Year 5 in spring 2 have been learning about the Mayans. To begin the topic, we read about famous Mayan civilisation artefacts. We looked at a picture of an artefact and made a prediction for what it was. We then discovered what is really was and discussed how close our predictions were. In the following lesson we then learnt about what daily life was like for the Mayans. We looked at the differences for workers and nobles as well as what the Mayans ate, what clothes they wore and what entertainment they had. Year 5 then found out about Mayan inventions and how they still affect our lives today. We have also investigated Mayan religion and why their Gods were important to them as well as identifying important Mayan places and facts.
Junior
KS 2 Music Spring
Ukulele Club have continued to meet each week. It has been really lovely to have one of the children, Poppy, writing out the chords to a couple of songs and teaching these to the rest of the group including Mr Hardy!
Mr Oparaocha, who joined us as a Teaching Assistant in Year 5, is an extremely talented musician and has started Lower and Upper School choirs which are proving very popular with the children.
In Year 3 the children have begun to learn the ukulele, which they will continue with now until the end of the school year. They have learned to name the parts of the ukulele (It has a body, neck and head – but it’s got no arms and legs!), how to hold the instrument correctly, playing different rhythms by strumming and some quite tricky picking patterns. Finally, the children were introduced to their first chord (C major)! Everyone is giving it their best effort and as a year group they are making very quick progress.
The children in Year 4 have explored a number of songs from different genres including disco, folk and classical. They have sung together and also had their first taste of playing the recorder! Pupils have also composed their own pieces of music to fit a backing track using an app in charanga to drag and drop notes on to the stave – improving their recognition of traditional musical notation.
Year 5 in Spring 2 have been using the website https://www.norfolkmusichub.org.uk/ ‘Charanga’ to create their own piece of Hip Hop music using ‘YuStudio’. The children have all really enjoyed creating their own pieces and listening to others. By following the videos children have added in a range of drum beats, bass and chords. Some children have included other musical instruments as well as adding in melody sections to their piece. Some have been continuing on at home using their log ins which has been great to see!
Year 6 have been focusing on the key question: ‘how does music teach us about our community?’ as a link to the social theme ‘music is a builder of community and guardian of cultural identity’. We have been listening and responding to a variety of songs such as ‘Let’s Rock’, ‘Simple Gifts’ and ‘Friendship Should Never End’. This has helped us to sing along by clapping and moving to the rhythms we have heard. We have developed our performance skills by working together in groups to perform parts of the song.
DT Autumn Term 2023
Year 3 Autumn 2023
As part of our Ancient Egyptian unit, the children translated their first names into hieroglyphs, made a cartouche design and then moulded their own cartouche from clay. They researched the colours that the Ancient Egyptians used and tried to replicate these when painting and glazing their own cartouches.
In their food technology unit and using some of their food technology skills of chopping, weighing and mixing, the children made Egyptian bread ‘Kaak’ to taste test at home.
The recipe was adapted from one found on the tomb of Ramses III and involved creating a snail shape, boiling the dough – under adult supervision and then baking the bread.
Year 3 also created a cross curricular piece of work – combining art with D.T. be designing and creating a tile plate for the Gaudi inspired artwork of repeating patterns.
Year 4 Autumn, 2023
This term in DT, we made Roman cake stands to place our apple crumbles on. We used our mosaic knowledge to design the top of our cake stands. Once completed, we began assembling our cake stands. This involved lots of trial and error.
We enjoyed using a wide range of materials to see what would work best for our cake stands. Then we made our apple crumble. We used many of our Food Technology skills such as peeling, chopping and mixing. Once completed, we were able to test the strength of our cake stands and taste test our apple crumbles.
Year 5 – Autumn 2, 2022
In DT this half term, we have been focusing on designing and creating a Viking Longboat with a pneumatic system. This has been linked to our History topic of the Vikings, where the children have learnt lots about the designs of Longboats and why they were designed that way.
First, the children completed a design brief, where they carefully considered what materials and tools they were going to use. The children used many skills such as: sawing, measuring, drilling and cutting using a wide range of equipment. After the structure of the Longboat was built, the children were able to decorate their boats. The children were so proud of their final products!
