Welcome to our class page. Over the year, we will use this page to capture snapshots of our fantastic learning, progress and experiences - so keep checking in for updates! If you ever have any questions or would like to learn more, please get in touch with our class team (Mrs Ash - Teacher; Mrs Somarakis and Miss Lucas - TAs and Mrs Fairbairn - Teacher on Fridays) who would be very happy to help.
Our PE day for Term 4 (Spring 2) will be Wednesday. Please wear your PE kit on this day. We will be swimming on Mondays; please wear school uniform for this day.
Homework is handed out on Tuesday and due back in the following Monday. Please see your child's homework book for home learning expectations and ideas.
In the event of your child needing to self-isolate, please use the homework website links above that your child can access for a range of subjects.
In the event of our class bubble isolating, or a school closure lockdown, we will be using Teams Online. Your child will need their username and password to access teams (these have been emailed).
Black Country Living Museum Visit by the Children of Chestnut Class
During our visit to the Black Country Museum, we got the chance to go into real Victorian buildings, houses and shops and learn lots about Victorian life.
In the sweet shop, we learned that sweets were coloured using unusual ingredients like coal (black), rust (orange), beetle blood (red) and arsenic (green) and that one sweet would be shared by a whole family for a week. These were called 'sook' sweets because they would suck them and then pass them onto the next person.
Whilst in the chemist, we learned that medicines were made by hand and were rolled in sugar to taste better; this was where the phrase 'sugar coated' comes from. Due to the fact that many people couldn't read shop signs, the big bottles in the window showed them which shop the chemist was.
We experienced a school lesson and discovered that Victorian children had to pay 2d (2 pence) per week to go to school and would be sent home if their hands or shoes were dirty.
The visit was amazing at helping us to experience how it might have felt as a Victorian child and we even got the chance to look into a Victorian narrow boat (a family of 4 would have shared a tiny little space at the back).
History - Victorian School Day
After our fingernail inspection and a run-through of Victorian school rules, we began the day by learning how to copy the Victorian writing script called 'Copper Plate'. We carefully copied the lower-case letters and even had the chance to practise these on a slate board, too. It was very time-consuming and some of the letters were very puzzling to recreate (and to read!). We were shocked to learn that all writing had to be done using the right hand, even if someone was left handed; we didn't think this was fair and pondered how difficult it would be to use a hand that wasn't your dominant one for writing, cutting and drawing.
We enjoyed handling real Victorian artefacts, such as a range of washing equipment. At first, we didn't know what the objects were and worked in groups to come up with predictions about what they might have been used for and had to explain our thinking. Then, in the process of our 'Domestic Studies' lesson, we got the chance to find their purposes and use them to wash a sheet; we didn't realise it would be so laborious and time-consuming but we did enjoy using the grater to grate the soap into the warm water, the dolly to create lots of bubbles and the washboard to rub the stains out.
Drill was the Victorian term for physical exercise. It involved a series of formal exercises such as marching on the spot, arm swinging, trunk bending and skipping; it was thought to help children follow instructions, improve coordination and health, and prepare them for work and military service.
These were some of the drills we practised in our lines:
Marching
Attention
Right turn
Left turn
Bend forward
Swing arms forward
Swing arms backward
Using compass points of North, South, East and West
Art - Studying William Morris
After using our retrieval skills to investigate the life and works of William Morris, we tried to replicate his style by presenting our new knowledge in a scrapbook information page. We became very familiar with his designs and ideas and used our mark-making and sketching skills to recreate some of his most iconic designs; we found this was incredibly time-consuming due to the complex nature of his patterns.
We used these S2S to achieve our great replicas:
Dividing the pattern into sections and recreating one at a time
Thinking about the size, position and shape of each image
Using fairy lines to mark out initial positions
Using mark making to create textures
Using shading to create areas of light and dark
Art - Creating Marbled Books
English - Exploring 'Street Child'
We used our inference skills to make initial predictions about the characters and plot from the images and words on the front cover; we linked previous books we'd read, films we'd seen and our knowledge of history, too.
We used drama to deepen our understanding of how some of the characters in the story might feel or what they might have been thinking at different points of the story. We used acting with our whole bodies (faces, arms, gestures) as well as our voices, too. In these scenes, we're recreating the moments when Mr Spink (a landlord) discovers Mrs Jarvis and her family have spent their last shilling on a pie; he was not best pleased!
Our drama helped us to unpick the two sides of an important issue for Mr Spink - should he let the Jarvis family stay or should he throw them out onto the streets?
We used our drama and notes to help us write a persuasive letter to Mr Spink in role as Mrs Jarvis, we had to think about the organisation of our ideas so that it made sense to Mr Spink and we tried to use lots of emotive language to appeal to his feelings. We were also challenged to begin our sentences with the 5ws, to use a wide range of connectives to add or contrast and to use ; to join two ideas together.
