Welcome to Sycamore class 2021-2022

Welcome to Sycamore class. Our teacher is Ms Lloyd, and our teaching assistant is Mrs Stockley.

Over the year we will use this page to capture snapshots of our learning, progress and experience.

Please feel free to get in touch  if you have any queries. 

Keep checking our page to see all the exciting things we do in school!

Term 1  our PE days for this term will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays 

Please can children come to school in their PE kits for these days (please see our Parent Information Document for further details on PE kit)

Gardening sessions take place on Thursday afternoons and Forest School sessions are on Friday mornings

Children will be informed when the class has a slot for gardening, and an email from the office will be sent to parents notifying the day of the Forest School and information about wet weather clothing.

If the event of self-isolating or further lockdown

In the event of your child needing to self isolate, please use the homework 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

Generic Timetables

Term 1 - This term our projects are Take One Picture and Hamlet

Take One Picture

Sycamore class have had a super week enjoying their Take One Picture Project based on Claude Monet's painting 'Dusk in Venice'

Sycamore thought about 'First Impressions' and generated lots of fabulous questions that they wanted to research :-

• is the painting in an art gallery?
• what is the name of the painting?
• How big is the real painting?
• Who and what inspired the artist?
• Was art always the artist's passion?
• When was it painted?
• Is the artist still alive?
• How long did it take the artist to paint it?
• What style did the artist use/
• Did the artist paint during the day or night?

Popping with lots of questions, they used expert research skills to explore facts about his life, his inspiration for his art work and the techniques he used. Lots of interesting facts were discovered including; he had lots of  famous friends  such as Degas, Manet and Renoir, and that he mainly painted outside. Using light, he often created the same picture in different colours depending on the time of day as well as the Seasons.

For this reason, he often had to work quickly. 

Having found out amazing facts about Claude Monet, the children were keen to experiment with different art techniques in their sketch books, including stippling, scrumbling and hatching. 

The children were fascinated to learn that Monet and his friends created an art movement known as Impressionism, and that all the artists used the same criteria for their work. These included:

- They never used black

- They used different light 

- They mainly worked outdoors

- They worked against time

- They would used layer of paints

Feeling confident, they couldn't wait to apply their skills to their own recreation of the painting.

Finally, the children used powerful verbs, adjectives and adverbs to create imaginative sentences to capture the magic of the painting

"Above the majestic sparkling sea, the birds were flying gracefully home while the sun was happily setting" (Freya)

"The reflective water rippled and stretched quietly for as far as the the eye could see" (Lily)

"The shadowy castle sits calmly above the sparkling rocky water" (Julia)

"The colourful sunset was a silky blanket over the rippling sea" (Leila)

"While a big castle was breaking, the sea waves were rippling angrily across the harbour" (Stan)

"The sky sat calmly over me as I watched the silky white clouds float by" (Sam)

"The sprawling dark town is quietly reflecting on the rippling sea" (Evie)

"As the two mysterious dark ships left silently, they were eaten by the sunset" (Ben)

English

The children have really excelled themselves whilst studying this term's project of Hamlet.

To begin with, they used drawings to search for clues about the characters

By reading the play as a class, and by using their inference skills, the children have explored the character of Hamlet and investigated the question as to whether he should or shouldn't avenge the death of his father

They then learnt how to use disagreeing and agreeing conjunctions to offer different points of view when writing their discussion texts.

The children worked collaboratively to create S2S and used these as a framework for writing their discussion texts.

These steps included:

• Title
• Introduction -  to explain what the discussion is about
• Paragraphs to show each side of the discussion
• Conclusion to summarise and make a decision
• 5 W sentence openers
• Written in the 1st person
• Punctuation including capital letters . , ?! ()
• Sequencing conjunctions such as firstly, conclusion
• Agreeing and disagreeing conjunctions
• Written in the present tense
• Written in the 1st person

Following on from the question of whether Hamlet would avenge the death of his father, the children were eager to see what course of action he would take next and were keen to read more of the story.

They discovered that as well as Hamlet having a plan, King Claudius, his evil uncle also had a plan of his own.

The children then decided to use their drama skills to sequence and summarise the events, and to consolidate their understanding of the text. 

The children then explored the difference between open and closed questions and thought of some examples to ask the following characters in a Question Time session

• Hamlet
• King Claudius
• Gertrude
• Ophelia

Using their open and closed questions, the children were very keen to hold a Question Time session, whereby they could interview each character.

History

In our history lessons, the children first began my using their research skills to explore key events in William Shakespeare's life

They represented this information by placing it in chronological order on a timeline.

The children then investigated the symbolism of the Tudor Rose

They researched the events of the famous Battle of Bosworth between the Houses of Lancaster and York.

They found out that the Lancaster house was led by the cunning King Richard 111 and that his soldiers wore the Red Rose.

During the battle, King Richard was outwitted and was eventually killed.

Henry Tudor became King Henry V11 and by marrying Elizabeth of York, he joined the two houses together. 

The new symbol then became known as the Tudor Rose

Geography

The children discussed where the play Hamlet was set and discovered that it was Denmark.

By using a variety of resources, such as atlases and the internet, they explored the location of physical and human characteristics. 

They decided the label the following on a map of Denmark:-

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​major cities and towns
• rivers and lakes
• seas and oceans

Art

During the class Art lessons, the children have focused on the Tudor Rose.

First;, they used their observation and sketching skills to draw the Rose.

They paid close attention to detail and shading.

The children were then excited to recreate the Tudor Rose from clay

They very much enjoyed painting them carefully

Science

This term Sycamore Class are investigating forces.

They identified that a force is a push or a pull and included:

• water resistance
• gravity
• reaction force
• buoyancy
• air resistance
• driving force 
• magnestism

They then distinguished the difference between

 MASS - 'a measure of the amount of stuff inside an object' and measured in grams and kilograms

WEIGHT - 'a measure of the strength of gravity acting on an object' and measured in Newtons

The children had great fun completing an experiment to investigate the force of gravity by measuring the weight and mass of different objects. 

PE -Gymnastics

This term, Sycamore have been really enjoying their gymnastics lessons with a focus on symmetry and balance

They have worked on

• completing a four element sequence containing actions at different heights and speeds
• exploring symmetry to balance and travel
• exploring asymmetrical balances and travels
• working together to perform counter balances and trust exercises
• applying compositional ideas to counter balances

Forest School

On Friday 8th October 2021. Sycamore enjoyed their turn in Forest School.

Fiona started the session by reading a poem and asked the children to reflect on the importance of the message.

Then she finished the session with the acrostic poem about Conkers.

Sycamore class are so excited as Fiona says she is also going to give the class a couple of conkers and pots so we can start growing our own horse chestnut trees.

Great excitement was had as a frog was found.

Leila & Liv made sausage & mash followed by chocolate cake at the mud kitchen.

Stan was on the  hunt for conkers.

All the children enjoyed lots of den building.

Haruki used his engineering skills when stabilising a wonky bridge

Lisa practiced her gymnastics skills

Ashley explored different sound making

Children used reference books to help them identify different species of bugs and spiders, as well as spotting different funghi.