The Courier

This week 3S have been authors. They started by thinking about the title and cover of their books, what type of information they may find and what draws someone to their book to choose it to read. They worked hard on these.

Year 4 have begun an exciting new English unit this week on narrative poetry. They have started to flex their creative muscles by writing sentences including descriptive phrases, as they work towards writing their own poems over the coming weeks. Some of the children have been researching examples of narrative poems to share with their classmates, with a view to analysing their features.

Here are some examples of 4C’s excellent expressive portraits. They thought carefully about the colours and mark making they should use to emphasise the emotion.

We set the question, 'How tall is 5F?' This involved the children measuring each other's height, recording it and accurately calculating the total. Pupils used their skills of written tower addition to find the answer. Some chose to add up all 24 heights at once, others split them into groups first, which was more efficient. The answer is 3442cm or 34.42m tall!

Class 5F have been practising various measuring skills using different scales recently. We have used the weighing scales to measure the weight of pouring items such as rice. We have realised that you must understand what a scale can measure and what each interval is worth before you can use it.

The Year 6 Geography class took over the science lab just before half term to investigate how meanders form as part of their rivers study. The children set out their reports in the format of a field investigation, and observed how the path of the water changed over the surface of the plastic sheets, depending on the rate of the flow. They were able to create some magnificent meanders and even some oxbow loops and lakes, showing the passage of hundreds of years of history in the real world in a matter of seconds in our lab.

In assembly on Tuesday we talked about the school promise that says, ‘we are calm and sensible’. It is not always as easy as it sounds to make sensible decisions and we talked about different situations children might find themselves in when they would have to decide what the best thing to do is.

The children read out the following short scenarios, whilst other children in the audience gave their advice and thoughts:

• What would you do if you were lost in a shop?
• What would you do if you found something that looked like sweets in a cupboard at home?
• If you see a dog in the park should you go and stroke it?
• Should you talk to someone in the street you don't know?
• If you found somebody's purse on the pavement, what would you do?
• The pond in the park is frozen with ice. Should you go and play on it?
• On a summer’s day, the local river looks good for swimming in. Should you go in?

It made for an interesting discussion in the assembly, and it might be something you want to follow up with your children at home.

We celebrated World Book Day at Crescent today! What an amazing selection of outfits.  Keep up the reading.

Crescent School

On Tuesday after school the children taking part in Bayleaf co-curricular cookery club made apricot buttermilk cake. They worked so carefully following the instructions to bring their masterpieces together. They took their cakes home and we bet they tasted good!

Just look at the smiles on our brilliant bakers, well done everyone!

It is wonderful to have the children participating in clubs, developing their interests and learning new skills all while having some fun.