Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire – News.
Foundation Unit
The children in nursery have begun their phonics and maths topics, looking at the letter ‘s’ and the colours red, blue, and yellow. They sang the Jolly Phonics song and practised saying ‘s’. They have been able to find and sort items by colour. In forest school the children have enjoyed exploring their local area. In Reception, we have had a wonderful week and enjoyed settling into our daily routine. The children have learnt about ‘s’ and ‘a’ in phonics. They have enthusiastically been singing the songs, practising their letter formation, and taking their phonics into the Art area. In Mathematics, we have been continuing with our baseline assessments, the children have been sorting items by colour and size.
Year 1
The children have continued to work well this week in Year 1. We have enjoyed looking at Traditional Tales in English specifically at Little Red Riding hood. They have enjoyed re-enacting the play and writing about their favourite part of the story.
Year 2
As this is a special time in history the children have been talking about the Queen and taking time to draw and colour pictures of how they remember her. In English the class have been learning about the silent and have had their first spelling test, with some excellent results. They then continued to use their spelling knowledge to write sentences using silent words. In maths the Year 2 pupils have been adding single-digit numbers, and will be moving onto adding in columns.
Year 3
Year 3 have have been flying on a magic carpet in the classroom – all over the world and to many different lands. The pupils have been creating some fabulous stories using a clear beginning, middle and end to structure their stories. We have also been looking at adjectives and how we can enhance our writing with them. In maths we have been looking at place value and adding tens and hundreds to numbers. We’ve also been practicing times tables with Hit the Button which is great fun. Please could you ensure your child hands in homework on a Thursday. In geography we have been looking at volcanoes and how they erupt, and looking at some volcanic rock from Mount Etna, which was very exciting. In history the children have been looking at timelines and chronology, very poignant at this time with King Charles ascending the throne.
Year 4
We have been thinking about risks, hazards and dangers in PSHE, and knowing who to call when we need help. We have continued to look at the work of William Morris in Art, creating our own repeat motif patterns using stencils and paint. In Maths, we have been revisiting the main written methods learnt in Year 3 and extending these to include larger numbers or applying them to problem solving questions. We transported ourselves back to 1860 in English, and learnt about the workhouses and how the Dr Barnado’s charity originated. We have been focusing on the prefixes ‘re’ and ‘inter’ for our spelling.
Year 5
Year 5 have been revising times tables facts and the formal written methods for multiplication and division in maths. In science, we started our materials topic by describing materials using scientific property words such as absorbent, translucent and insulator. In art our topic is Cityscapes and we were introduced to 3D pop art through the American artist Charles Fazzino. He has created some amazingly detailed 3D cityscapes of New York City. We created viewfinders so we could study a section of his work in detail and sketched what we saw
Year 6
Year 6 at Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire have been learning about diary forms in English and comparing direct and indirect speech. In maths we have gone over written methods – column addition, subtraction and multiplication which we are all pretty good at. it was interesting to compare the borders of Europe in 1914 with our present boundaries which we did as we looked at the alliances that preceded the first world war. Various outdoor sports are also now in full swing.