Pre-Prep: Sounds of Summer
With the gloriously still and sunny weather, the happy hum of campus in the Summer Term has been amplified even more than usual. Carried on the breeze we have heard upbeat jive music, as we celebrated VE Day, and a whole range of instrumental sounds, as the children prepared for their Pre-Prep Summer Concert.
Cheers of excitement have resonated from the sports pitches, with cricket, tennis and athletics in action, and the building project, our Makerspace, has also provided visual and (surprisingly gentle) auditory stimulation as the framework has started to emerge from muddy foundations. Amidst the riotous bird song in the Walled Garden, the sound of busy children clearing, planting and nurturing has been a regular soundtrack to the last five weeks of term. They are looking forward to seeing the fruits of their labours!
Music
This term’s music lessons have focused on the preparations for our big Pre-Prep Concert on 16th May. A special mention to our three new friends in Reception who hit the ground running with only a few weeks to learn the songs that the rest of Pre-Prep have been rehearsing all year, including two songs in French! Well done, Milo, Erica and Flora!
Form 8 perfected their recorder pieces, Form 7 used the bow on their violins, and Form 6 practised their ukelele chords. In Choir, we added actions and colourful scarves to our songs. It all came together in a wonderful concert which demonstrated Pre-Prep's enthusiasm as well as musical sensitivity. Congratulations to every single child. The School’s values were evident in each performance:
Courage in their confident performances, especially our 16 soloists who introduced their piece and received applause with a timely bow.
Courtesy by giving their full attention to other performers.
Creativity in the way they communicated the music expressively and in the improvised piece Music Machine.
With songs about the power of music in the enhancement of togetherness and friendship, and some harmonious (enforced) audience participation, we considered a new school value of Community to reflect the strength of the link between Belhaven’s children, teachers and families.
A big thank you to Hannah-Louise Scott (Head of Music) for organising a separate recital for our Form 6 instrumentalists and Prep School exam pupils on 9th May. This gave pupils some performance practice before their exams and the Pre-Prep Concert and gave the older and younger children a chance to learn from one another.
Pre-Prep music now has a new classroom which is a wonderful space for us to be in. It’s been an exciting few weeks in Pre-Prep Music!
Miss Lloyd - Pre-Prep Music Lead
Art & Design Exhibition
After the instrumental pieces at the Summer Concert, Form 6 showed their wonderful animation that they had been making in DT with Mrs Haddon. It was about skeletons because Form 6 became fascinated by this topic in Science. Please do watch their amazing animation again here.
This was followed by the physical theatre performance named ‘Belonging’. Form 6 have been rehearsing this with Mrs McGrath in their Drama lessons. It followed the story of a boy trying to fit in at school, brilliantly brought to life by some well-choreographed acting set against the backing of a suitably emotive backing track.
The Art and Design Exhibition took place after this in the Headmaster’s study. This was cleverly put together by the very talented Mrs Haddon and showed a vast array of the wonderful pieces of work that the children have produced in Art and DT during their year in Form 6. It was also exciting to see some of the work from Reception, Form 8 and Form 7 – the children felt very proud of their work and loved showing their parents what they have created.
Classwork
Form 8
In Reception/Form 8 class we have been looking at the features of plants and trees. We went on a scavenger hunt around school spotting different types of plants and looking out for signs of spring. We counted different types of wildflowers and garden plants and have planted our own beans. Some of them have grown very tall already.
In numeracy, Reception have been looking at matching a numeral to an amount and Form 8 have been focusing on fractions and halving an amount. We have all been looking at odd and even numbers.
In our Literacy lessons we have started a new book called ‘Stanley's Stick’. I wonder if the children can remember what Stanley turned his stick into? Our new Reception children have now learnt 17 sounds and are doing very well at blending them to spell and read words.
Our seven station challenges have included typing words on a keyboard, playing a game of Snakes and Ladders, painting a tulip, playing Noughts and Crosses, building objects out of interlocking cubes, completing a jigsaw, weighing objects to say which is heavier and threading beads, among many other things.
Mrs Hutchison – Reception / Form 8 Class Teacher
Form 7
In recent weeks, Form 7 have been engrossed in their new key text, ‘The Great Kapok Tree’, by Lynne Cherry. Through this book, the children have learnt about the prefix ‘un’ (unfair, unhealthy, unkind, unsafe, unequal etc.), how to use commas in a list and how to identify nouns, verbs and adjectives in a sentence. The children have written incredible animal descriptions as well as animal biographies. As well as many grammatical points, the children have been prompted to think about the ethics of deforestation.
In Maths, the children have been getting their heads around fractions. They can confidently use mathematical language such as ‘numerator’ and ‘denominator’ and have started to identify equivalent fractions e.g. one half = two quarters. Some of the children can add and subtract fractions, as well as find fractions of amounts.
In Science, the children have been learning about ‘Growing Up’. We have looked closely at life cycles and have discussed the differences between mammals, insects and amphibians. The children have learnt the word ‘offspring’ and can match a young offspring to its fully grown adult. We’re looking forward to our delivery of caterpillars next week!
In Topic, the children have been learning about the concepts of ‘Survival’ and ‘Consequence’. The have explored the layers of the rainforest and discovered which animals live there. Next week, we’ll look at some case studies of people and animals who have been affected by the destruction of the rainforest, including a rather adorable orangutan!
Miss Birrell – Form 7 Class Teacher
Form 6
In literacy this term we finished learning about metaphors and personification. Some of my favourites included, ‘the branches tickled my face as I ran through the forest,’ and ‘the leaves danced in the howling wind.’
We then did our main piece of writing, first by writing a checklist of features that we needed to include in order to build suspense. We then had to write the journey of the girl through the tunnel and into the forest, introducing an element of suspense, expanded noun phrases, metaphors and personification. They did a brilliant job and the pieces of work that they produced were fantastic. Hamish, Rufus and Ayleen were awarded a Headmaster’s Distinction but everyone in the class received a ‘Commended’.
We have now moved onto our next book called, ‘The Boy Who Grew Dragons’, which has already brought much hilarity! Our first piece of writing will be a funny rhyming poem about a dragon.
In Maths we have now finished the second part of our multiplication and division topic. We have been working on multiplication of 2-digit numbers with and without an exchange and how this links with division. We have been dividing using flexible partitioning which is quite complicated and requires a good knowledge of times tables. e.g. 57 ÷ 3. Partition the 57 into 30 and 27 then divide 30 by 3 to make 10 and 27 by 3 to give 9. Therefore, the answer is 10 + 9 = 19. We have just finished looking at division with remainders which again further shows the strong link between multiplication and division.
In Science we have just finished our light topic, following a big focus on the different stages of conducting an experiment – planning, investigating and evaluation. The experiment was to find out how the shadow size would change if you moved the light source further away from the opaque object. Our next topic is plants.
In Topic this term, we are learning about John Muir and National Parks. We have started off by looking at John Muir’s life and all of his many achievements. The children found that they had heard of John Muir because of The John Muir Way and John Muir Country Park but hadn’t realised his birthplace was actually here in Dunbar.
In Games sessions the children have been working on their running, throwing and jumping in the build-up to Sports Day. We have been blessed by such wonderful weather, which has allowed us to get outside for every session. We have also been doing cricket and the children have been learning both fielding and batting skills. They are enjoying it and are making great improvements, but they definitely feel that it is trickier than they thought it would be!
Mrs Johnstone – Pre-Prep Lead & Form 6 Class Teacher