As part of the food technology unit, Year 5 chose to make stained glass window shortbread biscuits. They continued to develop their food technology skills through chopping, weighing and cutting when following the recipe.
Year 6 Autumn 2, 2022
As part of our topic on World War 2, the children designed and made Anderson Shelters. They used their measuring, cutting and design skills to create their shelters and then evaluated them based upon their strength and appearance. The children worked very hard to make them look authentic; some even had little vegetables growing on the roof just as they did during the war.
Geography Autumn 2023
In our school we encourage children to gain an awareness of the world around them and to think about the effect people have upon it. Skills are taught progressively from Reception to year 6, with opportunities for children to build on and embed their learning. The children complete retrieval grids to show their understanding before and after the topic.
By Year 3, in the Autumn Term, the children are building on their mapwork skills by recapping their knowledge of continents and countries, in their ‘Around the World’ topic. They have then learned about places in the UK and developed our understanding of different settlements such as cities, towns and villages. Then, they compared two UK cities (Norwich and Birmingham), and even challenged themselves further by extending their map skills while learning about grid references.
In Autumn Term, year 5 have been learning about earthquakes, building on prior learning about mountains and volcanoes, talking about plate tectonics and the “Ring of Fire.” They also researched how earthquakes are measured and studied an earthquake in Chile.
The children are encouraged to record their work in various ways, to appeal to various learning styles and use these additional opportunities to practise their SPAG skills and presentation of their work. We make links with local events and discuss things which are happening globally as they occur, especially when the children have encountered them on their television or have been affected by these occurrences, such as local flooding.
DT Autumn 2023
Year 3 Autumn 2023
As part of our Ancient Egyptian unit, the children translated their first names into hieroglyphs, made a cartouche design and then moulded their own cartouche from clay. They researched the colours that the Ancient Egyptians used and tried to replicate these when painting and glazing their own cartouches.
In their food technology unit and using some of their food technology skills of chopping, weighing and mixing, the children made Egyptian bread ‘Kaak’ to taste test at home.
The recipe was adapted from one found on the tomb of Ramses III and involved creating a snail shape, boiling the dough – under adult supervision and then baking the bread.
Year 3 also created a cross curricular piece of work – combining art with D.T. be designing and creating a tile plate for the Gaudi inspired artwork of repeating patterns.
Year 4 Autumn, 2023
This term in DT, we made Roman cake stands to place our apple crumbles on. We used our mosaic knowledge to design the top of our cake stands. Once completed, we began assembling our cake stands. This involved lots of trial and error.
We enjoyed using a wide range of materials to see what would work best for our cake stands. Then we made our apple crumble. We used many of our Food Technology skills such as peeling, chopping and mixing. Once completed, we were able to test the strength of our cake stands and taste test our apple crumbles.
Year 5 – Autumn 2, 2022
In DT this half term, we have been focusing on designing and creating a Viking Longboat with a pneumatic system. This has been linked to our History topic of the Vikings, where the children have learnt lots about the designs of Longboats and why they were designed that way.
First, the children completed a design brief, where they carefully considered what materials and tools they were going to use. The children used many skills such as: sawing, measuring, drilling and cutting using a wide range of equipment. After the structure of the Longboat was built, the children were able to decorate their boats. The children were so proud of their final products!
As part of the food technology unit, Year 5 chose to make stained glass window shortbread biscuits. They continued to develop their food technology skills through chopping, weighing and cutting when following the recipe.
Year 6 Autumn 2, 2022
As part of our topic on World War 2, the children designed and made Anderson Shelters. They used their measuring, cutting and design skills to create their shelters and then evaluated them based upon their strength and appearance. The children worked very hard to make them look authentic; some even had little vegetables growing on the roof just as they did during the war.
Art Autumn 2 2023
Art
Year 3 Autumn term
Year 3 have focussed on developing their sketching skills using the techniques above to work on texture, line and tone when sketching a variety of Egyptian artefacts.
