Selby Abbey visit

What a fantastic day we had visiting Selby Abbey! Selby Abbey was the first monastery to be founded in the North after the Norman conquest, survived the Reformation and stands to this day as a parish church. It is steeped with beautiful artwork, amazing architecture, awe- inspiring religious features and has a remarkable history.

The Reverend Canon John Weetman took us on a journey through time to an age when monks inhabited the Abbey and we listened to their voices echoing through the Nave.  He told us about the origins of the building and the story of St Germain and the monk Benedict. We explored the resurrection chapel, the High Stewards stall and even the Chancel.  The Reverend explained the importance of the font and its position at the West Door and how the Jesse Window (thought of as the second finest window in England) depicts the family tree of Jesus. One of us even got to dress as a monk! We spent time sketching, investigating the ‘leper’s squint’ and were challenged to count all the crosses in this magnificent building. 

Art

This term, in art, the children have been experimenting with block printing ink to create monoprints. We are re-creating The Big Frieze by Emma Yarlett. This piece of artwork is part of our ‘Understanding Christianity’ topic in RE, written by Stephen Pett. KS2 have been given panel 3-4: People of God, which covers many generations of God’s followers. The panels hint at the journey they travel referencing bible stories such as Moses and the Ten Commandments and Joseph freeing the slaves in Egypt.

In order to replicate this Lowry-esque section, we have been experimenting with different mediums from observational drawing of architecture to monoprinting and photography. This week, the children enjoyed a walk into Ledston village. They photographed interesting and important buildings and architecture that we could use to replace the industrial buildings in the piece and make our work more personal and relevant. They also had a chance to draw Kirkstall Abbey from a to scale model provided by Artemis- the museum and art gallery service run by Patsy Lyttle. The children have also been perfecting their printing and font skills (writing must be printed backwards) in preparation of the final construction over the next month.

R.E.

Artist Emma Yarlett’s wall frieze illustrates seven of the eight core concepts that are explored in the ‘Understanding Christianity’ materials. It is designed to help make us aware of the wider context of the concepts and indicates some areas of disagreement and diversity.

In class, we have been exploring the first panel of the frieze: Creation. We have discussed our favourite things in the natural world and things in the world that are good and creative. The book of Job offers an extended metaphor as if God were an architect or builder which gives it strong links to our work in art looking at architecture.

We have also been discussing what difference it would make to believe that the universe is a creative project of God instead of the universe just happening on its own.

All this has resulted in a beautiful display depicting what our class believes are the most important and our favourite things in the natural world.  

Misty Mountain Sierra

Last week we began investigating and researching for our topic, Misty Mountain Sierra. The children quickly found a number of key facts and lines of inquiry about mountains and in particular Mount Everest. We also used a diary text about climbing Everest for our guided reading sessions in class.

Today we have introduced maps of our local area to the children so we can develop map skills and map reading abilities (geography) before we look in more detail at places around the world.

In maths we are trialing single year group sessions this half term and covered prime numbers & factors with the year 5's whilst Year 4 did some skills recap and word problems.

In the coming weeks, both year groups will start to learn about fractions and related maths themes.

Our focus in literacy so far has been identifying and using fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases and conjunctions. We spent time 'magpie-ing' interesting vocabulary from our Everest text and also introduced Thesauras and dictionary skills to develop the use of high quality language.

Finally, in addition to regular PE lessons, the children have been challenged to 'climb Everest' this half term. Using their measuring and multiplication skills the class worked out that they would need to jog/walk 200 laps of the school playground in order to cover the 12.5 miles to Everest base camp. As of writing we have a few children who are one quarter of the way!

Keep checking back to our blog as we hope to upload more topic and RE photos later this week.

Y4 Skipping School

On Friday 5th January, Leanne from Skipping School came in to work with our year 4's and prepare them for a cluster skipping festival in April.

The children had a fantastic morning, trying new skills, creating routines with friends and even got to have a laugh at some staff trying not to act their age.

