With just the right amount of cloud cover, the sports day was perfect. The house captains, Holly, Libby, Liberty, Sophie, Alfie, Jake, Jack and Max, did a great job at getting everyone organized for their races. Every single person gave their all to their races. It was good to d=see not one but two records broken on the day - congratulations to Sophie for breaking the obstacle course record. Many thanks to all the family than came and cheered the children on.
What a fun way to end a unit, as part of their homework pupils prepared a VE Day party. As you can see we had lots of lovely cakes, bunting, paper chains and the costumes for the day were fantastic. I loved the war time singalong, we'd have kept every ones spirits up in the shelters! The party games are unchanged it seems! Well done Chestnut Class.
As part of our World World Two project we looked at a range of artwork created in war time. The images were quite dark and disturbing. t recreate the effect we practiced our shading skills using a range of media; most of use preferred the drawing pencils but some likes the charcoal and permanent markers. The quality of our pictures was fantastic as you can see in the slideshow.
WCET (Whole Class Ensemble Teaching), the organisation which delivers the music program at East Harling, invited all of the Juniors to a day of workshops and a performance at Open, London St, Norwich. Here are my observations from the day. 'We are on our way, three coaches of excited children and maracas, it promises to be a great day. The first workshop was fast and furious; fortunately we had been taught the two rifts needed for The Nights by Avici in our music lessons in school. However, with 300 instruments it sounded quite different. The time flew by so much so everyone thought break-time was lunch-time! The rest of the day went so quickly and we are now headed back to school. Thankfully a video was made of the performance which will help us remember the all the fun we had singing Tina Singu, The Nights and Crackers Maracas. we are extremely grateful to Mrs Shaw for this occasion and for teaching us the ukulele this year.' Here are some pupils comments: 'It was a good opportunity to listen to music performed by musicians.' Portia (the WCET teachers played a piece from Toy Story and the theme tune from the Simpsons). 'I liked that people volunteered for solos.' Niamh 'From the balcony you could see everyone and they were all playing.' Jamie H As expected, this term has been jam-packed and these blog updates have too frequently been pushed to the bottom of my todo list. I've added a few photos here of some events and a few notes about them. SATs week seems a dim memory now but I think all of Chestnut Class will remember the breakfasts, it was a lovely way to start each day and ensured eve arrived in class smiling throughout the week everyone arrived in class smiling. The cricket was a welcome treat especially as it meant double PE for a while as Mrs Hemsall needed to teach the athletics before the session. The explanation homework was fantastic, one of the most enjoyable afternoons I've ever had in school. I learnt so much about what the pupils are passionate about, and I'm still getting updates. The walk around East Harling with Mrs Kelly was the prefect way to start our inquiry about life here in the Second World War. The visitors, Mrs Partridge and Mr Lake, gave us fascinating personal accounts which are far more meaningful than using books and we were extremely grateful that they took the time to come and talk to us. Last Thursday, we had a wonderful visit from Miss A Partridge, author of 'Name on a Stone East and West Harling 1914-1918' Not only did she share how a historian can use public records to find out about the stories behind the names on the war memorial, she also shared some amazing first hand accounts of life as an evacuee in the Second World War. We are extremely grateful to Miss partridge for not only giving up her time but sharing some unique historical facts.
This week we are focusing on life in 1939 -1941, the mass evacuations and the Blitz. Any stories your family may have of this time would be greatly appreciated. The inquiry topic is about the villages around East Harling as well as East Harling. Below is a link to the BBC timeline which we will use to put the time in context. Post SATs, we're indulging in some fun puzzling activities that will improve our thinking skills. The image above links to my husband's old puzzling blog which has explanatory videos and links to the games online.
There are a couple of important key learning skills that can be developed through puzzling: firstly, how to transfer learning from earlier problems to help solve more challenging ones and secondly, perseverance. Stickability (perseverance) is a life skill that we all need to practice, knowing how to apply what has already been learnt helps us out of the 'pit' and takes us on the road to success.Some pupils already have excellent stickabilty whereas others need to develop this before facing a greater range of challenges at high school. An extremely impressive collection of characters were in class last Thursday. Well done to all who made a great effort not only to dress up but also to share their favourite book. Our photos reflect the genre types we enjoy most in Chestnut class: humour, fantasy, adventure and historic tales.
Back in the year of 2012 there was a town (that is now extinct) called Southstead. In South stead there lived a special young boy called Tom. Tom lived in an ordinary yellow house surrounded by others that were all sorts of bright colours; except for one. The house opposite his was an ancient, decaying wreck called Blenty Estate. Everyone avoids this house because: A) the building had a putrid scent of rotting flesh coming from it. B) Sometimes at night peculiar sounds were heard from the building that drove most visitors away. Apart from tom. In fact tom was so drawn to the estate that he plane to explore that very night.
It was midnight. At last! Tom could finally begin his risky adventure. He clambered out of his window, jumped of his roof and sauntered over to the house feeling brave. Then he stopped. Should he continue? “Why not?” Thought tom carrying on to the door. Instantly the reek of rotting animals whipped his plump cheeks. He went inside despite the silent warnings from the night sky. Tom wandered over to a glass cabinet inside the Estate and observed the singular trophy in it. He needed a closer inspection. As he went to undo the clasp he was plummeted down into darkness. Further and further he went until he landed painfully on his back in a dark room. Suddenly the lights went on. Tom’s head felt fuzzy. He looked around, rubbed his eyes and stared frozen in utter horror. He was surrounded by meagre, shiny gumballs that were as blue as the ocean and as red as the sun’s molten core. He sat up slowly, his 4 foot body quivering like the puny trees that cowered at the front of my home. As he mournfully reminisced his family he braced for sudden death. Then he stopped. His favourite song was playing! By the time he stood up all of the tiny bead-like creatures were dancing merrily around a boom box. After 2 rounds of the Macarena tom stopped still. All of the gumballs had stopped too. He hiccupped. Oh no. they didn’t seem to take kindly to that! One of the gumballs screeched some strange words and immediately they all started morphing into…A GIANT-BOY-EATING-SLUG?!?!? In a flash poor tom was (once again) put into darkness. Tom awoke. Where was he!? The young boy started feeling around his surroundings. Oh no. very on no. tom knew what happened. He had just been swallowed by a Giant-Boy-Eating-Slug. Great. Luckily Tom was 8 and instantly knew how to get out. Yep. It was the only way… By Portia |
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