Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire – news roundup.

 

Foundation Unit

We have now come to the end of learning about ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and we have had a productive week planting our own beans and creating magical castles for the bean stalk to grow up to. In Reception we have focused on getting into character and thought about the feelings of the main characters in the story, we have written speech bubbles and made our own puppets to role play the story. Nursery have been busy focusing on the story of ‘The three little pigs’ and looking at the materials that the houses were made out of. They quickly realised that straw was not a good idea for a house as it kept falling down.

Year 1

We have had a lovely week this week. Swimming was another week of success with everyone enjoying their lesson with instructor John. The children have been working hard learning about verbs in English and using them in sentences. The children then had to change the verb into past tense and use it in a sentence.

In Maths this week we have been looking at number lines. The children had to work out what the number line was counting in and then fill in the missing numbers. Alongside this we have been working on our addition facts using a variety of resources to help. The children have been having lots of fun in Art the last couple of weeks. Our topic is ‘Colour Chaos’ where we have been looking at colours and how different artists use colour. Firstly, we looked at Piet Mandrian who predominantly used primary colours. We then moved on to looking at Mark Rothko and how he started to introduce secondary colours to his work of block shapes. The children explored making the secondary colours from the primary colours and then recreating their own versions of Rothko’s work.

In History our topic is our local environment. We have looking at the history of the school and special features of the buildings. 

Year 2

We have been busy with not only English and Maths, but loving learning about the new topic ‘A Visit to Japan’. We are in the process of making a new display and decorating the classroom. This year is the year of the tiger – spend time looking at the poster and working out what year you were born in. Our Church assembly on Monday 7th February is about Japan, we hope you can make it. Working alongside Year 1, this week in History the children have been learning about the school, the history of when it was built and the additions to it over the years. They especially liked learning about the special round window – called an ‘oculus window’ – meaning in Latin ‘eye’. They each illustrated the window in their books.

Year 3

What a busy week we’ve had ! In history we’ve been looking at the Ancient Greeks and how they bought the Olympic Games to life…incredible that we are still participating every four years all this time later…We’ve been sourcing rivers in the UK and the seas they flow into – the children have loved delving into atlases and working in pairs to source the information…We have been visiting our imaginations in English , inspired by Mr Majeika (our Group reader), I brought in some shrinking potion and the children wrote some amazing stories as a result. We’ve been looking at adjectives to enhance all of our written work. We’ve been looking at multiplication and division in maths – using timestable knowledge to achieve the quickest answer. Performing Arts brings more singing and auditioning for Olivia. Year 3 are singing beautifully and already adding a lot to the performance.

Year 4

This week, Year 4 have been busy practicing for the assembly on Monday morning. We are covering the important theme of ‘Mental health and wellbeing’ and have been planning and acting out a range of scenarios to show how different emotions can influence our behaviour. We have revisited the column method for addition and subtraction and have been carrying and exchanging quite a lot this week! In English and ICT we have been continuing the task of ‘branching stories’ and we are learning to use Google slides to present these stories. Year 4 were able to watch the auditions for the main parts for Olivia and gain an insight into the impressive acting and singing skills Year 6 have to offer!

Year 5

The focus for this week’s English has been story openings We have been studying the openings of some of our favourite stories such as Harry Potter, Kensuke’s Kingdom and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and deciding what makes a good beginning. We noticed different techniques such as starting with dialogue, an action or a description. We then wrote different openings of our own, trying hard to include powerful descriptive language to “hook” the reader in. In science we worked in small groups, investigating and testing a wide range of materials based on their properties such as magnetic/non-magnetic; insulator/conductor; flexible/rigid and waterproof/not-waterproof. Next week, based on our results, we shall consider how these materials could be reused or recycled. In sport, Year 5 have demonstrated great enthusiasm and team skills playing football and netball.

Year 6

We have been busy with decimals this week, multiplying and dividing them and working out how to convert remainders into decimals. In English we read a story about a boy assumed to be guilty of a theft who was in fact innocent. We analysed the text for evidence and clues that led us to suspect the boy and also how our own prejudices laid suspicion on him. In grammar we looked at sentence structure: specifically active and passive sentences. On Tuesday afternoon we held the auditions for our KS2 musical, Olivia, and the standard was very high. Football and netball again this week, it was considerably warmer up on the field this week! In PSHE the class looked at the value of money. Everyone has worked really hard and it has been a very productive week.

Windrush Valley Prep School Oxfordshire – Private School Oxfordshire.