Hopefully, if the weather allows, the children will have plenty of opportunity to improve and develop their skills at playtime, ready for the BLP competition.

This week, in science, the children were given a Christmas challenge. Santa sent us a letter asking for help as Rudolf was sick and Santa was unsure of how many reindeer he would need to pull his sleigh. The children had to test how much force was needed to pull a ‘sleigh’ along different surfaces using a Newton Meter. They spent time filling their ‘sleigh’ with 3d presents that they crafted from multilink and stationary then experimenting with wood, rubber, carpet, bubble wrap and smooth surfaces to see which created the least friction.

Over the past couple of weeks, the children have also been looking at 2d shapes, lines of symmetry, reflections and remembering shape names. Recently the children were given the task of cutting out a number of ‘muddled’ shapes in order to create a hidden Christmas picture. Using ovals, trapeziums, hearts, circles, rectangles and parallelograms they eventually found that the image hiding in the shapes was in fact Santa clause!

 We have also begun to learn about using time. Today the children became BBC TV programmers, and had to work out a listing for Christmas day of all the programmes and films they would like to see but remember to include the Queen’s speech and this year’s special, ‘The Highway Rat’, both at specific times. Using mathematical knowledge, they had to calculate the start times, durations and finishing times of each programme without any ‘dead air’- because we all know that the BBC has no adverts.   

In R.E. we have been developing our understanding of Christianity through the use of ‘The Big Frieze’. Panel 5: Incarnation, tells us of the purpose of the coming of Jesus- to show us, through his actions, how to live. In an interesting twist we linked this to ‘The Lion, The Witch ad the Wardrobe’ (TLTWAW) and how we can show God and Jesus in different and more accessible ways. After seeing the theatre production at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, watching the film and reading part of the book we challenged the children to find similarities to the Christian Bible. We discussed the possibility of Alsan being a representation of Christ and the Pevensie children encountering the seven deadly sins including gluttony and pride. This also linked back to previous discussions at the beginning of November about ‘forgiveness’ and how important it was for Aslan and the siblings to forgive Edmund. In both the Bible and TLTWAW we see how to live a happy and fulfilling life.    

The Mysterious Case of the Fronted Adverbial

This week in Gascoigne class, as the title suggests, we have been developing our understanding and ability to use fronted adverbials in written work. The children have been absolutely fantastic doing this and have produced some excellent work which I would like to celebrate below.

For this task in particular, they were given a simple sentence which they had to re-write with a fronted adverbial of their own.

Donny - In the arms of her frail old grandmother, she began to cry.

Will R - Whilst exploring, she saw the trees were covered with a fine dusting of snow.

Jack S - At the bitter break of dawn, the trees were covered with a fine dusting of snow.

Sadie - Painfully, the parachutist landed with a bump.

Evie - Falling uncontrollably, the parachutist landed with a bump.


After that, the children were asked to create a complete sentence, including a fronted adverbial, about either themselves or the teachers.

Leo - Bravely, Leo wrestled the mighty python.

Sadie - In her sparkly dress, Sadie danced across the room.

Millie WH - Desperately, Mr Riley piled the chocolate cake into his mouth.

I'm sure you'll agree there are some excellent suggestions here, well done to all the children.

Chocolate

Everyone in Gascoigne class had a fantastic day last Friday when we were visited by Chocolatologist Carl Turner from the Ministry of Chocolate.

The children were challenged to use and apply a range of science, history, maths and DT skills throughout the morning as they were set tasks which would enable them to become chocolate experts themselves.

There were some great practical activities including tasting, smelling and even LISTENING to chocolate, as well as lots of information about FairTrade and the origins of chocolate. I think if Carl ever requires an assistant he will have at least 28 applications from our class. 

In other news, the year 5's visited Queen Ethelburga's school on Wednesday to complete this years Bebras computing test. Although we had a slight technical glitch regarding the test, the children still had an excellent day and made the most of seeing a different school environment.