Chaffinch
Our class book for Summer Term is Danny the Champion of the World. We had fun finding out what we were reading with a taste of pheasant, a feather 🪶 and our own book to read. I wonder where our discussion will take us?
Ancient Egyptian Day: A RECOUNT FROM THE DAY: On Thursday 23rd March, I took part in an amazing day in Chaffinch Class when my friends and I all went back in time to ancient Egypt. It was one of the most fun learning activities I have ever done in school and I think I will remember it forever. We were even allowed to come to school dressed up in Egyptian costumes. When I walked into the classroom, it had been transformed into the inside of a magical pyramid. The walls were golden brown and cushions and cloths covered the floor. There was even a camel in the middle of the room. I thought my eyes were tricking me, and my nose too because the scent of roses and jasmine filled the air.
We met Shelby the tortoise so we could learn about this reptile and write our news reports.
History - Do you know how to mummify a tomato? We explored the Ancient Egyptian way of preserving a body
Christmas lanterns for our contemplative walk through school🕯️
Roman's in Britain learning celebration Dec 22
Countdown to Christmas! Our performance was magnificent.
In Food Technology we have been investigating, designing, planning, making and evaluating a healthy sandwich. We had great fun making and tasting our own lunch and then enjoyed our creations in the classroom.
An Autumn Celebration at Wellington College Nov 22
Our 'eggsperiment': looking at the impact of sugar and acid on a substance similar to tooth enamel.
In Science we have been learning about the digestive system and the functions of each stage. (October 22)
Today we walked to church to remember our Queen. We prayed, lit a candle and thought deeply about the difference one person can make in the world.
Parent Information Evening 14 September 2022
Thankfulness - September 2022
We have been thinking about our value of thankfulness. Here all all the things we are thankful for:
- we can learn with our friends
- our teachers are kind and caring
- all the fun learning we do
- the resources that help us to learn
- everyone is so welcoming
- everything in Chaffinch!
- our friends look after each other
- we go on lots of trips in Chaffinch
- we get to learn new things all the time
- we can use new equipment
- there are always friends waiting to help us
- we have beautiful plants in our classroom and our gardens
- learning is fun
Autumn Term 2022 - we have had a lovely few days getting to know all our new teachers and classmates in Chaffinch. We have been reading The Planet in a Pickle Jar by Martin Stanev and have made our own jars full of all the things we'd like to preserve for our grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren. What would you preserve? .
Swimming survival skills: June 2022.
Follow this link to see photos of us in the water 💧
Check out some active photos of our learning on the RE photo page - we acted out the parable of the workers in the vineyard (May 2022). Follow this link:
Philosophy for children: the present 🎁 we all wrote questions based on the film.
Questions generated:
Should you judge people by how they look?
Why are some people mean to animals?
Can gifts make you feel better about yourself?
Do computer games make people angry?
Do pets make people happy?
Do video games make you mad?
How does playing outside help people?
Can we treat living things the same even though they have disabilities?
Can animals help people feel calm and happy?
How can animals help you?
Why do people hurt others over their looks?
Can animals help humans?
Why do we feel better when we find someone or something else the same as us?
Not Philosophical: Why did the boy hurt the dog? Does the boy not like the dog with a missing leg?
Chosen: How can animals help people? Is it fair to the animal?
The class had a really interesting debate about how animals can help people in roles such as police dogs, sniffer dogs, guide dogs, messenger dogs and pigeons in wartime, therapy pets and general pets at home. Horses can get you places and are used for enjoyment. Also, we talked about how adopting animals in the wild (tigers in India or orangutans in Borneo) can help people take care of the planet and be responsible. Should we eat animals? Some animals are bread to do a job so is it better that they are born to help people rather than never live at all. Animals can be bored if they're not doing interesting things, or if they’re not with people, so letting them use their natural talents is the kindest thing to do. All animals should just be free and not be pets but…would they starve to death then and what if they needed a vets help?
Design Technology April 2022- Viking Money Pouches
Family learning event April 2022
Viking day 2022 - we ended our learning about the viking Invasion and Anglo Saxon life with an exciting day where we cooked, built and performed to embed our learning.
Chicks and Easter symbolism. We have been thinking about the link between Easter and Passover. Eggs play an important role in both festivals. It was so special to have a visit from a chicken and her chick 🐤
Mental health champion training March 2022: we learned why mental health matters, discussed a wide vocabulary of feelings and emotions, played games to help us role play how to help others and learned strategies to help us help ourselves and the wider community. Such a valuable day and important certificate to achieve.
World book Day celebrations March 2022 included reading, acting, art, pe and fun fun fun. What a wonderful celebration of books!
A Healthy Breakfast is so important. Now we know what to make , how to make it and where it comes from. Thank you to the West Berkshire Farming and Agriculture team for leading this exciting workshop.
We are enjoying reading How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell and have been inventing our very own species of dragons. Do you like our fact files?
Merry Christmas 2021!
Advocacy Week. On our first day we found out more about what was happening with waste and why it matters. Then we each planned our own response. Here's some of what we got up to:
A special class assembly on self control today (22.11.21). ❤️
Rivers in Action
We had an active and exciting lesson on river terms today as we made our own river in the playground. We watched in amazement as all the features appeared before our eyes. It was a great way to learn terms such as confluence, tributary, delta, source, mouth and meander. We even built dams to cause flood plains.
