Palm Class – A Musical Journey.
Palm Class have been working hard this term learning all about different types of music from opera to body percussion. They have been thinking about different instruments and how alternative pieces types of music make them feel.
Today they finished journaling all their work and worked hard to create their own journey through their SOLE book to showcase their learning.
This afternoon, year 3 began their new topic of Rocks, Relics and Rumbles. We became geologists as we studied a range of rocks to find out if they were metamorphic, sedimentary or igneous. We first used our excellent observations skills on the rock’s appearance, then we used wire to investigate if the rock was hard or soft. Finally, we used pipettes to drop water to test if the rock was permeable or impermeable. All of these tests led us to discovery the rock type. We had a lot of fun and we’re excited to learn more about our topic.
Year 3 have become news reporters this week as we interviewed historians about wealth and power in the Bronze Age. We had a few technical difficulties, but after showing resilience we have produced a piece of work we are proud of. We hope you enjoy our news reports!
Presenters: Sophie and Melody
Camera crew: Maddie
Presenters: Lennie and Theo
Camera crew: Attya
Presenters: Poppy and Max
Camera crew: Miss Halloway
https://vimeo.com/509899512/a04a75ad1e
Presenters: Maddie and Harlee
Camera crew: Miss Halloway
https://vimeo.com/509900236/c9ef02e111
Presenters: Ella and Gracie-Mae
Camera crew: Dolly
Presenters: Eddie and Jack
Camera crew: Oliver and Harlee
Presenters: Harry and Max
Camera crew: Miss Halloway
Ash and Beech have been working incredibly hard this week. In phonics, we have been recapping some very important trigraphs. We have also been extending our learning by putting our words into context and using them in sentences. In maths, we have been continuing with our learning about number 8 and have even challenged ourselves to look at number 18 and how it is made from a ten and 8 ones. In literacy, we have been continuing our learning about ‘Dear Zoo’ and even made our own story books, they looked amazing! We have also been having lots of fun learning all about our Cornerstones topic ‘Starry Night’.
We have also been thinking about keeping our minds healthy for Children’s Mental Health Week. We thought about ways to support our friends and discussed the importance of talking about how we are feeling. We all made sure that we took 15 mins on ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ to look after ourselves. Here is a fantastic example of one of our wellbeing activities:
Foundation have worked particularly hard at using their ‘metacognition minds’ this week. We learnt all about the metacognition cycle and how we can plan, monitor and evaluate our learning. Ash and Beech worked so hard and planned their response to a maths activity. They explained what resource they would use and why it would be useful, they then monitored their progress and evaluated how well it worked! We even ensured we used our oracy skills to communicate our answers effectively! WOW, Foundation, you really do have magnificent metacognition minds!
We are so proud of you all! 🙂
Take a look at our amazing learning below:
This week in our learning journey, we have been looking at what our hopes and dreams might be for the future and how we think the world might change. Have a look at Max’s video below and Isabella’s ideas for the future.
The future. 2100.
In the future they may develop flying cars. Like our cars but without wheels. They would have things like on a monorail and use magnets so they can float. They would be solar powered and electric.
It might even have robots to look after people that are contagious from diseases that would be pretty cool. I think they will have special body scanners that can tell you if you’re poorly and make you better. If they can’t I think robots will be able to independently do operations. I know we have medical robots now but they can’t do this.
You will be able to ask Alexa to do things like cook you meals with a built-in oven, Alexa could throw balls for your dog. Alexa would be able to help with all the day to day chores.
Paper printers could print 3D images, sugar paper for baking, and normal paper print.
Things would be a lot more expensive. My mum said sweets when she was younger were 1p that are now 5p. A loaf of bread was 33p and now averages at £1.10. A pint of milk was 17p and now is 54p on average in the 1980’s.
Tv wouldn’t look like it does now. It would be 3D without needing to wear glasses.
In the future I think a loaf of bread would be much more expensive along with everything else. Imagine £15 for a loaf of bread!
At the airport they could have planes that flew themselves completely. Not just auto pilot.
A charger for your electronics, mega powered and would charge your phone, laptop etc within a minute. A multi charger.
Everything is recyclable in the future. Renewable energy is used in all homes. No animals are endangered as they have special equipment to keep them healthy and to support development.
But really I don’t know what will happen in the future, I just hope the word will be more green . I just want the world to be a better place for everyone and everything.
We have creative in all the different ways we can participate in remote learning and today we practised our French numbers with a quick game of Kahoot!
