It was an absolute pleasure to be a part of Pre-School as they continued to explore their ‘Marvellous Me’ topic, focusing on their homes and families. The children shared some lovely photos and stories with each other, which has helped to build their relationships. Our Pre-Schoolers have also developed their creative skills by recreating their houses out of recycled materials and drawing some fabulous family portraits!
Reception children have been using the story of Elmer as a stimulus and have been retelling and sequencing the story in a written format with story maps. They have also been developing their computing skills as they practised with the mouse to make their own rainbow elephants for Elmer day!
Year 1 Geographers have studied maps of the United Kingdom, using geographical vocabulary to compare and contrast the four countries within the UK. It raised a lot of discussion and interesting questions.
In Year 2, learning has been based around The Great Fire of London and looking into what London used to look like in the past. Pupils have been using fantastic descriptive vocabulary to describe city scenes from the past and present which has raised lots of thought provoking discussions about what famous buildings from old London and modern day London.
As the days become cooler the children have been learning how to stay safe in the log circle during their explorations in Forest School. They learnt to avoid walking inside the circle by calling the word "elephant" to anyone who had forgotten, encouraging them to walk around the outside. Everyone sat on the logs discussing the three elements needed to make fire and then quietly observed its colours and listened as it crackled and snapped.
It was an absolute pleasure to share in so many of the children’s achievements this week in our Pre Prep assembly! Commendations, Golden Moments and birthday celebrations galore! I am also delighted to report that House points keep flooding in, each one eagerly earned and noted by the responsible Year 2 captains.
Year 3 - The Year 3 children travelled back in time this week as they went on a journey back to the Stone Age. Year 3 visited ‘Celtic Harmony’ where they enjoyed taking part in a wide range of prehistoric activities such as moulding spears, creating clay beakers, witling sticks and grinding wheat to make flour for bread. Well done to all Year 3 pupils for showing what great manners Edge Grove pupils have.
This week the children had great fun in science lessons drawing all of the organs inside the body on an apron. Year 3 demonstrated that they had a good understanding of where all our internal organs can be found and their various functions.
In maths lessons the children were using their understanding of place value to solve addition equations. Pupils were asked to add 10 and 100 from any given number and to use their knowledge of partitioning to add 2 digit numbers together. In English this week the pupils were learning how to wash a woolly mammoth. Top tips: Don’t get any soap in his eyes and tempt him into the bath with cake! Year 3 used the story of ‘How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth’ to inspire their own set of instructions. They even included fronted adverbials and imperative verbs to their sentences. The children were impressing their languages teachers this week as they continued to learn basic Spanish vocabulary and introductions in French. The excitement grew on Thursday when the whole of Year 3 were taken on their first away match for football and hockey. Well done to all pupils involved! Year 4 - In the topic the children have been busy making persuasive posters encouraging the roman people to join the roman army. The children have enjoyed this as they have been utilising their creativity and newfound persuasive writing techniques to make a compelling range of posters.
The children have been exploring the effects of air resistance through an investigation using paper aeroplanes. We have thought hard about the independent, dependent and controlled variables within the experiment they are designing.
In maths the children have delved deeper into the topic of place value, comparing and ordering numbers and solving reasoning problems to encourage deeper thinking. In English we have been analysing newspaper headlines in preparation for writing our own newspaper reports later in the term. Our grammar focus this week has been paragraphs whereby the children have been grouping related information together to further deepen their understanding.
Year 5 & 6 - Year 5 and 6 this week took part in the first whole school assembly with our new grand piano which is situated in the Apthorp Hall. It sounded beautiful hearing the pupils singing voices accompanying such a marvellous instrument.
A big thank you to all pupils who came into school on Saturday to help support our open morning, they all acted with maturity and were great ambassadors for the school. I hope they enjoyed taking part in the different activities around the school. In science this week year 5 have been exploring the pathway of the blood through the heart. They have made models of the heart to help them with this explanation. You can see a photograph of the model made by Dotty below.
In maths, Year 6 have been playing snap to strengthen their mental maths ability!
Thank you to all our Year 7 and 8 pupils who helped out at Open Morning on Saturday. They all did a fantastic job and spoke very proudly of their school. The parents were very impressed! Well done to Caitlin in Year 8 who finished 2nd in the Hertfordshire U13 squash tournament at the weekend. A fantastic achievement!
It has been a very busy and successful two weeks of sport with the boys and girls showing great enthusiasm on the sports field. Well done to our Year 3's who took part in their first ever school football and hockey fixtures last week. You can view all the match reports here.
We had some excellent news over the weekend with Cailtin in Year 8 finishing second in the Hertfordshire U13 squash tournament and Ellie in Year 6 finishing 4th!! Well done to both girls on a fabulous achievement.
Art - The art department has been a hive of activity over the past few weeks with the following art projects underway:
Year 3 Everyday objects - wearable fashion Year 4 Chocolate bars - edible project Year 5 Sports drawings - sports and art mark making interactive art project Year 6 Under the Sea - collage and animation project Year 7 Surrealism - imaginative painting project Year 8 Portraits - realism pencil drawing project We have ben so impressed with the quality of work and we can't wait to see even more fantastic work being brought to life.
Music - A joyous start to last Wednesday morning for all who attended the first Rush Hour concert of this academic year. All pupils performed superbly and it was fantastic to see them taking ownership of their presentation skills which they learnt last year in class. They did an excellent job of introducing their piece to the audience and bowing afterwards. This musical start to the day always lifts everybody's spirits for a very happy Wednesday! Well done to all involved. We look forward to the next one already.
We hope parents are getting some lovely performances at home as Year 3 & 4 pupils have been told the importance of practising their songs outside of music lessons. Music and lyrics have been posted on Google Classrooms to aid practise at home for the upcoming Harvest Festival.
Songs: Year 3 & 4 - Thank you for almost everything Pre Prep - Glory Hallelujah Matilda songs have also been posted onto the Matilda Google Classroom
We look forward to Bah Humbug and Matilda auditions resuming next week before casts are announced before half term.
Other than preparation for upcoming assemblies and productions, Year 5 & 6 pupils have been busy in class honing their rhythm and pulse skills. Pupils in Year 5 have been exploring cyclic patterns on the djembe and Year 6 have been having rhythmic conversations and exploring 2-part rhythms through reading musical notation and keeping in time with the pulse.
DT - During Open Morning on Saturday, pupils were set a task to design and make their own phone holders and the results were very impressive! Well done all.
On Friday 30th September, Mrs Angelina Draper came to Edge Grove School to visit the School Journalists’ Club. She is a journalist herself with many years of experience and came to talk to members about how to be a better journalist.
She has written for many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, The Diplomat, Time Out and more. For three year whole years, Mrs Draper wrote a column for parents on apps for children!
We thank her for her visit to the school and appreciate her time and consideration for young writers at Edge Grove School.
