Wednesday 13th July
History Week. What a fantastic week!
This week we have been researching World War II and how it affected Manea.
Belinda went to interview Mrs June Newell who lived in Bethnal Green as a child and was evacuated to Manea when she was only four years old. Her story was amazing. We loved listening to the recording and produced our "Life of an Evacuee" factsheets.
We have been looking at food and clothes rationing and why this was a vital part of the war effort. We have produced rationing leaflets. Next we baked a wartime recipe using our ration allowances and available foods. We made carrot cookies.
Mr and Mrs Short came to talk to us about living in Manea during the war. We learnt so much! Here are a few facts:
Willow Class would like to say "thank you" to:
We hope to see you at the History Marketplace.
Tuesday 5th July
Banham Zoo
Year 3 and Year 4 had a fantastic day at Banham Zoo. We really enjoyed seeing all of the different animals - and we even stroked centipedes, snakes and rats! Then we held a tiger's skull. This was part of our talk about the different carnivores, herbivores and omnivores that can be seen around the zoo.
We all agreed that it was a brilliant day.
Thursday 30th June
We have been busy again this week!
In Mathematics we have been focussing upon solving problems - these have been either pattern or number related. We have had to:
Thursday 23rd June
This week we have been very busy rehearsing our class part for the school production which celebrates decades from the Queen's reign.
Our scene represents the years of World War II.
Tuesday 16th June
What a week! We have been busy rehearsing our parts in the school production. Lines have been learnt, props created and costumes sorted. We are looking forward to performing our play next week.
In Maths we have been looking at shapes and their properties. We completed a task on tangrams and used the shapes to make other shapes.
Thursday 9th June
What an amazing week!
We have been to March swimming pool and had our first swimming lesson.
It was great!
Thursday 26th May
Today we visualised a main character from our class Literacy text. We re-read a description of Krindlekrax, the crocodile, and using evidence from the text we painted our own pictures of him. It was great fun!
During our Literacy lessons we researched crocodiles and made our own information leaflets. We discovered that crocodiles can grow to be huge, 5 metres to 7 metres ... just imagine!
We used our Maths lesson to estimate these lengths.
Thursday 18th May
Sunflowers
We have been busy growing our own sunflowers. This week it was time to plant them outside now that the frosts have gone.
We lined the tyres with rubble bags, filled them with soil and planted our plants. They needed lots of water.
Thursday 5th May
This term our History topic is "The Tudors". We have enjoyed finding out about Henry VIII and his six wives.
We have learnt a rhyme to help us remember what happened to each of his wives:
Divorced, beheaded, died,
Divorced, beheaded, survived.
Can you name all of Henry's wives?
This week we have worked together to create a Kings and Queens timeline.
Thursday 28th April
This week in Literacy we have been looking at sharing and recording information. We have researched and created our own leaflets about crocodiles.
Thursday 21st April
It has been Science Week. We have been to see the chicks and have discussed how quickly they grow and change. In our lessons this week we have studied the life-cycle of a chick and learnt some amazing facts.
We have investigated the scientific question: "Do Eggs Float?". We placed eggs in water and salted water and discovered that the buoyancy of the eggs was affected by how dense the water was. Egg-amazing!
Then in Art we even made some chicks!
Thursday 14th April
Welcome back. We hope you had a lovely Easter holiday.
We have been busy as usual. In Maths this week we have been learning about angles and turns. Here we are working on angles problems.
Wednesday 23rd March
We have enjoyed making Easter crafts this week. We have made Easter cards and Easter baskets.
In Mathematics we have started to investigate angles. We have learnt about the properties of :
Here we are finding out about these angles
Friday 18th March
This week we have been busy in Willow Class. In our class assembly we performed the book "How to Grow a Dinosaur". We loved doing the voices for the characters and the actions.
Thursday 10th March
It has been another busy week in Willow Class. In Science this week we have continued learning about Forces and Magnets. We have learnt about forces being either a push or a pull. We have planned an investigation to see how different surfaces affect how a toy car moves when pushed onto them.
