Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire – Trip to Warwick Castle, Art, English, and Sports.
Foundation Unit
In Nursery this week the focus has been on learning the initial sound ‘o’. They have been on a sound hunt, explored a bowl of orange jelly looking for the letter ‘o’ hidden inside and created colourful octopuses. In Mathematics, they have been focusing on the number 4, the children practising their number formation by painting with water on the walls outside their classroom. In Reception, the focus has been on teen numbers 16-20 in Mathematics. The children enjoyed the challenge of exploring how many different ways they could make a number with the Numicon, one group found 7 ways to make the number 18. In our topic lessons, the focus has been on transport you can find in the air. The children thoroughly enjoyed making their own paper aeroplanes and flying them in the playground.
Year 1 & Year 2
Year 1 and Year 2 had a trip out of school to visit Warwick Castle. It was a proud day for all staff who went on the trip because the children all looked smart and their behaviour was excellent – they were a credit to Windrush Valley Private School. Oxfordshire. It was a day of learning, adventure, and fun.
Year 3
In creative writing we have been writing some fabulous stories imagining we wake up one day invisible! The children have fantastic imaginations and their invisibility adventures were absolutely amazing! In maths we have been revisiting fractions and adding and taking away fractions with the same denominators. We have also been blitzing our timestables and division recall – I have been very impressed with their speed! Hit the Button is a fantastic computer game to play at home to hone these skills even further. In Geography the children were shocked to get a letter from a Galactic spaceship, telling them about the plans to build a space supermarket in the area of the school. We had some brilliant persuasive writing letters objecting to the idea and saying why it is so important to keep Ascott-UnderWychwood as a village not a Space supermarket! In History we are putting together factual powerpoints about the Romans and are looking forward to a trip to Chedworth Roman Villa.
Year 4
This week we have been studying architecture, by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. His early designs are very geometric and Year 4 have designed their own buildings, using only shapes – it is more difficult than it looks! In English we have been focusing on similes and inverted commas. For homework, some pupils went the extra mile and created informative PowerPoints on the use of inverted commas. In Maths, we have been learning about capacity and converting between millilitres and litres and it was excellent to see the children connecting the recent work on decimals, when writing their conversions.
Year 5
In science we were excited to begin a new topic called Living Things and Their Habitats. We started by learning about reproduction in flowering plants so visited the school gardens to find a variety of flowers. We discreetly removed a few specimens and brought them back to the classroom. We then carefully dissected the flowers and were able to identify the female and male parts. In English we read an explanation text on the water cycle and identified its specific features. We then practised notetaking to research the lifecycle of a Monarch butterfly and are looking forward to writing a detailed explanation of the process of metamorphosis next week. In maths we have revisited angles and reflections as well as multi-step word problems. We have been working hard on our country dancing and singing and are looking forward to sharing this with parents next week.
Year 6
We’ve enjoyed a varied week in year 6 after all our hard work for SATs last week. We began the week looking at an excerpt from Philip Pulman‘s novel Clockwork which has a story within a story and we shall read the whole book as a class reader after half term. Returning to our Cold War topic we have been examining Communist and Capitalist ideologies which has been really interesting. The class have had all sorts of things to say about how wealth could/should be distributed. We have done a few maths puzzles (magic squares) to keep mathematically nimble and fun.
Sports
We are immensely proud of one of our Year 4 pupils, who last weekend took part in Matt Fiddes Martial Arts Southern Regional Championships in Reading and won his age category for hand-drills. He was competing against much older participants and it is great to see how things have progressed from his Martial Arts Extended Day Activities here at Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire.
Next week 18 pupils from Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire will be taking part in the ISA London North Athletic Championships at at Bedfor Int Athletics Stadium.