Birch

Birch Class Summer 2 Week 5 (2/07/2023 - 7/07/2023)

This week in Birch class we have had a very interesting week after the fun and games of creative week last week.

We made the most of the nice weather by spending one of our maths lessons outside measuring the heights, lengths and widths of things. In English, we continued looking at Ancient Egypt and used our abilities to determine fact from opinion to evaluate the most likely cause of Tutankhamun's death.  In music, we added more instruments to our performances of the Beatles "blackbird" and listened to their hit "Hey Jude".

We learnt why Viking invasions were so successful and why they came to Britain. Finally, Friday was really hot so we helped Kiara to celebrate her Birthday with a cake made from icecream!!!

Birch Class Summer 2 Week 3 (19/06/2023 - 23/06/2023)

This week in Birch class we have had a very interesting week, as ever. As well as going deeper with our Egyptian English book (comparing children’s lives in those days to our own) we continued learning to sing Blackbird by the Beatles but added accompaniment from glockenspiels. As well as doing our usual maths work, we had a special one off lesson where we all worked from the same blueprint to accurately measure pieces of string to make stick figures. We then compared them to each other’s, knowing that if we had followed the instructions then they would be identical. We also learnt about what babies need to survive, how their parents care for them when they are little and how they grow inside their mother's tummy. Finally, and most excitingly, most of our class took part in our first ever inter-school football match. By all accounts the children enjoyed themselves and played well and fair.

Birch Class Summer 2 Week 1 (5/06/2023 - 9/06/2023)

Birch class has had a fantastic start to the final term of the year! We started off by being archaeologists and using our excavation skills to find remains from Ancient Egypt. We also started our new History topic, looking at Vikings and begun looking at the Beatles Song "blackbird" (focusing on finding the musical pulse). We have also matched baby animals to their parents and begun to think about how babies are different to grown ups in PSHE.

What a final week of term we had in Birch Class this week! We went on a trip on a train to Waterloo where we saw a live orchestra perform "The Firebird". We also wrote a final poem about change (with similes and metaphors) and made the paper look old by coating them in coffee and tea. On the last day we were all shocked when Mr Collard's friend drove into school...in an ICECREAM VAN!

Birch Class Summer 1 Week 5 (15/05/2023 - 19/05/2023)

It has been a challenging week in Birch class (and across the school) as we did our end of year assessments for English, Maths and Reading. We worked really hard and most children were rewarded with a trip to the cafe to get a milkshake on Thursday and a film with popcorn on Friday!

Work wise, we have done the preparations we need to start writing our end of book poem in English, looked at online dangers and ways to stay safe, as well as looking at animals, plants and people that live in the Arctic areas of Northern Russia.

Most importantly, this week we celebrated Mental Health Week and in particular we had a special day on Thursday in which we all wore green clothes. This complemented classroom activities that we did all week and Miss Stone's assembly about it on Monday.

Birch Class Summer 1 Week 4 (08/05/2023 - 12/05/2023)

This week in Birch class we have had a challenging week as we were trying really hard to support the Year 6 class with their SATS exams. This meant that we had extended English lessons and shorter Maths sessions as well as late playtimes. We coped incredibly well and made the most of our lessons regardless.

We had a wonderful Science lesson learning about the different classifications of living things and went on a minibeast hunt where we found worms, beetles, spiders and lots of other fantastic creatures!

We extended our programming skills by learning some new commands and used them to get a turtle to draw Capital Letters.

Finally, we developed our RE knowledge by matching some of the world's biggest faiths to their special places and compared them to a Christian church. We also explored the pros and cons of Baptism.

Look at our amazing Party to celebrate the coronation of King Charles the 3rd.

We learnt about the Monarchy, ate a breakfast and had our photos taken being coronated.

This week we have also learnt about friendship skills, found cities, rivers and mountains in an atlas and identified parts of speech and created personification in English.

Birch Class Summer 1 Week 2 (24/4/2023 - 28/4/2023)

I am very proud of Birch class this week as we had several disturbances to our usual routine and we dealt with them very well! We started the week with an assembly about the environment and Mr Macey covered the hall in rubbish for us to learn about the 3 R's:

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle

On Wednesday we had an extra long and practical whole school assembly to learn about our new sensory scheme which led to us learning our lessons out of order and Mr Macey couldn't come to school on Thursday but the class were very hard working and considerate to the teachers who covered the class.

We started new units on programming for computing, living things for science and special places for RE.

Birch Class Summer 1 Week 1 (16/4/2023 - 21/4/2023)

We came back to class after our Easter break and it was lovely to welcome Stan into our class, who had spent time with Mrs Robinson before and was good friends with Craig already!

