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It has been another fun week in school. We welcomed our Resident Author, David Mason, into school on Thursday and the children enjoyed listening to a range of poetry. Our Y3 and Y4 Dodgeball teams took part in the MCSP Dodgeball competition at Mossley Hollins on Tuesday. Despite playing well and giving it their all it was St Josephs who pipped us to the post. Our Y6 children attended Mossley Hollins on Tuesday for the Young Shakespeare workshop based on Hamlet. They thoroughly engaged with the performance and even took on some of the roles themselves.

On Friday our Y5 children visited Mossley Methodist Church for a Science/Faith series of workshops. They had come up with a number of questions to ask in advance and they had an amazing time.

Some of our Y3 and Y4 children also experienced an exciting sporting festival at Graystone Leisure Centre and the children loved trampolining, scootering and gymnastics.

The Trouble with Tadpoles – It has been an amazing week in Nursery. The children have been learning about the lifecycle of a Frog. On Monday they learnt about frogspawn and had fun in the soap flakes with black beans in it as eggs. On Tuesday they moved on to tadpoles and used their fingers to paint tadpoles. Wednesday gave the children the opportunity to make froglets from egg boxes and put tails on them. On Thursday they learnt about adult frogs and they made frogs with springy legs. Finally on Friday the children ordered the whole lifecycle of the frog. What a busy week!

This week Reception have continued their learning on The Little Red Hen traditional tale. The children used their phonics to write sentences to retell the story and drew pictures of the animals.

The children have been making good progress with their First Class Phonics sessions and this week completed progress check assessments. They have also been practising their handwriting using the sky, grass and ground.

Following their Mastering Number scheme, Reception’s Maths focus has been investigating which numbers are bigger than other numbers and discussing which Numberblocks can hide behind others without being seen. The children made a giant pizza and together counted different amounts of toppings we could add to it.

In RE, the children had lots to share about their learning this week as they learnt about how they celebrate birthdays. The children read ‘Kippers Birthday’ and drew pictures to show the different ways they celebrate, such as having a birthday party and a birthday cake.

Year 1 have enjoyed working with David Mason. They had a great time acting out one of his poems about the water cycle and then created a picture to represent the poem.

In Year 2 this week the children had a real treat! They had the pleasure of being joined by the fantastic poet – David Mason. The children thoroughly enjoyed listening to a range of his poems and they also had the opportunity to join in with some of the performances. The children were flowers, worms, butterflies and even mountains!

In Year 3 this week, the children have been understanding the numerator of unit fractions and ordering and comparing unit fractions in Maths.

In English, they have been creating a dialogue between Manfred and the Doctor using inverted commas, designing their own character and writing a plan for their own versions of Manfred the Baddie. They also had a treat this week and enjoyed watching David Mason performing lots of exciting poems.

In RE, the children have been looking at Maundy Thursday. They found out about the events at the Last Supper and then designed their own last supper, looking at the special people they would invite and the food they would have.

In Science, the children carried out an investigation to see which surface the car travels further on. They set the car off from different heights on four different surfaces to see which surface produced the most friction. In PE, they have enjoyed playing volleyball and dance.

Year 4 have had another jam-packed week, full of exploration, discussion and problem solving.  In Maths, they have learnt more about fractions and now understand what proper, improper and mixed fractions are.  They even learnt how to convert improper fractions into mixed fractions and to add and subtract fractions. 

In Science, the children learnt more about electrical circuits and tested a variety of materials to see which ones were conductors of electricity and which were insulators.  In English, they have spent the week writing diary entries, writing in character as the Tear Thief.  In Geography, they have learnt about the different stages of a river and in RE they have enjoyed learning more about Jesus’ time in the wilderness and what he did prior to and after his time in the desert. 

This week in Year 5 has been full of exciting learning and special experiences! In Maths, they’ve been diving into fractions and learning how to find fractions of different amounts. In English, the children have been busy writing their own stories, inspired by Leon and the Place Between, and the children got to be creative and innovate on the original tale.

They were also thrilled to have a visit from David Mason, a poet who shared his beautiful poems with them. The children loved listening to his work and had some wonderful discussions about the power of words.

To top it all off, they visited Mossley Methodist Church for a fascinating workshop that combined science and faith. They explored astronomy, the environment, and the science behind light, which was both fun and thought-provoking.

