Silver Birch Class

2020-2021

Welcome to Silver Birch class. 

Our teachers are Mrs Jackson and Mrs Downs and and our class TA is Ms Hall.  

Our class page will contain lots of information about things we are doing and learning about in Silver Birch. We also have a class blog which is written by the children from Silver Birch. Here you can see pictures and examples of work that we have been doing each week.

The link to our blog is:  

https://firtreesilverbirch.wordpress.com/      

Please feel free to ask questions or make comments on the blog.

In the event of self-isolation or further lockdown

In the event of your child needing to self isolate, please use the links above that your child can do in any of the 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 user name and password to access Teams. 

This week the children watched a clip to see how an artist would go about sketching the heart’s anatomy.

They learnt how to make their art work most effective by drawing straight lines onto an image of a heart diagram to split the diagram into quarters. This  helped them with the positioning and size of their heart sketch.  The outcomes were very impressive.

Our Ancient Egyptian learning

We have been learning about The Ancient Egyptians this term. We developed our historical knowledge by using a range of sources: researching online, using books and watching videos.

We then used our knowledge to demonstrate how we could write in a variety of genres:

We created leaflets – using persuasive language to encourage people to visit Egypt, setting out our work clearly using sub-headings and pictures and deciding what information would be important to record to attract visitors.

We demonstrated our understanding of the roles of Ancient Egyptians and what their daily life would be like by stepping into our chosen character’s shoes and writing a diary from their perspective.

We also applied our knowledge of the mummification process to write an instructions on how to mummify a body, clearly explaining what happened to the body of someone who died during these times. 

We had to research and present information, on the Egyptian Gods, in a non-chronological report. We analysed a range of reports and generated our S2S which we then followed to write our own reports.

We  planned and wrote a newspaper report based on the events at the time Tutankhamum’s tomb was discovered. We had to imagine that we were reporting on the scene when Howard Carter unveiled the hidden tomb. Using all of our research materials and our knowledge of how to write a newspaper report we then wrote our own.

We have also learnt about the Ancient Egyptians through a variety of other subject. We learnt about a game called ‘Senet’ which the Ancient Egyptians used to play and is believed to be one of the oldest board games. We then applied our DT skills to design and create our own version of the game, evaluating how well we created it and how it could have been improved.

Jewellery was very important to the Ancient Egyptians, believing that it enhanced appearance, indicated social status and protected them from evil. We had a task to use our DT skills to design and create our own Egyptian collar which involved cutting, measuring and painting.

We also analysed some pieces of Ancient Egyptian art. We identified the features of each piece of art work and the story they told. We then designed and created our own piece of art work using these features.

Over the course of the term we have learnt many things both in terms of The Ancient Egyptians and about ourselves. Here are some of the comments that the children have made:

• We have learnt about Ancient Egypt –that they do gruesome things when they mummify the body (Kyra)
• The Ancient Egyptians have over 2000 Gods (Brooke)
• I learnt that I liked independent writing – I have really enjoyed writing stories (Grace)
• The Ancient Egyptians were very interesting to learn about – I found out so much about how they lived (Alesha)
• I am a bit more focussed because the class is smaller and therefore quieter (Brooke)
• I have learnt that I am a good baker (Ella)
• I need people around more than I thought I would (James A)
• I have found that it is a lot easier to do work on my own as there are no distractions (Luke)
• I have learnt that need someone to keep me organised and help with my timekeeping (Jacob)
• I prefer to be around people (Gabriel)
• I miss not being able to talk to each other (Tia)
• I have missed not having people around although I have been able to share models that I have made via zoom (Jacob)