On Wednesday, something very strange happened. We came into the class and found an interesting word written out of sticks and leaves: "varmints". We thought this might be something to do with our next English book and used it as a prompt to form questions.

In PSHE we challenged why some people think that some jobs are for people of certain genders and we explored the roles that different adults play in our lives.

In Geography we looked at the large variety of countries in Europe and found their capital cities.

In Art we made circles and spirals out of natural objects that we found ourselves.

Birch Class Spring 2 Week 6 (27/3/23 - 31/3/2023)

This week is the final week of the Spring term and we have finished up a lot of fantastic projects! In English we made canvas designs and printed out word processed our own change poems for them. We looked at how to keep ourselves and others safe around electricity and the noble eight fold path of Buddhism. Finally, we are entering the final stages of our zones lessons and so we designed licenses and awards to celebrate our achievements.

Birch Class Spring 2 Week 4 (13/3/23 - 17/3/2023): SCIENCE WEEK

What a fantastic week full of science we have had! We have had an acoustic and a forensic workshop as well as many, many short experiments. We look forward to entering a competition by drawing our least favourite sounds and creating solutions to minimise their effects.

In class, we hosted our first "Birch Poetry Club", drank juice and invited (videos of) Amanda Gorman to perform before we read our favourite poems out! After that we designed, wrote and digitally published posters to invite people to our next poetry club.

Finally, we all celebrated red nose day. Our class prepared a drink and crisp stand, pin the nose on the teacher competition and bookmarks to sell. We then invited the rest of the school to raise money for comic relief.

Birch Class: Spring 2 2023 - Week 3 (6/3/23 to 10/3/23).

This week we caused disruption in the school! In English, we all picked something about our school that frustrates us. We then designed banners and created chants to persuade Mr Collard to change the school rules. We marched down the corridor banging our drum and chanting loudly. Mr Collard listened to us and then we saw Mr Griffiths and marched to him, too. It was very funny because the school phone rang in the middle of our protest and he had to answer it!

We also learnt about the work of Martin Luther King and we designed postcards with powerful words and colourful backgrounds against his silhouette on.

Birch Class: Spring 2 2023 - Week 2 (27/2/23 to 03/3/23).

This week we have had a very busy week in our class doing many different things. We all celebrated a fantastic book day and attended a workshop about inclusion and diversity with the charity Hope Not Hate. We were also surprised on Monday when Mr Macey's assembly was interupted by a special delivery: lots and lots of instruments were delivered from the poet Amanda Gorman who wanted to encourage us to make changes in the world. We will be learning a lot more about here in our English lessons this half term.

The children also had a great time exploring electrical toys, games and components to kick start out new science topic.

Pictures to follow shortly.

Birch Class: Spring 2 2023 - Week 1 (20/2/23 to 24/2/23).

This week we welcomed Kyle to our class! He has settled in fantastically well and worked so hard. We have had a very creative week, as you can see in our pictures below. We finished our English book (Escape from Pompeii) and look forward to what our next one will be???

We made fantastic, natural, sun catchers in art and smiley face pancakes, too.

Birch Class: Spring 1 2023 - Week 6 (06/2/23 to 09/2/23).

What a fantastic final day (and week) we have had in Birch class. We went to a Buddhist temple as part of our R.E. learning and saw magnificent statues and learnt about the Buddha's life before we tried our own meditation in stillness and silence.

When we returned to school Mr Collard had a surprise for us all: a film afternoon (in celebration of mental health week he chose Inside Out) and gave us all squash and biscuits!

I hope everyone has a wonderful half-term and we look forward to seeing you all for Spring term 2!

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Birch Class: Spring 1 2023 - Week 5 (30/1/23 to 03/2/23).

This week we have had a very busy week in Birch class. All the children have really engaged with our literacy text, "Escape from Pompeii". They especially enjoyed learning about volcanoes and then writing a report as the Senator telling people to either relax because the volcano is safe or to prepare for danger as the volcano would erupt. After we had drafted our reports we used computers to edit and publish. Look at our amazing work here:

Birch Class: Spring 1 2023 - Week 4 (23/1/23 to 27/1/23)

This week we have had a very interesting week in Birch class. We looked at the setting of our Roman themed Literacy story and imagined a similar but more luxurious town called Herculaneum. In science, we looked at 5 different solids that are often thought to be a different state because they behave in unusual ways, such as elastic bands: Can you think of any others?

In computing, we edited the audio for our podcasts and in RE we considered what a wonderful world we live in, but the ways that people still suffer in it. We also roleplayed different situations in which some people would go into the yellow zone (Zones of Regulation).

