Team R:
Team R Welcomes Spring!
This week, our wonderful Team R students enjoyed a special nature walk around the school grounds, searching for the first signs of spring — and they were not disappointed!
With their keen eyes and curious minds, the children spotted budding flowers, fresh green leaves beginning to appear on the trees, and even heard birds singing in the sunshine. There was great excitement as they discovered tiny shoots pushing up through the soil and talked about how plants grow and change with the seasons.
The walk was a fantastic opportunity for the children to explore the natural world around them. They used their observation skills brilliantly, describing what they could see, hear, and feel. We were so impressed with their thoughtful ideas and wonderful vocabulary as they shared their discoveries with friends.
Back in the classroom, the children enjoyed talking about their favourite signs of spring and creating beautiful spring-inspired artwork.
Well done, Team R, for being such enthusiastic and respectful nature explorers!
We look forward to spotting even more signs of spring in the weeks to come!
Team 1 / 2:
Last week, Team 1 and Year 2 children were lucky enough to take part in a wonderful online poetry workshop with one of our focus authors and poet, Nicola Davies.
From the very beginning, she inspired us with stories about how she writes her poems and books. Nicola told us that she gets many of her ideas from the countryside where she lives. She spoke about listening carefully to birdsong, walking along the beach, watching the changing seasons and spending time outdoors. She explained that being curious and really looking closely at the world around us can help us become writers too.
The children loved hearing how real places, animals and memories can turn into beautiful poems and powerful stories.
We were also treated to an exciting preview of Nicola’s brand-new book, which will be all about maps and the places that are special to us. The children were fascinated by the idea that maps do not just show roads and rivers — they can also show memories, feelings and favourite places.
After sharing the new book with us, Nicola taught the children how to create their own maps of places that are important to them. Some children mapped their homes, some chose a grandparent’s house, others drew their classrooms or cosy corners at home.
Once the maps were finished, Nicola showed us how to use them as inspiration for poetry.
We looked closely at:
- The small details we had drawn
- The sounds we might hear in those places
- The colours we might see
- The feelings those places give us
Using our maps, we began to turn our ideas into words and short poems. It was wonderful to see the children so engaged, thoughtful and proud of their ideas.
The children’s maps are full of imagination, memory and heart. Each one tells a story about somewhere meaningful.
Take a look at the maps we made — I’m sure you will agree that they really are special!
Team 3 / 4:
Team 3/4 has been buzzing with excitement as a group of our children dived into the fascinating world of The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner. Throughout this unit, the children have become non-fiction experts by mastering how authors organise information and refining their retrieval and summarising skills. They have also begun to analyse the effect of an author’s language on the reader, learning to distinguish between fact and opinion while identifying the writer’s specific viewpoint.
To celebrate their hard work, the children brought their learning to life through a variety of creative projects. We were incredibly impressed by their “Bee Job Applications,” “Flower-to-Fork” maps, lift-the-flap posters, and “Wanted” signs. It has been wonderful to see them combine technical reading skills with such imaginative outcomes.
Team 5 / 6:
This week, Year 5 and 6 have been stepping into the shoes (or should that be tentacles?) of the alien commander from David Wiesner’s fantastic book, ‘Mr Wuffles’. After crash-landing under the radiator and encountering the terrifying house cat, our young writers have been busy crafting diary entries from the alien’s perspective. We have been exploring all the key features of diary writing: using first person, organising events chronologically, and including direct speech. But we didn’t stop there! Our grammar focus has been on using colons to introduce lists, semicolons to link related ideas, passive voice for effect, and most importantly, “show, not tell” to reveal emotions through actions and senses rather than just stating feelings. The children have analysed WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) at three different levels, used structured planning sheets to organise their ideas, and are now writing their own extended diary entries. The results so far have been amazing – we’ve had trembling tentacles, cracked power cores, and some very creepy encounters with tiny painted monsters! Well done to all our brilliant writers in Year 5 and 6.
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