This week, our Year 6s were further immersed in to the world of William Shakespeare when we were treated to a performance of Hamlet by the Young Shakespeare Company. The actors brought to life the characters and the plot in their unique twist of this treasured classic. Before long, the children themselves were playing a vital role in the play, adding sound effects, actions and even taking on some of the different characters too - who’d have thought we had such Shakespearean talent in our midst? By immersing themselves in the production, the children gained an incredible understanding of what is an extremely complex tale!

We’ve also been experimenting with electricity in our science lesson this week; the children worked in teams to carry out a number of investigations involving wires, batteries, bulbs, switches and motors. They refreshed their understanding of simple circuits and then applied their knowledge to a series of problem-solving tasks!

It has been a very exciting week in school. The children have thoroughly enjoyed World Book Day which we celebrated in style on Thursday. The children and parents/carers joined us from 8.30am at our Book Swap event and all the children have been able to bring a book from home and swap it for another of their choice. We even had a Hook a Duck to win a new book which the children loved. At 10.45am the children came into the hall where we held a book cover parade, so the children had the opportunity to share the amazing book covers they had created to celebrate the day. We have been blown away by the imagination and creativity shown by the children, it was a fabulous whole school celebration. The rest of the morning was spent reading with a reading buddy and everyone was so excited to do this, with older children reading to the younger classes. In the afternoon we met as a whole school again for our annual Poetry Slam. I have been so impressed with how well the children performed their poem as a class and the level of expression, props and music that were used. What a fabulous day!

On Friday we welcomed parents and carers into school for our Achievement Assembly and it was lovely to see so many parents and carers sharing their child’s success.

In Nursery, it has been more Jasper’s bean stalk fun this week.  The children have finished off planting their beans and have remembered to water the ones they planted last week.

At the start of this week they celebrated Shrove Tuesday. They made pancakes and enjoyed trying different toppings on them.  Their favourite was chocolate and strawberries!

Mrs Brown and Mrs Lardner-Cox have been out visiting children and their parents at home for the REAL project, they went on a listening walk, read their new story and made shakers from plastic bottles.  They had lots of fun together.

World book day was celebrated in school on Thursday, and the children all made a tabard with their favourite books on.  They all loved singing in the poetry slam and sang ‘Five Currant Buns in a Bakers Shop’.

Reception have had a visit from The Little Red Hen this week. She left a big mess of red feathers and flour in their classroom and a letter asking Reception to make some bread. The children enjoyed getting messy; measuring, pouring and kneading their bread. Their favourite part was buttering and adding jam to their bread and of course eating it! The children left a roll for the Hen too and they used their phonics and best handwriting to write a letter back to the Little Red Hen.

On Tuesday, the children learnt about Pancake Day. Chef Miss Burney cooked pancakes for the class and the children enjoyed adding toppings and eating them.

The children’s Maths focus has been number bonds to 10. They sang the action song ‘10 sleepy fingers’ and noticed which different numbers make 10.

In RE, the children focused on the Hindu festival- Diwali. They enjoyed listening to the story of Rama and Sita and retelling the story using masks.

As part of World Book Day, Year 1 really enjoyed it when the Year 5 children came to read books to them.

This week in Year 2, the children have been learning about a variety of measures. The have been using rulers and tape measures to measure length and height and we have enjoyed using the scales and weights to measure the mass of objects.

Year 3 have had another great week in school. In English, they have been practicing their poem ‘Please Mrs Butler’ by Allan Ahlberg, ready for the poetry slam. The children have worked so hard learning the words and practicing their performance skills. In English, they have also been ordering the story of Manfred the Baddie.

In Maths, the children have been subtracting measurements and practicing their arithmetic skills using the column method.

In RE, they have been learning about Palm Sunday. The class watched a video to show what happened during Palm Sunday and then they created a palm leaf and acted out the event.

Year 4 have had another jam-packed week, full of exploration, discussion and problem solving.  In Maths, they have learnt more about fractions and now understand what proper, improper and mixed fractions are.  In science, the children learnt more about electricity; the components required within a circuit and how a circuit must be complete in order for electricity to light a bulb or make a buzzer work. 

In English, they have continued to focus on punctuation and using inverted commas for speech.  The children wrote short dialogues last week, which they have now edited and typed up on their Ipads. In Geography, they have enjoyed learning more about the features of rivers.

Year 4 have also enjoyed lots of book related activities this week and had a great time on World Book Day, taking part in a poetry slam and buddying up with the Reception class for paired reading.  The children have also enjoyed their second Forest School session, where they observed the signs of spring and had lots of fun climbing trees and making dens.