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Birch class: Spring 1 2023 Week 3 (15/1/23 to 20/1/23).

This week we have done a lot of different things in Birch class and many of them have been quite active! We have been reading our English story and so far everyone in the Roman village of Pompeii seems to be having a lovely time. We made a soundscape by using musical instruments to tell the story so far.

In art we went outside, collected natural materials and used them to create temporary pieces of outside art: I wonder if they will survive the wind and frost over the weekend?

We have explored how we can improve our day by observing and acting when we first start to go into the yellow zone instead of waiting until we get to the red zone. Finally, in history we explored the differences between the myth and reality of how Rome was founded as a city.

Birch class: Spring 1 2023 Week 2 (9/1/23 to 13/1/23).

This week in Birch class we have had a very hard working and creative week.

In English we made a volcano and erupted it with lava! In science we used balloons to explore the behaviours of solids, liquids and gasses.

Ryan has begun to partition big numbers into smaller ones in maths.

Birch class: Spring 1 2023 Week 1 (3/1/23 to 6/1/23).

It was lovely to see the children return safe and healthy after the Christmas break. We are going to start our new class text on Monday so we spent the week reviewing old SPAG lessons and setting targets for the coming term. In maths, two groups have begun looking at multiplication whilst the other has been exploring how to use maths to help a fox who wants to cook!

We have started our new topic (Roman Britain) in which we explored photographs and in art we collected natural objects to make smiley faces.

Week 6:

We have had a brilliant week in Birch and Cedar class: the highlight of the week was definitely the Christmas celebrations on Thursdays. Most of the parents and carers came into school to sing, dance, eat and be merry with us. We also had our annual Christmas tree celebration in which Miss Stone taught us the true meaning of Christmas.

Week 5 (28/2/22)

This week some amazing things happened:

-Cedar and Birch joined together to make a large class. Everyone has settled very well and are getting along as best as we can!

-We all went to the hall for assembly and were called to see the library: all sorts of snowman related things (included a melted snowman and snowy footprints) were found. We started reading our text about a snowman who comes to life!

Birch Class: Autumn 2  - Week 4

We have had a great week in our class which finished in dramatic style - we went to a circus school! We all learnt how to be like a Sloth (just like Sparky the Sloth from our English lessons). We learnt so many skills including how to climb the "Chinese Pole", some of us even balanced no-handed half way up! We then used the low and high trapeeze and managed to hang upside down.

Our class Sloth came with us and had a go, too. Sadly, we have to say goodbye to him as we are starting our Christmas book on Monday!

Birch: Autumn 2 - Week 3 

We have had a very enjoyable and hard-working week in Birch class. A few of our highlights include:

-Investigating the characters in our class text (Sparky!) and justifying our opinions with evidence.

-How to improvise with glockenspiels to a song we have been learning. Some of us could sing and play at the same time!

-Learning about tribes that live in tropical places like Brazil.

-Embracing the diversity that we enjoy in our school. In particular, we made representations of ourselves wearing brightly coloured clothes that we designed ourselves.

-Celebrating Children in Need with a live Joe Wicks class and the whole school and by doing activities based around Pudsey the Bear.

Birch: Autumn 2 -Week 2

This week, we opened the package that arrived in Birch class last week and discovered a sloth! We have written about what we know about Sloth's and then researched them ready to create an advert next week.

We have started our really exciting computing unit. We are currently learning audio recording skills so that we can make our own podcasts in a few weeks time.

Finally, we have explored some symbols that Christians associate with Jesus and looked at the stories behind them.

Birch: Autumn 2  -Week 1 

We have had a fantastic first week back in Birch class.

The week started very strangely as a very special package arrived in our class. We looked on the box to get clues about what might be inside and realised that it must be a living animal. We spent our English lessons writing questions to help us find out what type of animal it is.

In PSHE, we have learnt that all families are different but they are equally special. In geop

geography, we learnt about Inuit people and the challenges that they face living in the cold. For music, we began learning about blues music and in our zones lesson (look at the pictures below), we learnt many idioms to do with feelings and we also read scenarios and imagined how we would feel in that situation.

Autumn 1 Week  (17/10/22 - 21/10/22):

Today is the last day of term at Waterside and we have had a fantastic time in Birch class. This week alone we have been looking at rounding numbers in maths to help us to estimate and completed our work on Weslandia by making a piece of non-fiction by imagining that it is a real place and creating a brochure for it.

In RE we split the class in half and researched 2 different Jewish festivals: Purim and Passover. We then presented what we learnt to the other half of the class. It can be a bit scary presenting to an audience but we all rose to the occasion. In science we looked at creatures that live in our local environment and further away. We played a "guess who" game using these animals and then created yes or no questions to check that we knew a lot about each animal.

