We discussed the importance of rules and came up with our own Roses Class Rules to help us be Courageous,  Compassionate. We have all signed to show we agree with our class rules.  : )

In our MoE drama we have been working as a team of archaeologists who have discovered an  cave with amazing Stone Age cave paintings and other Stone Age artefacts. We have been commissioned by the National History Museum to create a museum exhibit about life in the Stone Age to Iron Age. 
We have researched the role of an archaeologist in finding out about the past, and begun to find out about the key events and periods of the Stone Age to Iron Age 

We have been having fun using sock puppets learning to meet and greet people in French. We have visited the key Paris landmarks with our puppets and learned a French rhyme . Bravo Roses!  Tres bien!!  

The Roses Class had a fantastic start to term learning about the English Rose and growing their Growth Mindset. Morda Roses Grow on You and Grow in their learning every day : ) 

Dear Lovely Roses Parents/ Guardians,
 
Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely summer break.
 
We are now the new ‘Roses class’ and we are a class full of English Roses!
 
Mrs Chapman is going to teach all day on a Monday and a Tuesday and on a Wednesday morning.  Mrs O’Grady is going to teach on a Wednesday afternoon and all day on a Thursday and a Friday. 
 
Unusually, this term starts on a Friday. For the first day back, we will be finding out about the significance of the English Rose.  We will also be doing lots of Growth Mindset work preparing us to have the best attitude for learning this year, so that we can deal with any thorns along the way and bloom with splendour throughout the year! 
History
For our history Mantle this half term we will become a team of anthropologists and archaeologists. In our dramatic fiction our team finds a stone age cave painting in a Welsh cave (Note – no cave paintings have as yet been found in the UK), later a burial site is also discovered. Our team are commissioned to uncover the story of the people who made these images and left these remains and create a museum exhibit showing their story.
Stepping back into prehistory we will become a tribe of cave dwelling hunter-gatherers, then follow the progress of mankind through the development of agriculture and the technological achievements of the bronze and iron-age. We will retell the story of the doomed ‘Doggerland’ people, who lived in the stretch of land that once joined the UK.  We can guarantee some exciting dramatic events along the way as we find out all and find out what happened to this now submerged land.
In literacy, we will cover a range of fiction and non-fiction reading and writing genres which will be inspired by our Mantle of the Expert commission and our class novel, “Stig of the Dump” by Clive King. Stig is a classic children’s novel about a boy called Barney, who falls through the ground at a nearby chalk pit only to discover a strange boy who wears a rabbit skin and speaks in grunts. This ‘stone age cave boy’ becomes his friend and the two have many adventures together
 
We will be using the novel in class to inspire our literacy work and for homework comprehension tasks.
 
Art
Our artwork this term will be inspired by the ancient cave art of the French Lascaux Caves. We are going to use the lovely story book “The First Drawing” by Caldecott Medalist as our inspiration. We will use a variety of tools and mediums to create our own cave walls and cave drawings.  Our DT project, after the half term break, will be to design a hunter gatherer diet. 
 
Science
Mrs O’Grady will be teaching science this term.  Your child will be learning about forces during the first half term.  We are going to find out about pushes and pulls, gravity, air and water resistance and friction.  We will also have fun finding out about magnets.  After half term, we will learn about light.  We will explore different sources of light, find out how light travels and how the human eye works.  We will investigate shadows too. 
 
Geography
In the second half of the autumn term we will be environmentalist studying rivers around the world and working to help protect this essential natural resource.
 
French
We will be teaching French as our modern foreign language from September, and using a fantastic new resource called KAPOW to deliver these lessons. 
 
 
HOMEWORK
 
Reading at home: Regular reading at home and discussions about their book is essential to enable your child to improve their reading fluency and comprehension.
 
We would want your child to be reading at home most evenings. Please ensure you sign your child’s book to show that they have read at home and talked about their book with you at least once a week.
Reading record books will be handed in and checked on a Monday. Mrs Chapman will be holding a ‘catch up’ lunchtime reading session on Tuesday lunchtimes for any child who has not had their book signed to say they have read. 
 