We are also working on writing our opening of The BFG. We have been focusing on being resourceful and using all of our knowledge from our notes on previous lessons and linking this to ‘The Forgetting Curve’. Have a read of this fantastic opening below:
BFG
In the middle of the witching hour, a towering Oak tree was home to a screeching owl. With a flap of its wings it took off from the branch, flailing wildly to escape the shadow that moved stealthily towards the town.
Whirling on the air currents, the owl proceeded to the town, coming to rest on the roof of Mrs Conker’s Home for Girls. In the dormitory below, Sophie rose cautiously from her cold creaky bed, put on her spectacles and looked through the frosted paines of the window. From her lookout she spied the snowy white owl perched on the roof.
Sophie got out of bed, slipping on her trainers, and began to creep across the room trying to avoid the creaky floorboards. Suddenly, lights in the corridor outside the door to the dormitory flicked on and the disembodied voice of Mrs Conker pierced through the room “Who’s that out of bed?!”
Sophie timidly replied “Sophie miss.”
Mrs Conker bellowed back “Get back to bed and we will continue this in the morning!”
The red haired orphan looked back at the old faded door and decided Mrs Conker had left. She began to creep back towards the window. Looking out into the street below, she noticed how the buildings looked crooked and foreboding in the shadowy light. Just as she was about to close the curtains a clap and flash of thunder and lightning rolled through the town casting a silvery glow which illuminated a tall, hooded figure!
We also spent some time interviewing members of our family or friends, discussing how they felt about retirement.
Sole- retirement
For this I interviewed my grampi who is retired over facetime.
Wed.3.feb
When did you retire? – 1997
What did you do before you retired? – My grampi used to run his own company.
Do you like being in retirement ? – I love being in retirement but I don’t like being old .
Why do people retire? – they might be unfit to work , or they could reach an age where they want to do something other than work.
Would you have retired earlier/ later? – No.
What benefits is there to retirement? – you can do what you want when you want more or less.
Is there anything you don’t like about retirement? – yes, it feels like you get older quicker.
Do you have any worries now you’re retired? – no , not apart from trying to keep healthy.
Keep up the great work Year 5!
Well, that’s another week of impeccable learning coming to an end!! Year 5, you must be exhausted; you have all worked so incredibly hard and been so resilient with your learning.
We’ve seen some amazing writing – some of your best yet, we might add (we’re not going to let a Lockdown get in the way of our Super North Star!) We have been so proud seeing your love of learning grow and grow, despite these difficult times, but year 5 you have risen to the challenge …… and excelled!!
Have a look at some of the incredible things we have completed this week:
Year 3 have been exploring how humans in the Neolithic area created cave art. We learnt that they used animal hair, sticks and their fingers as paint brushes. They also crushed up bones, rocks, wood and charcoal into powders before mixing them with animal fat and water to create paint. We created our own cave art painting using mud and charcoal mixed with water. We were resourceful using sticks, pine needles and stones as our tools!
The children who have been in school this week have become archeologists! We discussed what archeology is and what an archeologist is before walking down to our diggin area. We were on the lookout for anything that might have told us about what life could have been like in the Stone age. We were very careful using spades to dig out the objects before cleaning them with our brushes. We found some items that were old and some items that were made more recently. We had a lot of fun!
Today in French, Cherry explored how France celebrated Christmas. We found it interesting that a yule log in France is a special log that is put on the fire so if Mary and baby Jesus needed a place to stay there would be somewhere warm for them. We also found out that in some areas of France it is a tradition to have 13 desserts as part of their Christmas meal.
After learning about France and their traditions, we began using our knowledge of French to create Christmas pictures. We use our French numbers, colours and shapes to help us. If we were unsure what a French word meant, we used our learning value resourcefulness to figure it out by using books and bilingual dictionaries.
Today, Cherry class became engineers and built their go karts! First, we had to think about the purpose of our karts and how they would work. Once we had gathered up all of our materials it was time to start building! Two at a time, we cut wooden dowel to the length of our boxes so we could attach wheels. If we weren’t cutting our dowel, we were decorating our karts and letting our imaginations flow. We can’t wait to test these out in our next science experiment!
Today, Cherry had a lot of fun crafting and creating. In the morning, we designed and created spinning tops. We discussed the best ways to create our spinning tops and whether the disc would work better at the bottom or the top of the cocktail stick. After experimenting with different designs, we soon discovered that a shorter cocktail stick with the disc close to the bottom worked the best.
In the afternoon, we creating christmas decorations out of wire. We learnt that using different forces we could bend and twist the wire into different shapes.
