It's lovely to see the weather has changed and the start of summer has arrived. The children are starting to enjoy more learning outside of the classroom and making use of our fantastic school grounds. Mr Duffin has been busy with the children in Forest School or the Gardening club and the school is filled with plants growing which look fantastic but have also been so useful for all the children in their learning about plants and life cycles. Some children have even mentioned how therapeutic they have found the gardening element and it's great that children are seeing the mental health benefits of gardening and growing plants. We are always looking for volunteers in school, whether to support our children in their reading or helping around the school with the areas like Forest School.

Reception

Reception have had great fun this half term exploring the growing topic. We observed our very own chicks hatching out of eggs when learning about the life cycle of a chicken. Both classes had a great day out at Romshed farm, where we learnt about the importance of farming. We are currently observing the life cycle of butterflies, they are in the chrysalis stage! This has all inspired some fantastic writing! In Maths we have learnt all about the subtract symbol and have been using real life objects and number lines to solve subtraction problems. We look forward to lots more fun next half term when we explore habitats! 

Year 2 

In Year 2 we have had an exciting half term looking at the circus! We started this topic by learning some circus skills. It was so much fun.  In English, we have written about clowns and even made up poems about them. We have looked at the book 'Leon and the Place Between' and wrote stories based on this. 

In Science, we have been learning about different inventors and scientists such as Elizabeth Garrett and Tim Smit. We made our own Biomes, and they are growing on our windows in the classroom. 

We have been working so hard on preparation for our SATs, and we have all done so well. 

A huge well done to all of Year 2, your teachers are all so proud of you. 

Year 3

Year 3 has had an incredibly busy half term, from tea tasting to a visit to the Tower of London!

We started the term with some tea tasting as an introduction to our book Cloud Tea Monkeys. From this book we did some research and wrote non-chronological reports all about tea and how the production of tea has changed over time. 

We have been lucky enough to have a cricket coach come in for our PE lessons this half term. We have learned the skills to play the sport and have had lots of fun along the way.

Our topic this half term has been about Crime and Punishment in Britain over the centuries, from Roman Britain up to present day. We visited the Tower of London as part of this topic and we had a fantastic day!

We had the opportunity to meet the author and illustrator Harry Woodgate in Orpington Library and he taught us how to illustrate in his style. He even read his new book to us!

Finally, in Science we have been learning about plants and the life cycle of flowering plants in particular. We delicately dissected a flower to see all of the parts that make up the plant and discussed their functions.

Year 4

Year 4 has had a busy half term. In English, we have been linking our texts to our History topic WW2. We have created a comic strip inspired by Little Ships and Operation Dynamo. We have written diary entries and designed propaganda posters inspired by The lion and The Unicorn. As a cross-curricular link with Art and Design, we wrote fact files on a chosen endangered animal and poetry too.Finally, we wrote powerful poetry around The Blitz, as a cross Curricular link with History.

In Maths, we have learnt how to find fractions, identify equivalent fractions, revise finding non-unit fractions of amounts, finding perimeters and area.We also learnt about negative numbers including in context of temperature and using compact addition.

In Science, our topic this term has been on Sound. We have had lots of fun activities learning about Sound including the string telephone activity where we were investigating how sound waves travel, using cups and string. We also made pan pipe straws to test pitch.

In History, we have started to learn about World War Two. We have discovered how the war started, the effects of the Blitz and how it impacted on evacuees. We have also studied the little ships and the part they played in the Dunkirk rescue. We will continue this topic after half term.

In Art and Design, we have made three-dimensional sculptures on endangered animals.

In Spanish, we have revised our greetings and introducing ourselves and introduced the ‘Mi Casa’ unit. This includes describing where you live.

In Computing, we have been learning about coding and scratch. In Forest School, we have been planting saplings which will grow to become a hedge creating a border and at the same time extending the Forest School area.

Year 5

Year 5 have had a fantastic start to their summer term.  The Coronation was a wonderful celebration that allowed us to research our new King and produce a crown - that we wore during our Coronation concert - which contained facts that we were able to share with our family. In computing, we have been using Crumbles to program our own fairground rides which we were able to light up and design ourselves.  For PE, we have been so lucky to have a coach from the Park Langley Tennis Club to teach us tennis skills - some of us have used our skills to run drills for the afternoon tennis club.  Additionally, as part of our science learning, we had an amazing visit to the Planetarium in Greenwich, where our host took us through our solar system and we were able to share an amazing star show. We dissected flowers to discover how plants reproduce as part of our Living Things and Their Habitats topic as well as learning about life cycles of mammals, amphibians, birds and insects.  

For history, we have been researching the ancient Kingdom the Benin and have produced our own instruments, similar to the ones used at the time, that we will play to accompany an adventure story we have written.  For Autism Awareness Week, we learned about thinking differently and being unique, finishing with an acrostic poem, celebrating all we have learned.

Year 6

This term year 6 have been working incredibly hard in the lead up to their SATs tests. During SATs week they excelled, putting 100% into every test they took and we couldn’t be prouder of them all. Each afternoon during SATs week the children worked on creating a 3D sculpture of an endangered animal, starting with just a bottle, cardboard and some newspapers. They worked on ensuring the shape and features of their animal were correct before we Papier-mâché the whole sculpture and adding the finer details. I’m sure you will agree that they look fantastic. 

Last week year 6 took part in the Junior Citizens workshop at Orpington Fire Station, where they were able to learn a variety of new skills to help them in their transition to secondary school. They learnt: first aid, fire safety, and all about local services they may need to use such as transport services and the police. The children all thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and came away with many new skills.

Ash and Maple 

Maple and Ash have been learning all about different celebrations this term, enjoyed celebrating the Coronation and did an amazing performance of ‘Celebration’ to the parents. They absolutely loved celebrating Mental Health Week, especially as the week ended beautifully on National Pizza Day.  Both Maple and Ash have been learning about lifecycles in Science and have enjoyed seeing the chicks hatch and following the caterpillars spinning their cocoons.

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