Hare Class 2022-23

Welcome to Hare Class! Miss McIlvar is our class teacher. On Monday afternoons, Mrs Irwin teaches us!

Term 5 Message

Welcome back everyone! I hope that you enjoyed your Easter break. There will be lots of interesting topics to learn about this term! We will be writing defeat-the-monster stories based on folklore in English, and adding fractions in Maths. We will be learning about the Anglo-Saxon period in History by investigating the mystery of Sutton Hoo. For Science, we will be exploring forces and magnets, whilst in Music we will continue to be learning how to play recorders.

Our PE days for Term 5 are Wednesday and Friday. Our outdoor PE day is now Wednesday- please come to school in outdoor PE kit on a Wednesday. Indoor PE will be on a Friday this term.

Home learning will be sent home in homework books on a Friday, to be returned by the following Friday. Home learning tasks will also be set on Professor Assessor. 

The children are also taking home two reading books at a time, including a reading for pleasure book. May I please ask that these books are returned once finished so that others can read them too! Thank you.

The topic web and medium term plan can be accessed by looking on the Class Learning page.

If you have any questions about home learning or anything else, please don't hesitate to ask! Thank you. 

What a lovely start to the term! We have had great fun today exploring the joys of reading together. We even brought in our own book character 'spoons' for the day! First, we shared why we had chosen our character and what book they were from. We made profiles for our characters and then had great fun making puppet shows with our characters.

After that, we told the story of Alice in Wonderland through dance, using expression and movement to perform the important parts of the book! 

Finally, in the afternoon, we have taken part in games and quizzes to celebrate the nations' favourite children's novels and characters. 

We have really enjoyed learning about Hinduism and the celebration of Diwali this term. As part of our learning, we made our own Diva lamps! Hindus light them during the festival of lights. 

The children were fascinated but shocked by how different life was in Ancient Rome! We agreed that society is very different today and Roman society was harsh and unfair. In particular, the children were outraged that sadly, slavery existed, that women weren't allowed to vote, and that only the richest members of Roman Society had a voice! We made our own pyramid to remember who was who in Roman society, with the Emperor on his throne, the senators and consuls at the top, the patricians in the middle and the plebians at the bottom. The children have spent lots of time building their research skills this term and have researched what Roman life was like using books, drawings, and the internet. 

It was an absolute delight to take part in the Voices Inspire Concert, joining together with other schools at Salisbury Cathedral! We sang songs which were all about the weather, season and time of year- Love Shone Down was our favourite! 

This term, our art focus has been on creating 'cave art' in the style of Stone Age people. We have studied cave art and how it was made, created handprint chalk pastel drawings and painted prehistoric animals. For this lesson, we imagined that we were back in time in the Stone Age and created our drawings with chalks, charcoal and pastels.

We have had so much fun learning our story Little Red Riding Hood this term! It started with a mysterious basket which turned up in our classroom... Inside the basket was an apple, a piece of cheese and a scarlet coat... it must have belonged to Little Red Riding Hood! We have been learning to retell the whole story and have been having a great time acting out scenes from it. We are looking forwards to writing our own versions of the story! 

In RE this term, we are learning all about Creation! To start off our topic we had great fun exploring the school grounds searching for everyday wonders which make our world amazing. We found so many incredible things!

Number Facts and mental maths practise:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/daily10  

This website is a great source of practise mental maths questions and number facts revision.

(If the hyperlink doesn't work copying and pasting should work for you).

GOOGLE CLASSROOMS

The children have been sent home with a new copy of their Google Classroom username and password. Please contact Miss McIlvar via the school office if you have any difficulties logging in to Google Classrooms- thank you. 

Google classroom sign in link:

https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin/identifier?service=classroom&passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fclassroom.google.com%2F&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fclassroom.google.com%2F&emr=1&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin

Blue Peter Badges

In May, we launched our Blue Peter Climate Heroes challenge and children undertook different pledges at home and at school.  We received lots of pictures from home showing children sorting the recycling, turning the taps off when brushing their teeth, switching electronic devices off, beach litter-picking and planting bee-friendly flowers.  We continued this in school and over the summer holidays we received the badges.  These badges give children free access to over 200 attractions, including some that are local to us.  Grown-ups need to apply for the badge card before the badge will work – this is a confirmation of private details that you must do.

The link to apply for the card is given below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/blue-peter/badge-card-application

 Please write the respective code in the ‘reason’ section; the code is based on the class you were in last year:

Hare Class (were Hedgehog) = DL SP40LB CH

In Term 5, we had the opportunity to learn from a real archaeologist, and investigate the lives of people who lived nearly two thousand years ago at Rockbourne Roman Villa! We got to explore the ruins of the villa and imagine how it once looked and how it operated. Then, we put our history skills into action to investigate different artefacts and what they tell us about the past. We even got to dress up like the Romans! We finished the day by making our own Roman mosaics. It was fantastic to spend the day being archaeologists and putting what we have learned at school into practise!

We were very lucky during the last week of term because we were able to see a Commonwealth Games 2022 baton! We spent the morning learning about some of the countries which make up the Commonwealth and locating them, and then we got to have a closer look at the baton. We even held our own relays with the baton!

This term we are learning all about the Hindu festival of Diwali, and how it might feel to celebrate it. First, we have had great fun learning the Story of Rama and Sita and acting it out with stick puppets, learning the reason why the festival began.