As part of a cross curricular theme, we looked at some of the works of Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi is a famous artist, architect and is often referred to as “God’s architect”. Adfter learning about his work the children were inspired to create their own repeating patterns using nature as a muse.
Year 4 Autumn term
Year 4 have focussed on the ancient world of Rome and have replicated beautiful mosaics from this period. They have created a 3D piece of artwork, combining this with their Design and Technology unit. Year 4 made mosaic cake stand.
They challenged themselves by creating their own tesserae using foam squares and reducing the size of these to recreate the small pieces of tile used by Ancient Roman artists. The children sketched their mosaic in their sketchbooks before recreating it with the tesserae.
Year 5 Autumn term
Year 5 have linked their artwork with their science unit on planets and shadows. They have created a piece of art using watercolours, focussing on the techniques of tinting and shading. We have considered different shading techniques such as, hatching, cross-hatching, scribbling and stippling. They have explored the use of both oil pastels and watercolours as medium to create artwork with and have created their own watercolour sunset of Stonehenge.
Year 6 Autumn term
Year 6, focussed their art around the history unit of World War 2. Recreating images of paratrooper paintings by using mixed media and collage techniques.
Science Autumn 2 2023
Year 3
Year 3 began this half-term by looking at their exciting experiment from Autumn 1 – mummifying tomatoes! The children were very pleased to see that their preservation techniques had worked and the tomatoes had survived being buried in salt for 2 weeks. Following this, they have been learning about light sources and their necessity in our everyday lives. They have completed many investigations including classification of light sources and reflective materials. They also investigated patterns in shadows when manipulating the light source.
Year 4
In Year 4, the children have been looking at how we hear sound and have learnt the names of different parts of the ear. We thoroughly enjoyed trying out the different experiments to discover that sound is made by a series of vibrations. The children’s favourite experiment was using the tuning fork in the water (even if the vibrations from the tuning fork did make the water splash a little)!
We have also looked at how to change the pitch and volume of different musical instruments. The children were surprised to find that with some instruments it was very difficult to change the pitch. By far, the children’s favourite experiment was making string telephones from cups and string and seeing which materials were best at passing the vibrations through the “telephones”!
Year 5
In Science, Year 5 have been looking at Materials. We began the half term off by comparing and grouping together different objects that were in a bag based off of their properties. Children picked up an object in a bag, described what it felt like and then guessed what material it is made from, before taking it out and then classifying it.
Children then looked at soluble and insoluble solutions where we grouped material into categories: those which dissolve in water, those which don’t dissolve and those where there appears to be a different sort of change.
We then planned and carried out an investigation to attempt to separate mixed materials. We looked at whether it was possible to separate:
- Coffee and water
- Paperclips and water
- Salt and water
- Rice and water
To do this we used a sieve, filter paper and a magnet.
Later on this half term, Year 5 looked into irreversible changes where we completed a ‘rust race’ investigation. We left nails in different liquids over the week to see which liquid caused the nails to go rusty and at what speed. We discussed the differences between a reversible and an irreversible change.
Year 6
In Year 6 this term we started Science by learning about animals, including humans. We learnt about the circulatory and digestive systems and carried out an investigation into how exercise affects our heart rate. We found that after 2 minutes of continuous exercise our heart rates speed up to help oxygen reach our organs more quickly. We also learnt about how to live a healthy lifestyle, including diet and exercise and what effect this can have on our health. Over the course of a week, we did regular exercise each morning to see if this helped us to be more alert during our lessons. Most of us found that we did find it easier to concentrate in our morning lessons after five minutes of continuous exercise.
In the second half of the term, we have been learning about light. We have carried out lots of practical investigations to explore refraction, reflection and the spectrum.
Computing Autumn Term 2023
Year 3
In Computing, the children have been introduced to networks and have been exploring each week how they operate. This has included learning about the features of a device and considering the inputs, processes and outputs a device may have. The children have consolidated their understanding of the purposes of different digital devices, as well as comparing artwork created in real life to one created digitally.