Find out next week how we got on.
Thursday 3rd March
It has been another busy week in Willow Class. We are really enjoying learning about "Forces and Magnets" in Science. Today we investigated the strength of different magnets. We used paperclips to see how strong each magnet was.
Thursday 25th February
This week we have been learning about Easter, performing poems in Literacy and playing team games in PE.
In Maths we have been working on "place value". We have used our outdoor classroom and the playground to develop our knowledge of the number system. We used the large place value discs to make and represent different numbers.
Here we are at work:
Thursday 11th February
In Science this week we have been looking at "forces and Magnets". We shared the book "Grandpa's Surprise" and looked at all the push and pull forces the characters used in the story. Then we went outside to discover the properties of magnets. We learnt that magnets either attract a material or not.
Here we are at work:Can you spot the magnets?
Thursday 4th February
This week in Mathematics we have been solving multiplication problems. We have learnt the importance of:
So how would you solve this problem using our four rules?
6 x 4 =
Here we are using our multiplication tables and working in our outdoor classroom calculating multiples.
Thursday 28th January
Another busy week in Willow Class. Last Friday we visited the woods where our task was to build a tunnel, Despite the very wet weather we worked well in our teams to make our tunnels.
Here we are at work.
Thursday 21st January
This week we have all really enjoyed working in our outdoor classroom. We spent time organising and creating our outdoor space. Over the next few weeks we will be adding new things to our area.
In Mathematics we have been learning about fractions. We used our mud kitchen to make pies and worked out how to share them equally. The sausage rolls were tricky!
Here we are at work:
We are really looking forward to our visit to the woods tomorrow. We will tell you more next week!
Thursday 14th January
It has been another busy week in Willow Class. In mathematics we have been learning about position and direction. We have also created some mathematical pictures using different shapes.
We hope that you enjoy looking at our mathematical picture gallery:
Thursday 7th January
Happy New Year!
We have been working really hard this week on developing our independent learning skills. Here we are working on our own
Wednesday 16th December
Happy Christmas!
Willow Class have been getting ready for Christmas and have been busy making Christmas crafts.
We have made symmetrical Christmas hats to wear for our Christmas lunch.
Thursday 10th December
This week Willow Class have been learning songs for the Christmas Nativity. We loved the songs about the donkey!
In Maths this week we have been learning to tell the time and use standard units of time. We had to estimate how long a task would take and then measure the time in seconds using a stopwatch.
Here we are working on estimating and measuring the duration of tasks.
The children said:
Thursday 3rd December
This week in Literacy we have written in role as Ug. We wrote diary entries explaining how Ug felt about his great ideas and the problems he faced, especially with his parents!
In Music we have been learning the songs for our performance at the Christmas Nativity next week at St. Nicolas' Church.
We all enjoyed the pantomime this afternoon!
Oh no we didn't!
Oh yes we did!
Wednesday 25th November
This week Willow Class were lucky enough to be visited by the Team for Traveller Education. They shared many different traveller stories and traditions with us. Our favourite story was "The Ogre" which has actions and is set to music.
Here we are acting out the story:
In literacy we have planned, rehearsed and performed different scenes from Ug, Boy Genius of the Stone Age. We took on the roles of Dugs and Dug chatting to a neighbour.
Here we are having some heated discussions:
Friday 20th November
Another busy week!
This week we have been buddy reading with our friends in Acorn Class (pre-school). We visited them and shared lots of different books.
Here we are reading together:
We have invited Acorn Class to visit us next time to share books.
In music we have been looking at how musical instruments make sounds. We have discussed what the word 'vibration' means and have made our own musical instruments.
Thursday 12th November
Our Remembrance Day Display
This week Willow Class have been learning about the importance and significance of Remembrance Day.
We learnt that the guns of World War I fell silent on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. King George V ordered a two minute silence to remember those who died. Today we remember all those who fought and died in wars. We made poppies and used water colours to create a poppy picture. In Literacy we wrote cinquain poems. Here are a couple of our poems:
War
Deadly, cruel.