English - Drama, Debates, Discussions and Newspaper Reports
In Hamlet, the central character, a young prince, finds himself in a desperate predicament; he suspects his Uncle Claudius has murdered his Father in order to gain the throne and Hamlet is asked by his Father's ghost to punish the new king. We stepped into Hamlet's shoes to explore the two sides of this dilemma; should he avenge his Father or should he leave things as they are?
We've enjoyed using our inference skills to draw on evidence from across the text (and our wider reading, too!) to help us step into character's shoes; we imagined how the characters might behave and how they might react to events happening in the story.To helps us explore the dramatic events of the story, we created freeze frames which we performed to the class; we also had fun writing questions as newspaper reporters to interview characters in the 'hot seat'.
In our writing so far this term, we've really focused on:
Organising our writing into paragraphs by using 'boxing up' to help us group our ideas into topics, time or events
Using a range of connectives to link, explain or contrast our ideas (we can now use words like 'however', 'moreover' and 'hence')
Using 5ws and how (adverbial phrases) to start our sentences
Using a comma to mark the 5ws and how at the start of our sentences
Using brackets to add extra information within a sentence
Growing our vocabulary and choosing our words to create a desired effect on our reader
Art - Sketching Tudor Roses
In Art, we've explored the image of the Tudor Rose; a symbol that would have surrounded Shakespeare in church, at home and in architecture around him on a daily basis. We learned about the complicated history of the 'War of the Roses' and how this culminated in the creation of the Tudor Rose. We used our sketching skills and used the following S2S to help us recreate the rose using pencil:
Shading to show darker and lighter areas (e.g. shadows in the centre of the rose or under petals)
Hatching and cross hatching to create dark areas or show texture
Mark making to show texture within the rose (e.g. centre covered in pollen)
Scale and proportion (getting the right size, shape and position of the petals)
Art - Creating Tudor Roses from clay
We then developed our modelling skills to create the rose using clay - this required lots of patience, determination and attention to detail. We used different techniques including rolling, stippling to create textures and attaching the clay using scoring and water. We are incredibly proud of our finished roses.
D.T - Baking Tudor Bread
Another DT highlight has been in Food Technology where we worked hygienically to follow a Tudor Recipe; our Tudor Lover’s Knots tasted delicious (the honey drizzled on top might have had something to do with that!).
Computing - Coding our own 'Hamlet' soundtrack
We enjoyed exploring coding software called 'Scratch' in Computing; we learned how to create a scene with a character (called a 'sprite) which could move and play sound. We explored the different block functions and were even able to modify how the character looked, add sketches to our backdrops and show thought or speed bubbles to give our character dialogue, as well as choosing and editing sounds to create a soundtrack for the scene.
Term 1 - Science - Forces
In Science, we've been learning about Forces. We explored Friction through an investigation; on which surface will the car travel the furthest distance? We designed a method that was fair and made careful measurements to gather data about each surface. We applied our Maths skills to find the average distance for each surface using addition and division, too!
We investigated air resistance through an investigation with helicopters; whilst keeping all our other variables the same, we only changed the length of the blade to see if the more surface in contact with the air would cause the helicopter to take longer to reach the ground.
We were shocked to learn that WEIGHT was measured in Newtons whereas grams/pounds/ounces are a measure of MASS instead. We learned that an object's weight could change depending on how much gravity was acting upon it (e.g. on the Moon there is less gravitational force so an object would weigh less than on Earth); MASS, however, would remain the same wherever the object was. We learned to use Newtonmeters to measure an object's WEIGHT and measured an object's MASS using scales.
Term 1 - Take One Picture
Chestnut class have settled in brilliantly and have thrown themselves into our Take One Picture Project with wonderful enthusiasm and creativity. We have been exploring Rousseau’s painting ‘Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!)’ and have worked hard to accumulate a huge amount of learning in such a short time.
English / Art - Making Inferences and Predictions using Right There Clues
English / Art - Investigating the Life of the Artist, Henri Rousseau
During the week, we investigated the life of Rousseau and we used our research to create eye-catching information pages. Later, we applied our retrieval skills to become experts about the subject of the painting – tigers – and devised our own posters and Kahoot quizzes using the facts we had gathered (we even challenged ourselves to use 5ws and how to start our sentences in a variety of ways).
Art - Developing our Sketching techniques to recreate tropical leaves
Art - Recreating Leaves using Oil Pastels
Art - Our finished leaves
In Art, we have carefully studied tropical leaves and have used our observations to sketch our own leaves using oil pastels. Our colour matching, blending and use of light and shade helped us to create incredibly realistic leaves. Later, we challenged ourselves to investigate colour mixing and creating a range of textures using paints on large paper sheets; we then sketched and cut out our own leaf shapes. We also developed our braiding, coiling and collaging techniques with tissue paper to create highly textured leaves and vines. When we finished our leaves, we assembled them to create our own rainforest – complete with a crouching tiger!
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