Finally, Mrs Jeffery kindly brought in an embossing machine which allowed us to stamp different patterns into paper. We thought it was a lot of fun and it is something we would like to do again in the future.
This week in Apple class, we have been learning about many significant people from the past. We have been learning about Rosa Parks especially and her stand against racism. We were very surprised to learn that in the past, racial inequality existed and stopped certain individuals from living as they do now. We have acted out a scene of Rosa Parks’ protest on a bus and discussed why this was an important part of History! 
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Today in Year 3, we used force metres to measure the magnetic forces of our magnets. We recorded our results into a table to help us remember which magnets were the strongest and which magnets were the weakest. I wonder if you were surprised by how strong magnets can be?
In year 3, we have been exploring magnets through magnetic testing. We used the different types of magnets to investigate lots of different magnetic materials. I wonder if you can find any other magnetic materials at home?
This week, we started our new topic- Mighty Metals! To introduce our topic, we investigated what forces were needed to make different apparatus on the fit trail move. We discussed that our legs were doing most of the hard work pushing and pulling to make the fit trail move. We even found a piece of equipment that required us to twist! What objects around your house need a force to move? Can you identify which force it is?
As part of our revist to Land Ahoy, we have been designing pirate flags. We learnt about what different symbols represent on flags before having a go ourselves. We first drew a draft of our flags on plain paper before block printing them! We had a lot of fun, perhaps you can have a go at home. If you would like to try block printing at home, there is a video on the school blog.
This afternoon, Cherry have been working in small groups to research and create a poster about oceans. They have had to use many of our learning values including collaboration, relationships and resourcefulness. We learnt about where our ocean can be found, what creatures live there, what the climate is like and we found out three interesting facts we would like to share with our peers. Later in the week, we will finish our posters and then present what we found to the rest of the class!
This afternoon, Cherry class were learning about continents. We have been learning about them all week but today had to match the correct continent picture to the correct word. We were able to look at the different continents and spot different shapes that made that continent up. It was quite a challenging task because we had to make sure the pictures were the correct way for us to make a guess but we were resilient until we matched the cards up correctly. We had a lot of fun and we are enjoying learning about the world!
Palm class have worked super hard to day writing reflections about their leanring journey ‘Wriggle and Crawl’. With the leanring journey coming to an end it was important for them to reflect upon what they have learnt and what learning values they have used during this half term. When they finished they carefully created ‘journeys of mini-beasts’ through their SOLE book.
Year 5 have been time travelling this week. Before they could jump into a different time period, they needed a machine to help them get there. Year 5 have been very resourceful using whatever they could find around school and home.
Ruby:
Isaac would travel to the future:
Lottie:
Anya couldn’t wait to start travelling:
Lucas:
When Lucas turned his time machine on, he travelled far into the future. What year is it Lucas?
Kubus, Phoebe and Evelyn worked collaboratively to create their time machine in school. They travelled through time and decided to make a meal before exploring:
It can be hard work travelling through time, so it was time to enjoy a meal around their fire:
They even have a translation box to understand any language:
Where would you time travel to?
Some great Maths and SOLE learning here! We love seeing how our planning is transferred into learning at home. You are all doing so well, keep up the good work and keep sending us photos. Even if it’s not based around your learning, it might be some cool lego model or picture you have made, we would love to see what you are up to!
Bonsai have been very busy this week with all sorts of activities! It has been great to see so many of Bonsai really getting involved in their learning and other activities.
Here is Harry and his wonderful assistant Anna explaining how gravity works.
Click on the link to listen!
Thank you to each and every one of you who have sent in videos explaining gravity. You were all very creative using different props from around your house and a huge thank you to all the family members (including dogs) who got involved!
In addition to this, Harry has recreated the moon phases from Oreos, don’t they look amazing!
Harry has also been busy writing the first verse of his poem.
Brilliant use of personification Harry!
If you want to read more poetry from year 5, there are more examples of the pupils’ poetry work on a previous blog post.
Anya has been busy creating top trump cards about the planets and has even had a go a little bit of painting.
Evie has been busy researching about craters and how they are created.
Ruby has been busying doing the bunny hop challenge as her PE. If you want to have a go, have a look in the PE folder.
She has also built her own reading den!
Seth has created his own circuit that can tell you when a door is open or closed!
Lucas has been very creative with his SOLE work and created these wonderful posters about craters and Sir Isaac Newton.
It has been wonderful to see all the activities you’ve been doing and I can’t wait to see what you get up to next week!