Shooting, fighting, dreadful.
Taking innocent lives.
Combat.
War
Dark, dangerous.
Killing , hurting, bleeding.
Breaking people's hearts.
Battle.
Thursday 5th November
It has been a busy week in Willow Class.
Before half term we designed and made a trail for the pre-school children to follow. On Tuesday we undertook our trail - it was great fun!
In Mathematics we have been learning to measure. We have learnt about the relationship between millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres. Today we were given the challenge to measure our classroom and objects inside it using non-standard units of measure.
Here we are measuring:
Thursday 22nd October
Trail making.
We were given a challenge. We had to make an outdoor learning trail for the pre-school to follow.
Planter
We have re-planted our class planter. We regularly water and tend the plants.
Holiday
Have a lovely half-term.
Thursday 15th October
It has been another busy week in Willow Class. We have been focussing on speaking and listening.
In Mathematics we have been solving problems and have had to explain our methods of working out each calculation. We realised that there are many ways we could solve a problem.
Here we are explaining and sharing our solutions:
In Literacy we have been writing poems. We wrote a class poem about our favourite scene from Gregory Cool:
Twilight
Calm, pale blue evening.
Shimmery, glowing lights.
Beautiful fireflies flapping their tiny wings.
Stars quivering in the distance.
A dazzling moon dancing in the sky.
Owls hooting, dogs barking, donkeys braying.
Smells of dinner drifting on the breeze.
Stifling hot air.
Harmony and freedom.
Today we had a wonderful time writing our own poems.
Thursday 8th October
In Literacy this week we have imagined being in Tobago.
We looked at the final scene in the story 'Gregory Cool'. We imagined what the boys could see, hear and feel:
We have also written letters as Gregory to our Mum and Dad.
Here are some of our letter openings:
How could you be so cruel! I am here for four weeks, please take me home.
Why Tobago? What? No toys, no computer, no play-station ...
Here we are sharing our letters with each other:
In Science we imagined what was underneath our feet.
Were we right? Find out next week.
Friday 2nd October
It has been another busy week in Willow Class.
In Science we have continued to investigate the use of rocks in our environment. We explored the school and grounds to see how many different rocks we could find and how they are used.
Here we are recording our findings.
In Literacy we have been looking at identifying the main parts of a story. From our class text "Gregory Cool" we identified five main points:
In Drama we created our own freeze frames. Can you guess which scene is which?
Thursday 24th September
In Willow Class this week we have been on a walk around the village looking at how rocks are used. In the graveyard we saw headstones made from marble and limestone. We noticed that the older headstones are beginning to erode.
Can you spot the differences?
A huge thank you to the parents who came with us.
In Literacy we discussed elections and voting, as part of our work on British Values. We wrote speeches giving reasons why each of us should be voted on to Manea Primary School Council.
Here we are rehearsing our speeches.
Thank you to everyone who attended our class welcome meeting this week. It was lovely to meet so many parents/carers. A letter will be sent home shortly to those parents who were unable to attend.
Thursday 17th September
It has been another busy week in Willow Class. This week we have written diary entries as a character in Literacy, explored different rocks in Science, created our own musical accompaniments in Music and learnt new counting games in Maths.
One of our favourite sessions this week has been Dance. We are choreographing our own dance based on trees and forests. This week we created the opening of our dance sequence - the tree growing from its seed.
The pictures below show our different ideas for the opening of our dance.
We hope you enjoy looking at the photographs.
Thursday 10th September
We have enjoyed our first week in Willow class.
This week we have:
We created sound pictures based on the book 'Gregory Cool'. Our pictures show the scene where Gregory wakes up.
Welcome to Willow Class
We have all enjoyed our first day as a junior school pupil. Our day started with a tour of the school, especially the junior department.
Today we have been very busy. We have:
We have had a wonderful day and can't wait to come to school tomorrow.