Pre-Prep: Sparks of Joy
Hallowe'en and Belhaven Bonfire Night have sparked joy, excitement and inspiration since we returned from the half term break.
In After School Club, the children produced wonderful drawings of Guy Fawkes, while Outdoor Education saw the children creating spiders' webs and firework imagery out of natural materials found in the woods.
Nativity rehearsals are well underway and I’m sure the songs of ‘Christmas Recipe’ are ringing through your homes! There have been many questions about costumes and there is great excitement already about the parents coming in to see them perform.
Music
Pre-Prep choir is really coming together learning the words and actions for our 10 fun and jazzy nativity songs. It is very helpful that so many children have listened to the recording at home as this really speeds up the learning process. Over the coming weeks we will also learn/revise some traditional Christmas carols, so our memories are really being put to the test to retain so many lyrics!
Form 6 are now able to recognise and write 5 different note values and have started learning keyboard skills. This involves knowing the names of the white notes and developing dexterity for playing with a good hand shape.
Form 7 and Form 8 have had lots of fun learning to play xylophones. This helps with concepts of pitch (low and high) as well as requiring dexterity to manage the mallets and make a ringing sound. We have introduced other percussion instruments (the cabasa being particularly popular) to help us continue to develop understanding beat and rhythm.
Classwork
Form 8
Form 8 have started their new book-based writing unit. We have read Ivy and the Lonely Raincloud and are focusing on recount and descriptive writing. This means we are using adjectives, thinking about the role characters play in our writing and planning our own fictional story. This also means applying our ever-developing phonics knowledge and making sure we put all of our handwriting practice to good use.
In number, we are making strides through our addition and subtraction unit. It has been lovely to see the children applying their skills through play by using Lego to add and subtract. Our maths has focused on 2D and 3D shapes, with us also thinking about patterns. We loved learning about patterns through dance!
Every week, we continue to practice listening skills. This means listening to an instruction with 3 key words and being able to carry it out. It has been great to see the children become so much more confident and support each other at the same time.
We have also been focusing on the importance of teamwork. To do this, we worked in small groups to build the tallest tower. Little did the class know that there would be a surprise... We had to swap towers halfway through and continue the work of the previous team. Some of the class even got plus points for their amazing communication, which we soon discovered was the most important thing when working as a team!
Left: Learning about patterns through dance
Right: Teamwork exercises
Form 7
Form 7 have continued using the book, Toby and the Great Fire of London, to inspire their writing. The children thoroughly enjoyed writing a recount of the fire in the form of a diary entry. They used their imaginations to describe what the residents of London would have experienced during the blaze. More recently, the children have been learning the difference between fiction and non-fiction. We have started writing our own informative texts about the fire using the facts and information we’ve learned over the past few weeks.
In Maths, we’ve been using our knowledge of number bonds to 10 to solve more complex problems. If we know 6+4=10, then we can solve problems like 26+4 or even 176+4! The children have also been learning to look for patterns in numbers, for example, if 5-3=2, then 50-30=20 and 750-30=720.
In Science, the children have loved learning about the needs of animals for survival. We’ve now studied the needs of the 5 animal groups – mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians – and have compared how their needs are very similar to human needs.
Form 6
Form 6 are continuing to use the book Stone Age Boy to inspire their writing by helping them to understand how to step into someone else's shoes and write from their perspective. They have written a diary entry as the boy in the story and the next step is to write as Om, the girl from the Stone Age.
In Maths, we are moving through our addition and subtraction unit and our current focus is on the different methods of crossing 10 or 100. The important part is knowing your number bonds well and knowing different ways to break up numbers, for example 9 can be 4+5, 3+6, 2+7 etc. If there was a sum that said 365 + 7, they would look at adding the 5 first then the 2. We are also continuing to work on our times tables using Times Table Rockstars.
Nutrition has been the focus in Science and we have been learning about the five different food groups; which foods belong in which group and how they benefit our bodies. Next we will be talking about what a balanced diet looks like and why it is important.
The children have been really enjoying all the different sports they have been practising. Next week we will start to do some Scottish Country Dancing ahead of our Christmas party on the 13th December. In hockey, we have started playing on the full pitch and focusing on our spacing instead of following the ball like bees round a honey pot! I was very impressed by their efforts and how much they have come on in a short time. Well done!
