualising the hundred square and moving on to the formal written method. In English along with our weekly comprehension and SPAG lessons we have been writing stories using descriptive writing to make our work more interesting for the reader. When we finished our stories, we then looked through our writing to highlight the connectives we have used as it was a particular focus this week.
In Science we are enjoying studying different rocks and minerals, sorting them and examining their properties.
Humanities was exciting as we got to taste Mayan hot chocolate, finding the flavour more bitter than expected, an insight to life and food in the past.
Our view point photography is materialising into watercolour paintings after transferring images onto paper, learning to use a wash before adding in the detail. A busy week!
This week Year 2 have been getting stuck into learning all about time in maths, we have revisited o’clock and had a daily challenge to see who could show the o’clock and half past time the fastest in the class with their tiny clocks. We have gone even ventured into converting digital times into analog and analog into digital.
In English we have had a very poetic week, looking at poems from Spike Milligan and reading rhyming stories. The children created a four line poem based on an animal of their choice. We planned out what words rhyme and it was very funny to see the children making up their own rhyming nonsense words.
In science we have been continuing to work on food chains and this week we all created some food webs, containing multiple producers and consumers we even had a challenge to see who could get a human into their food web.
In Adventure school the children worked together to practice making different knots. it was great to see them looking at the instructions and interpreting them in their own way.
Next week we are really looking forward to creating our own non fiction animal fact books.
Enjoy your weekend.
We have been exploring the colourful Meg and Mog books written by Helen Nicoll and Illustrated by Jan Pienkowski.
Year 1 were inspired to write their own spells using strange and wonderful ingredients. We especially enjoyed creating collage illustrations of Mog to complement our creative writing - an alternative adventure for Mog.
In maths we move to another curriculum area - measure. Our investigations have taught us how to measure accurately using a ruler, to compare using appropriate vocabulary and to apply our reasoning skills to answer questions.
Mid week we had an amazing outdoor learning session creating models with our woodworking resources. Year 1 were tasked to create an animal, thinking carefully about the features and characteristics. They learnt how to join Balsa wood with nails and screws and how to problem solve if the design did not go according to plan.
Reception have had another fun filled week with many rich learning experiences. Following on from last week, the children were so intrigued by Sophia’s show and tell that we continued the dentist theme. The x-ray’s of the skull and mouth stemmed many questions of curiosity. (Thank you for letting us see them). Sophia taught the children all about the teeth, using terms such as molars and incisors. She said “molars are used to grind and incisors are used to cut.”
We then looked at a range of teeth moulds where children counted the teeth comparing adult and baby sized teeth. In science we focused on sugary and non sugary foods and what food forms keep our teeth healthy. “Candy floss is so bad for your teeth, they will make them rot,” Amber said. We looked at different fruits and learnt that even though fruits are healthy for us, they are not always good for our teeth so we have to make sure we brush our teeth properly.
In literacy, the children are being introduced to different forms of writing. This week we looked at labelling and captions. We looked at a well known story: ‘The Gruffalo story’ and as a class described the gruffalo’s appearance using labelling such as “purple prickles, turned out toes, two orange eyes and poisonous wart.” The children worked very hard and it was pleasing to see how they are beginning to apply their phonic knowledge to their writing. In woodland school this week the children had such fun digging and planting. As a team the children worked collaboratively to dig up the potatoes observing some creepy crawlies along the way 🐛🐌. We also took the time to plant tomatoes, spring onions, garlic, radishes and cress. We are hoping to visit Richmond park for our woodland school sessions after half term.
In Maths, we have been counting two groups through the use of practical activities. Please continue to develop your children’s number formation and numeral recognition ready for addition and subtraction later on in the year. Next week, we will be looking at 2D shapes.
Have a great weekend!
Another great week in Second Steps.
The children had so much fun with the science experiment using cornflour, water and paint. They discovered how to make purple using two different colours. They really liked the way they could roll it into a ball then when they stopped it was all gooey, running the rough their fingers. It was very slimy and messy but the children had so much fun.
Sport with Miss Adamidou the children were learning to skip with hoops, bunny hopping through the hoop and swinging it over their head and repeating the actions. They all listened and participated really well. After learning how to skip with a hoop they then continued to skip during playtime.
Second Steps were challenged to solve the mystery through a series of tasks that involved their knowledge of phonics/listening skills.
What’s the mystery sound? We used our smart board and listened to the sound each Mystery Sound button made. Children tried to identify the sounds and discussed their predictions. We also used some instruments such as bells, drums, rhythm sticks and triangles.
Children thought that rhythm sticks sounded like horses galloping. They also thought drums sounded like dinosaurs running.
Over the last few weeks we have seen some good friendships forming. It’s so lovely to see how well the children are getting on and the games they are playing together they have been learning to share fairly by talking to each other and negotiating turn taking.
Well done Second Steps.
Good work Second Steps.
Miss Finch & Miss Vari
October has arrived and the FS children have settled in very well.
We carried on reading The Goldilocks and Three Bears story and children sort out objects between great big Papa, middle sized Mama bear and little baby bear. Our tuff tray gave great opportunity for this activity and children brought many different objects into tray to sort them by size.
While children were getting confident to retell the Goldilocks story, they also made up their own stories using castle, knights and dinosaurs.
Painting with toy cars is an enjoying experience.The children drove the vehicles into the paint and then on the paper making lines and patterns.
During water play and washing the dolls, the children practised the new song “Washing hands”.
In additional,the role play area was transformed into a garage play, where the little ones fixed cars with screwdrivers and tools, while the same time they built confidence, creativity and communication.
Enjoy your weekend!
Well done First Steps for a fantastic week!