Finally, in computing, we learnt about the wide range of uses that the internet can be used for including many things that most people don't even think about!

I hope that everyone has a much needed and well deserved rest next week and I look forward to seeing you all safe and sound on Halloween!

Autumn 1 Week 6 (10/10/22 - 14/10/22):

This week we have had an amazing week of learning in Birch class. We started the week by making a clay model of the main character, Wesley, from our Weslandia book. We then used this in our lessons to describe characters and to help us order and retell key events from the story.

In maths we have done a really wide range of activities. Most of the class have started to work on rounding numbers to the nearest thousands, hundreds and tens. We have done this using number lines, hill diagrams and calculations. Ryan is becoming more fluent with his number work and can now independently write most of the numbers to ten.

We have also enjoyed making wind chimes in art using egg boxes, string and our stick models from a previous lesson. We have started to make a guide book to zones and continued our topic map work, focusing on the UK's largest cities. The chlidren all worked together as a class to create their dream school (complete with swimming pool, a special lift that goes left and right as well as up and down and a teacher punishment room!). Once the fun was over, we created a serious set of rules that would allow the children to feel safe, secure and able to learn.

Autumn 1 Week 5 (3/10/22 - 7/10/22):

This week Birch class have continued to work hard and develop themselves and here are some of our most interesting activities:

-Some children have been on a number hunt around the school to explore how numbers are used in the real world.

-We have created our own beautiful number lines to aid our learning and make our room look nice.

-We have been learning about Judaism and this week is Sukkot so we built a Sukkah to celebrate.

-In science we took a close look at a bee and a ladybird and learnt a technique to draw an enlarged, accurate picture of them.

-One of our children has been showing off his reading skills to other members of staff.

Autumn 1 Week 4 (26/9/22 - 30/9/22):

This week we have had a very interesting week in Birch class.

We have worked very hard as a class to create a fantastic wall display based on our Weslandia text book (complete with origami flowers, paper insects and foil leaves). We complemented this with writing using a range of conjunctions to give reasons for our opinions.

In Maths, we have tried to work more as a whole class by incorporating dice games inso our learning. Ryan also made a fantastic wall display to help him write his numbers around the write way.

We have continued our work with atlases and can identify the 4 countries that make up Great Britain along with their capital cities. We also found Waterside!

We have learnt to weave in our art lesson and made unique pieces of art using mixed media and this skill.

Autumn 1 Week 3 (19/9/22 - 23/9/22):

Following the sad passing or our queen, we had one less day at school but what a week it was!

We have worked really hard to complete all our start of year assessments including English, Maths and Reading. Despite this we have continued to work on place value in Maths and many of us are now comfortably working with thousands (and beyond)!

In English we have been working on using word classes to analyse and improve our writing as well as reading our Weslandia class text and using ideas in it to start making a fantastic wall display.

In PSHE, Mr Macey used famous scenes from animated films and asked us to imagine how the characters felt: what zone would you be in if you were a small fish surrounded by sharks or Charlie Brown stuck inside on a rainy day?

In science, we have used classification keys to find the names of exotic animals (check us out on the school twitter page!).

Autumn 1 Week 2 (12/9/22 - 16/9/22):

This week in Birch class we have all worked very hard in difficult circumstances. We were sad to hear of the passing of Queen Elizabeth 2nd, but we were also determined to honour her memory by carrying on as best as we could and remembering the happy times. 

We have made further progress in our English exploration of shelters and have learnt to use complicated conjunctions to improve our sentences and explain our thoughts. We have predicted things that we think will happen in our class text Ryan is working really hard on his phonics skills and I am positive it won't be too long until he is reading.

In maths, some of us are working on grouping, counting and sorting objects whilst others are practicing using manipulatives (such as number coins and base 10) to count increasingly large numbers.

We had a fantastic art lesson this week in which we found natural objects such as sticks and decorated them with finely wrapped wool. We have looked at our individual achievements from the past that we are proud of in PSHE and to make a class charter to help us cooperate in class and around the school. Finally, we began to use atlases to find places and label them on maps.

Autumn 1 Week 1 (5/9/22 - 9/9/22):

We have had a fantastic first week in Birch class. We started our English lessons doing a range of activities to get to know each other. We then started to work on shelters, making different models for different toys using different models. We then started to write sentences focusing on nouns and adjectives.

In science we have started to group animals by their features and qualities and we have spoken and practiced copying emotions using mirrors in our zones lessons. Finally, in computing, we used skipping ropes and everyday classroom objects to make a model of the internet focusing on the physical components.