Here are some of the activities that some of our children have been up to so far this week.
Our maths learning was based around measuring and it’s lovely to see lots of you getting hands on.
In SOLE our science activity looked at sinking ships and making predictions.
I have also enjoyed looking at the Literacy Role play videos and photos. It is lovely to see you enjoying your time with your family whilst also taking an important step with your learning.
Lots of pictures have been sent in of all the wonderful home learning Bonsai have been doing. It is also great to see so many of you taking your learning outdoors to enjoy some sunshine!
Bibi has been busy creating colourful drawings on her front path and the pavements to bring smiles of those out on their daily walks.
Mia, Jess, Ruby and Lucas have been very resourceful this week by using different objects found around their homes to recreate the planets in our solar system!
Jess has also been busy helping around the house by making cups of tea and planting sunflowers with her sister. Jess did also find some time for a bit of PE on the trampoline.
On top of all this, Bonsai have been busy learning all about space and our solar system.
Maisie created a fantastic timeline in Google Docs of the pioneering Galileo Galilei, whose ideas where very controversial at the time.
Another pupil has been busy researching about our solar system and created this wonderful fact file.
Lucas has been very creative with his sole work about space by including glow in the dark stars, so you can even read his work at night.
Keep sharing and sending in your pictures of all the brilliant work and activities you’re doing at home!
Some of our home learning has been based around boats. We asked you to have a look at images of boats to find what they are made from and then test some of these material so see why they would be useful to make a boat.
We have enjoyed looking at the activities you have all been up to and the wonderful effort everyone is putting in. There have been its of creative ways of learning being demonstrated.
Here are some of the images and learning that you have sent in for your material investigations.
Over the past week, Bonsai have been sharing their work; it has been wonderful to see all the amazing learning that has been taking place at home. Please feel free to share any pictures of your work or any other activities that you’ve been doing whilst at home.
Jess has drawn a beautiful picture of one of her characters for her myth. She looks very powerful the picture is beautifully coloured in!
Additionally, Jess has draw a picture of Egyptian head piece worn by Nemes as part of her SOLE.
Evie has created a informative Powerpoint all about our solar system as part of our new topic; stargazers.
Finally, Maisie has been busy writing an Egyptian myth. She has used many synonyms and up-levelled her vocabulary to make her writing more interesting!
Under the unbearable Spanish heat, lived a magnificent and powerful queen. She was well loved by all her people , she brought life back to her kingdom after the previous rulers got overthrown by a new dynasty. Queen Esperanzo was well loved and admired by all except one, Esperanzo’s older brother Encanto. He lurks in the dark sinister shadows of his younger sister who owns the celebrated title of Queen. Even though Encanto is older by 5 years he is not King because he was not the first sibling in the royal family to get married. If his 14 year old sister Princess Belenza had married first she could have been Queen before him too. The young beautiful Princess Belenza despised her evil ,sinister brother and always knew he hated their raven haired affectionate sister /queen and always knew that he was planning an evil deed in his mind , and he what an evil deed it was going to be.
Well done to all of you who have shared your work. I would love to see what you’ve been up to! If you would like a chance for your work to uploaded to the blog, keep sending in your work. If you have been doing work in your book, take a picture of what you’ve done and send it in.
I would also love to see any work/activities you have completed from the additional activities folder.
This afternoon year 6 started the topic Tomorrow’s World. Over the next three weeks, everyone will get a chance to use the virtual realtity headset. We have also started to experiment with using circuits, learnt how simple circuits work and what happens when the output is changed.
We have already created fire artwork using oil pastels and today we used a different medium, paper. We put the scissors to one side and ripped red, yellow and orange paper into different sized strips before layering them to get the effect of flames. Some children used a pencil to curl the strips of paper.
We have been learning about the events of The Great Fire in 1666 and know that the diary of Samuel Pepys provided lots of information. If you follow the link below, you can learn more about the events and play a few Fire of London games along the way.
We have been using oil pastels today to create a fiery background. Some of us drew swirls, some lines, some chose triangular shapes to create flames. We then blended the colours together using our fingers. It was messy work, but a lot of fun.
We looked at a variety of pieces of art depicting flames to get ideas. We also cut out silhouettes of buildings which we will stick to our backgrounds. We worked really hard to carefully cut out the buildings.
We are looking forward to building model houses soon in preparation for our Celebration event.
We were very lucky today to have a visitor come and see us. Mr Wade spoke to us about renting an allotment, the types of vegetables you can grow and the history of the allotment. Did you know, allotments first came around in the 16th century? Our favourite story involved some naughty sweetcorn-loving badgers!