TT ROCKS HOMEWORK
 
Your child should be regularly practising their times tables at home by doing the TT Rocks games online. TTRocks gets to know your child and pitches the questions so that they are practising the right tables for them.  GARAGE is the easiest game and the game that issues the most coins, which they can then spend in the virtual shop.  If your child is in Year 4, they should begin to play the SOUNDCHECK game as this replicates the government TimesTables test that all Year 4’s sit in May.  Playing the SOUNDCHECK game at home will mean that the children won’t be too daunted when faced with it in the summer term.  Mrs O’Grady would love the children to challenge her on the ROCKSLAM game too. 
 
Mrs O’Grady will check each week that your child has been online to play the games.  Children who have not been online will complete the paper TTRocks sheets during Wednesday lunch times.   
 
PE
Our timetabled PE sessions will be on alternate Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Occasionally we may have extra sessions at other times. Please ensure that your child has a full PE kit in school (shorts, t-shirt, trainers, jogging bottoms) every week. PE kits should be brought in on Mondays and taken home for washing on Fridays.
 
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know and we will arrange a meeting as soon as possible. We are looking forward to a fantastic term. 
 
Very best wishes 
 
Mrs Chapman and Mrs O’Grady

We discussed what voluntary and community groups are and why communities need them to thrive. We discussed the type of help and support these groups can provide to a community especially in relation to health and well being (as part of be active week).

Next, we researched what voluntary and community groups can be found in our neighbouring town of Oswestry and what services they provide. We found charities who support families of terminally ill children, charities who provide food to those in need, voluntary arts and crafts groups who support people's mental health and well-being and a number of charity shops who raise money for medical research.

We created some mind-maps of all our our local voluntary and community groups and then we took it in turns to say which charity we would most like to volunteer for and why. The video below shows some of the children explaining their chosen charity and why they would choose to volunteer with them.

​

This half term we have been researching and studying J. M. W. Turner in our Art lessons.

We began by holding a walking, talking gallery, where we looked at examples of his work and discussed how they made us feel, what we liked most about them and what we liked least about them. We thought about how Turner may have been feeling as he painted each piece of art. 

We then researched J.M.W Turner himself and created an Artist Profile all about his life and work.

After this, we experimented with watercolours, which was the main media used by J.M.W Turner in his art work. We mixed colours; investigated what happened when we added white and black to a colour; investigated the effects of adding more or less water and experimented with colour bleeding (where colours run into each other when two wet colours are painted touching each other) and also tried allowing one colour to fully dry before painting another colour next to or on top of it.

Next, we all looked at some example photographs of 'sea-scapes' (which J.M.W Turner painted a lot of). We chose one sea-scape and all sketched and painted the same image using watercolours, using what we had learnt about the water colours previously. Even though we all painted the same image our final pieces of art work all looked different as we were authentic artists painting our own interpretation of the scene before us!

Finally, we used all that we have learnt throughout the half term to draw and paint our very own original sea-scape paintings. We imagined a sea-scene before us and thought about what we might see, what time of day it was and what the weather was like. Some of us drew and painted a real beach we had visited, some made imaginary beach scenes up, some of us painted sunrises and sunsets, some of us painted summery beaches and others painted stormy seas. Every piece of art work was original and different but each one was incredible!

I have been so impressed with the creativity, thoughtfulness, concentration and enjoyment in our art lessons in Andes class this half term. Each and every child has worked incredibly hard to produce their best piece of art work and the end results showed exactly how hard work pays off! 

Community

A community is a group of people living or working together in the same area. People in communities might go to the same schools, shop in the same stores and do the same things. They also help each other and solve problems together. 

We began the lesson by ripping a piece of paper in half - 1 piece of paper ripped easily. We then tried ripping a pile of sheets of paper, this was much more difficult! The pieces of paper worked together to create one strong thing, much like people in a community work together and support each other to be stronger.

We discussed what communities we are a part of...

..And we considered our roles and responsibilities within our local community.

We then designed our very own dream communities, drawing a map of all the parts of the community which are important to us. We thought about many elements including what jobs there are in our community, what entertainment there is (what people of all generations would enjoy), keeping our community safe.

Here are some examples of what the children came up with...

We began this lesson by finding out about The International Human Rights Law...

https://youtu.be/5KQGz-toMnk


We discussed how a right is a choice to make your own opinion and entitlement to things such as education, religion and freedom of speech. Responsibilities are duties or something an individual should do such as following the law and rules.
​
In groups we came up with suggestions of Rules and Responsibilities in school and shared them as a class.