Friday saw our Arts Fortnight come to a close. It has been such a privilege to work with the children and see their creativity blossom. Together they produced so much artwork it was difficult to display it all in the Art studio. They should all be very proud of their final performance and how it all came together. Here is just a tiny snapshot of all the work they put in!

3V have had some amazing events in the last couple of weeks…

We had another session of Routes and Roots where the children were sketching their surroundings, taking photos and taking part in dances. And the weather was extremely kind to us.

We have also been looking at Lent as preparation for Easter. We began by taking part in Pancake races on Shrove Tuesday.

This week we begin our Arts fortnight and we look forward to sharing with you all the amazing things we create.

3V experienced their second session of their routes and roots collaboration this week. The children all took a trek down to Adel woods to meet the artists. They began by exploring the woods and choosing their favourite tree. After sketching the tree they then used forest items, such as leaves, pebbles and pine cones to create artwork on the floor of the woods. Just like Andy Goldworthy! After this the children ventured deeper into the woods where they encountered a beatboxer. Under his guidance the children created music using the sounds of the woods as inspiration and really impressed with their own beatboxing skills. The children really enjoyed these activities and were using their new singing skills to entertain the public on our walk back to school.

So this week saw the start of our art collaboration with the Balbir Singh Dance Company. There are lots of exciting things planned but we kicked things of with a session on movement and a session on observational drawing. The children really threw themselves into it and created some amazing human sculptures representing Ivan’s journey through the woods towards the Ice Palace. It really captured the class’s imagination and are now eagerly awaiting the next session.

What a week to start back! The children have shown huge amounts of resilience this week dealing with the snow and ice. They have all come back with huge amounts of enthusiasm which is lovely to see.

We are starting lots of new topics now that we have moved into the Spring term. In Geography we are going to be exploring continents and countries and comparing the UK with Iceland. In Science we are looking at Light. This week we have been sorting and categorising light sources and we will be experimenting with the properties of light over the coming weeks. We are focussing on drawing skills in Art, looking at shading and 3D drawing and will be eventually sketching an Artic creature. In writing, we are creating information texts around artic animals and are learning how to create an effective Non-Fiction text using organisational features. In Maths, we are moving on to formal methods of multiplication using the column method.

So, it is a busy term filled with lots of exciting learning opportunities that I’m looking forward to experiencing with the class.

3V had a really special trip to Murton Park this week. They donned their tunics, tied their rope belts and got stuck into some authentic stone/bronze age activities. 3V went hunting for wild boar, ground out wheat just using stones, created beaker pots from clay and completed cave paintings before all cosying around a fire in the roundhouse for a murder mystery story. They behaved impeccably and demonstrated how knowledgeable they were about the topic. They were a credit to the school and made Mr Verney a very proud teacher by the end of the day.

We have had quite an eventful week this week in 3V! We started of the week with our remembrance service, which gave us time for reflection and to honour those that have given their lives to keep us safe.

Then, as it is was Anti bullying week, 3V donned their glasses and baseball caps to take part in a Rap Off against other classes in the school. They did a fantastic job with a very tricky song and really looked the part. On Tuesday the children were then showing off their odd socks to demonstrate that it is good to be different!

I would like to particularly highlight how hard 3V have been working in Maths this week. 3V have been using column addition and subtraction involving exchanges between the tens and hundreds column. They have shown amazing resilience and perseverance with what can be a tricky skill to master.

This week we have been spending time looking at the life of stone age people. We have been finding out about the changes that took place as the world moved from the Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic and, eventually, to the Neolithic. We have imagined what life was like in a tribe and compared the hunter-gather life to that of a farmer.

The children even had a go at threshing wheat to see just how hard a farmers life would have been.

We have ben exploring our story this week and have been creating an exciting story beginning with a cliff-hanger ending! We have started to plan our shared write and the children have been coming up with amazing ideas that we are now ready to develop.

We have been working as Scientists this week and have been analysing and categorising different types of rocks. We discovered that there are many types such as Quartz, Slate and Pyrite. We made careful observations and recorded the various similarities and differences.

We even inferred the reasons why Pyrite is referred to as Fool’s Gold….