For our Science lesson on how and why we have nights and days, we tried to recreate a model of the Earth and the Sun! We used torches to act as the sun shining down on Earth (the balloon). It was important to hold the torch still as we learned that the sun doesn't move or rotate... the Earth does!

Jambo! We have loved exploring our Big Idea- 'being Worldly' this week! For Worldly Day we have explored other languages and cultures, and were lucky enough to be taught some Swahili. We also got to try Spanish food, coinciding with our Spanish topic this term. Churros were a hit!

We explored the lives of children in our local area in the past by investigating a time capsule from children who went to our school 50 years ago. Wow! Times have certainly changed in some ways... and not so much in others!

Of course a huge focus of the day was on how we can use our voices to be courageous advocates for our world. We had chosen to raise money for WWF. We have spent lots of time discussing how we can look after our planet and be a voice for endangered animals and the environment.

The photos above show us turning plastic waste which can harm our oceans into artwork. We will continue to think about how we can be Courageous Advocates throughout the year!

End of Term 2

Merry Christmas everybody. We have learned so much this term! 

Thank you to all of your parents for your support and kind messages.

Have a lovely Christmas break and enjoy the holidays!

In Geography this week we got outside to explore the school buildings and draw a sketch map of the school! We learned that cartographers are people who make maps and had great fun acting as cartographers ourselves. 

For the past two weeks, we have had great fun learning the story of Little Red Riding Hood and retelling it using our actions! It has been a busy few days in our classroom playing games and taking part in activities to help us learn the story. We are now starting to learn how to write a story like Little Red Riding Hood. 

Earlier in the week, we interviewed 'the Wolf', 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'the Woodcutter' to find out more about them and get our questions answered! We described the characters in the story using a technique called 'the power of three'. We have also been studying the setting of Little Red Riding Hood and have been using our own School grounds to help us to write about woodlands in more detail. 

We were very fortunate to have a visit from the Bridge this week! Our visitors taught us all about the meaning of the Holy Trinity and we started off by having a very interesting discussion about what the Trinity is and sharing our thoughts about it. Then, our visitors taught us how we can create a 'Perichoresis Dance' to represent the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We had great fun choreographing our own dances and performing them to the class! Finally, we crafted some 'trinity hearts'. We had a lovely time- thank you to the Bridge! 

In Art, we have been studying Quentin Blake's illustrations and how he makes Roald Dahl's characters come to life! This week, we looked at some of his most famous characterisations and then sketched our own versions of the Hornswoggler monsters!

For Aspirational day, we had a jam-packed day learning from real life Scientists!

To start off with, we had a go at being engineers... our challenge was to build a bridge using only paper and sellotape! After that we learned all about space from a Scientist, who had even brought in a collection of 'space rocks' to share with us. We also learned all about Communication from an expert, and had great fun making telephones out of paper cups and string! 

What a fun end to term! We have spent the day learning how to be ‘resourceful’ and have taken parts in lots of activities to build our resourcefulness, resilience and perseverance. We started off Resourcefulness Day by playing lots of team-building games, including pass the hoop and password. We used our bodies to make letters and then got into teams to try to spell out words! We have also used our resourcefulness to make creations and inventions out of materials which would otherwise have been thrown away. We had to really use our imagination, adaptability and perseverance! Resourcefulness is one of our big ideas and we will continue to think about how we can show resourcefulness throughout the year.

A big highlight of this term has been learning how to play recorders! We have learned how to read some music, play them gently and can even play the note 'A'.

We have also learned that playing recorders involves a lot of dancing... so apologies if these photos are a little blurry!

In Science, we have been exploring soil! What is it made of? What qualities do different soil types have?

First, we investigated some different samples of soil in the classroom, looking at the moisture of the different soils, their colour and texture.

Next, we headed outside to explore some of the soil in our school grounds! We learned that the soil had lots of moisture in it because it had been raining recently. Some of the soil was quite rocky, other parts were more compact!

Practising our invasion games tactics and football handling skills in PE.

We had great fun exploring the Mesolithic site of Star Carr and imagining what it might have looked like in the Stone Age! We considered evidence which archaeologists have found at the site to help us and even had a go at making our own antler head-dresses. What were the head-dresses used for? We may not know for sure but we enjoyed coming up with lots of theories and ideas!

Our Art focus this term is 'Can you paint like a caveman?' This week, we investigated famous cave paintings and discussed the stories they might be telling. Then, we had a turn at being cave- people ourselves! We used charcoal and soft chalks and pastels to create our own 'Stone Age' stories and drawings on our classroom walls. 

Aren't there so many incredible things in our world? For our RE topic, Creation, we started off the term by going on a 'Wonder Walk'! The children spent some time exploring the grounds searching for little things in nature which are interesting, beautiful and wonderful. Here are some of the things they found!

It has been a great two days back so far; how lovely to see all of our friends again! 

We have been busy settling back in and creating artwork to decorate our classroom with. We have also been thinking about what makes a school a good place to learn in PSHE, and designing our 'dream' schools! It has been wonderful to do lots of groupwork and share all of our ideas with each other!

Home learning

The children have gone home with a reading book and a reading record. Please spend some time reading with your child over the next few days, for 5-10 minutes at a time. Home learning books and spelling lists will be sent out next week. 

Thank you!