Reflections on Remembrance Day
Lots of ideas to support reading in KS2
River Pang field trip with pond dipping, tractor rides and bug hunts. October 2021
We had several moments of awe and wonder as we harvested the seeds from our beautiful sunflowers.
Amazing focus! You could have heard a pin drop in our hot write today.
X tables are fun to learn. We used a number stick to encourage fluency in the 8 X tables
Harvest festival fun!
We enjoyed using our dictionaries and tablets to research exciting new vocabulary 😍📖
Thank you to all the children who stood for election on our School Council this week. We were impressed by your confidence, kindness and passion to make a positive difference in our school. Well done to you all! (9.9.21)
Welcome to Chaffinch Class Autumn 2021
DT - Pop Up Books with V folds, box folds, levers, flaps, doors and tabs. You're in for a treat when you see what they have produced. So much concentration.
6th July 2021 - This is the day…
We took Chaffinch class up the path to the church,
Sang a song which made the sun come out,
Made ‘rejoice’ artwork on the green,
Had a cupcake treat
Sang another song to make the sun come out,
Felt the calm and peace of the church inside,
Explored the lost gardens … and learned how wasps protect their nest🥴,
Ate our perfect picnic lunches,
Before hiking to the luscious lavender farm and back to school ….just in time to avoid the sudden downpour that had held off all morning!
… we will rejoice and be glad in it!🤗
Sports day practice...a few hurdles but then it was in the bag!
Learning to bowl in our PE lesson 30/06/21
Philosophy for Children - 21 June 2021
We had a really thoughtful morning thinking about the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert after he was Baptised and how he was tempted by the Devil. We thought really carefully, in small focus groups, and came up with several great philosophical questions before choosing one for our whole class discussion.
Our question was:
Why is temptation in the world and is temptation really the Devil or just a voice in your head.
Our discussion was fascinating and we wonder if you would like to talk about this with your friends and family at hone?
Excited About Reading.
Chaffinch have had a lovely start to the afternoon sharing their new Reading Challenge books with a reading partner. We focused on bringing the story alive with expression and asking each other questions. It was wonderful to see their obvious enthusiasm for all the books.
Celebrating Ascension Day at St James' Church
Exploring Dahl books May 2021
We worked together to explore lots of different books and express our opinions. We looked at our likes and dislikes, what was similar, what was unique and encouraged each other to try new new books.
By working together like this, we learn new vocabulary, interlink our thinking and create a new shared understanding. It's also fun. 😁
Science in action
Our Locality - 11 May 2021
Today we were 'secret geographers'. We had to read a map, navigate to our secret location, record human and physical geographical features and then report back to our class so they could guess our location.
Secret Geographer Work in Action
5th May 2021 - planning our descriptive writing of a Minpin's journey
29/04/21 a special science and art afternoon today! We looked really carefully at all the separate parts of a flower and then drew them as botanical sketches/paintings..
Contemplative walk - before the five minute walk we used these adjectives to describe the mood in the classroom: busy, exciting, loud, friendly, happy, shouty, silly and distracted. After the walk, we talked about feeling calm, focused, happy, friendly, belonging, cool and refreshed ; as well as saying we were much more able to think about our learning and some of us even talked about our brain ' feeling clear ' and 'our mental health being stronger'. This just shows the power of connecting with nature, even if only for five minutes each day.
26.04.21 We showed some great learning behaviours today as we built our toolkit to write an engaging and exciting setting in English: responsible, resilient, resourceful and reflective thinking from the whole class. I can't wait to read your settings later in the week...
1st April 2021 - class assembly all about forgiveness with a fantastic link to the Easter Story. We wish you all a joyful Eastertide.
Welcome to our Ancient Egyptian Day 30 March 2021
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We have worked hard today:
What do you think we learnt while having all this fun?
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mint, garlic and cucumber dip with flatbread
An afternoon of Egyptian fun 30.03.21
We would like to invite you to our Egyptian Museum on 30 March 2021
29.03.21 Rev. Gemma sharing her views on communion and belonging as part of our RE learning
24.3.21. Another thoughtful pupil lead assembly. The focus chosen by the group was 'compassion'. They re-enacted the story of the Good Samaritan and lead really compassionate prayers.
WC 15.03.21. Making artefacts for our virtual Ancient Egyptian museum
English WC 8.3.21
Over the next few weeks, we will be studying news paper articles in our English lessons. Starting with the features of a newspaper, we will then move on to journalist skills of questioning and note taking before studying headlines, puns and wordplay, quotes and opinions based on a news report of the short animation ' Spy Fox'. If you have a news paper at home, or access to the children's newspaper First News or BBC Newsround online, it would be great to support our class learning by reading and talking about news reports together.
Working hard to sequence our news story
Return to school 8/3/2021. What a wonderful day we have had. Maths and English this morning with art and hot chocolate this afternoon, as requested in last week's pshe lesson! Thank you to the Gan family for the lovely surprise in our garden at lunch time too. 😍 Welcome Back Chaffinch 🥰 .