Year 4
This half term we have been learning the computer science concept of ‘sequence’ and understanding this means being careful to put the order in which things are done. We have had lots of fun learning the block code language, Scratch. We have been careful to program the blocks one after the other to make the correct sequence for the computer to understand and execute. We have used the knowledge of sequencing to create a game that uses inputs from a keyboard to control a Sprite to move around a maze and to draw a line.
Year 5
In Computing in Year 5, the children have been creating and editing videos. Year 5 began the topic by looking at different videos and analysing and comparing them. Children then discussed different filming techniques:
● Long shot – filming one person, showing their whole body and where they are
● Moving subject – a person moving from one place to another
● Side by side – filming two people at the same time
Year 5 then planned their own video on how to stay safe online using a storyboard. The children then filmed their videos using iPads in groups using the different filming techniques. Year 5 concluded the topic by re-watching and evaluating their videos.
Year 6
This term in Year 6 we have been working on coding. We gave clear instructions, known as algorithms. We focused on repetition, selection and conditional selection. We used Purple Mash to complete set activities to practise using the algorithms and using different variables to complete different tasks. We created our own games involving the variables such as timers and directions through Purple Mash. We then looked at and focused on Online Safety and how to keep others and ourselves safe online. We reflected on our screen time use and how this can affect our wellbeing.
RE in Autumn 2
Year 3
Following last half-term’s learning on Christianity, the children have been introduced to Hinduism and have enjoyed exploring how the religion compares to others. The children have learned where and when Hindus pray, and the many fascinating representations of the Hindu god Brahman. The children have then accurately compiled all of their learning to answer this half-term’s Big Question, ‘How do Hindus make sense of the world?’
Year 4
In Year 4, we have been working towards answering our big question “Where do religious beliefs come from?” The children have been focusing on Judaism and have enjoyed investigating different religious artefacts such as a Kippah and the Torah. They have been researching different Jewish festivals and why they are important. The children enjoyed discussing which Jewish festival they would like to take part in.
Year 5
In Year 5, we have been answering our big enquiry question “How do people express their faith through the arts?” We learnt about how religious messages are expressed through art and then produced their own religious icon. The children wrote a prayer to go with their religious icon. In addition to this, children listened to four music tracks from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish community. They were all able to evaluate the music and discussed how it made them feel and how it made them want to respond.
Year 6
This term year 6 combined our RE and history topics to answer the Big Question of “How does faith in God help people during times of suffering?” We learnt about the Jewish faith and how Jews suffered during the Holocaust in World War 2. We studied some passages from the Old Testament which promise God’s strength and presence during times of trouble. The children looked at the experiences of Anne Frank and Simon Winston during the war and how they each responded differently according to their faith in God.
In autumn 2 we have been learning about the Islamic faith in order to answer the Big Question of “What are the sources of authority for Muslims?”. We have been particularly thinking about the Qu’ran and teachings of the prophet Mohammed (PBUH). We learnt about how the Qu’ran should be treated and looked other sayings from the Hadith. The children thought about what they could mean and how Muslims can apply the teachings to their daily lives.
Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day was marked in an assembly at the Junior School. The children learnt about Armistice Day on the 11th November 1918. At 11 o’clock on that day, nations who were fighting laid down their weapons and this signalled the end of the war (known then as the “Great War”). Today, we know it as the First World War. Armistice is an agreement for peace.
One year later, the first two-minute silence was held. King George V had asked the people of Britain to pause and remember all those who had fought and died in the service of their country.
In in 1920, King George unveiled the nation’s new war memorial called the Cenotaph, where people go to remember the fallen.
The children found out about the Royal British Legion and how it remembers the fallen by launching the Poppy Appeal, where members and volunteers sell millions of red paper poppies. In the weeks leading up to 11th November and on Remembrance Sunday, people are asked to wear a poppy as an act of remembrance.
The children listened respectfully and with interest.
On Wednesday 8th November, key stage one children were extremely lucky to be joined by the Mayor of Dereham. He talked to the children about why we wear poppies, the significance of the poppy and encouraged the children to join in with reciting a special passage to remember the soldiers who fought in the wars.
On the Friday the Infant School participated in class assemblies for Remembrance Day, including a two minute silence. Reception children also had the opportunity to make poppies.