We are very excited to see what else we will learn in our new topic.
This week we have started our new topic in year 5; Allotment. Today, we were researching where different regions of the UK are located and the types of farming they are responsible for. We are very excited to start our new topic and finding out where our food comes from!
Today in the Nurture Room we introduced the topic ‘Romans’.
The pupils were fully engaged and enjoyed finding out about the Romans. The pupils were also keen to find out more …. What will we find out next time?
Monkey Puzzle had great fun this afternoon becoming rap artists. They were creating raps and backing tracks on garage band making sure their lyrics would be good enough for the gate keeper to let them into Dragon Vine Towers on Alchemy Island. They tried really hard to create a variety of beats and the results were great!!!
Bonsai have been exploring Alchemy Island. We have been creating our own islands and putting our map reading skills to the test! What would you find on the Alchemist’s island?
This afternoon Monkey Puzzle have been busy creating their own islands, using co-ordinates to find their way through Alchemy Island and writing detailed descriptions of their journey. A lot of the children have really thrown themselves into their new learning journey and have created excellent mystical islands full of imaginative creations.
This week Bonsai class have been busy journaling their topic work ‘Off With Her Head’ into their SOLE books. We have really enjoyed learning about the Tudors.
Year 5 had an interesting afternoon looking at grand Tudor houses and finding the area of the rectangles they could find within the house. Some children really challenged themselves to estimate the irregular shape areas as well.
Today Year 3 said goodbye to the butterflies we have been looking after for the past four weeks. When they arrived they were caterpillars, just 8mm long. We fed them and watched them grow until they were ready to become cocoons. In total, five of our cocoons hatched and today we released our five Painted Lady butterflies beside the Butterfly Bush on the school field.
Year 3 have had a fantastic time on the farm today, learning all about where their food comes from and what goes in to making it grow. We met cows, pigs and sheep and had a good look at all the produce grown there. Thank you to West Town Farm for making us feel so welcomed and to all the parents with came with us.
Year 3 have had an exciting afternoon planting their runner bean plants into big pots – ready to grow tall and strong! They are in pots outside Cherry Class and we hope that they will get plenty of sunshine and some rain over the half term holiday. When we took them out of the seed trays we could see the roots curled like string around the soil and the seed which had split in half to allow the roots and stem to emerge.
It was lovely today to stand back and see the range of activities happening in our S.O.L.E. sessions. One one classroom we had children: using Google Maps to explore local and national locations, creating a perfect plate of Chinese food (in their opinion) and using pop up cards to reflect on Chinese new year.
In the other classroom the children were busy learning a range of french vocabulary as well as researching what different Hindu symbols meant.
Another fabulous day at Hazeldown Primary School!
As a part of our ‘China’ Learning Journey, Year 4 have been learning how to use Garage Band. This app is a great way to make music. Using a variety of instruments you can create a great sounding track. In our first session we experimented with the different instruments and had a go at making our own track.
Later on we will be using our skills to try and make a piece of music with a Chinese theme.
In S.O.L.E we have been learning how to use the app Garage Band. This is a music making app that enables you to record tracks from a variety of electronic musical instruments.
These tracks can then be combined into a music track.
We are just starting to use this app so please check back soon and see if we have made sweet music!
Today Redwood Class was invaded by a rowdy group of Vikings!
This week Team 2 have had lots of fun collaborating to design and make their Lego Dragons. 
In team 2 we have been making Viking jewellery! Year 3 even had some help from some year 4 SOLE superstars who gave us tutorials on what to do.
We have applied our previous learning of instruction writing to write instructions of what YOU need to do to make some beautiful Viking jewellery at home!
Cherry Class were very excited this afternoon when Mrs Hard delivered a parcel for them! When they opened it they found a Bear and a letter! They are really excited about getting to know their new arrival!!
Today, in Oak Class, we have been finding out the French translation for what we want to be when we grow up. Can you guess what we want to be? Capitalise d’un navire, chanteur, gymnaste, agriculteur. 
Year 2 have enjoyed using their pebbles today to make their very own minibeasts. We now have an amazing selection of ladybirds, bumble bees, big, scary spiders and beautiful butterflies.
Well done Year 2 for being soooo creative!
Miss Floris
Palm class created their very own dinosaur timeline, whilst looking at the different dinosaur eras in time. We found out that the Stegosaurs was alive in the Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago and that the Ichthyosaurs lived during the Mesozoic era.