What a fantastic week they've had in Year 5! In English, the children brought the mysterious Abdul Kazam to life using powerful descriptive and figurative language, making their writing truly magical. In RE, they explored quotes from the Bible, reflecting on how challenging they can be to follow in daily life and imagining a world where everyone lived by them—what an inspiring discussion!

Music filled the air during their amazing brass lesson this week

, and the children ended the week with a spectacular celebration for World Book Day. They had a blast taking part in the Footy & Booky Quiz from the Literacy Trust, showing off their creativity with a parade of incredible book covers, and absolutely rocking the poetry slam with their energetic performance of Reading is Amazing by MC Grammar!

In Year 6 this week, it’s been another fun-filled week.  With World Book Day on the horizon, Year 6 have thrown themselves into learning and then writing their own version of Michael Rosen’s poem: ‘The Outing’. They thoroughly enjoyed thinking of ‘teacherisms’ that could be used in their poems as well as innovating the poem to include their own names. When performing the poem, they have done so with expression and enthusiasm. We definitely have some teachers in the making!

On World Book Day itself, the children enjoyed helping to run our whole school Book Swap event and loved helping some of our younger children choose a new book to take home. We’ve also been discovering which Hogwarts House we belong to by sporting the Sorting Hat and once we discovered where we belonged, we’ve found everything there is to know out about our houses in order to write a magically persuasive text.

In computing, Year 6 have developed the ability to change a variable when programming and have created their own, which they can’t wait to create next lesson!

Welcome back after the holidays. We hope you have had a good break. The children were excited to be back in school and have embraced their new learning.

In Nursery, the children have had a great first week back after the holidays.  Their class story is Jasper’s Beanstalk by Mick Inkpen. In the story, Jasper finds a bean and plants it, he tries hard to wait for it to grow but he becomes impatient and digs it up. 

The children have planted their own beans and are being very patient waiting for them to grow.  They have also painted the life cycle of the bean and labelled the different parts. They can’t wait to learn more about plants, beans and Jasper next week.

Reception have immersed themselves in their new topic- Traditional Tales. The children listened to their focus text- ‘The Little Red Hen’- and created a text map to orally retell the story. The children enjoyed baking bread in their new Bakery role-play area, playing in their farmyard small world area and labelling pictures of the characters from the story.

In Maths, they have been focusing on the composition of numbers 7 and 8. The children sang 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive and recognised that 5 is inside numbers 7 and 8. They made numbers 7 and 8 with numicon.

In RE, the children learnt about the Jewish festival- Sukkot. The children had a look at the Star of David and designed their own Sukkah.

In Art this week, Year 1 have started their 3D pictures of birds. They have completed observational drawings of birds and feathers using a variety of materials including charcoal.

This week in Year 2, the children have started their new Science topic which is based on ‘Living things and their habitats’. They have had many interesting conversations this week as they explored things that are living, non-living and dead. The children worked well in their groups to use their working scientifically skills to sort the different objects. In Maths, the children have been using rulers to measure in centimetres. The children have enjoyed comparing lengths and heights and they have also LOVED measuring each others heights.

Year 3 have had a great first week back at school. In English, they received a letter from ‘Manfred the Baddie’ telling them he had lost his swag back in the school playground, so they went to hunt the bag out and looked at the contents. The children have written a letter back to Manfred letting him know they have found his bag and have asked him why he has different scientific equipment in it. In Maths, they have been looking at measurements and comparing and finding equivalent lengths.

In History Year 3 have started their new unit on the Tudors and have been finding out about Henry VIII. They looked at a variety of images of him and looked at how much he had changed during his reign as king. The children then started to create a fact file all about Henry VIII. 

In Science, the children have started their unit about forces and magnets. They looked at different push and pull forces and used their scientific enquiry skills to sort different push and pull forces. In RE, they have been learning about Lent and have discussed what they are going to start and stop doing during the time of Lent.

The children have got straight back to work in Year 4, starting all of their new topics and beginning to read new texts.  In English, they have started to read ‘The Tear thief’ by Carol Ann Duffy and will be using this text to inspire their writing over the next few weeks.  This week, Year 4 have looked at figurative language and used some of these literary techniques to write a class poem.  They have also begun planning a persuasive letter which they will begin writing next week. 

In Maths, the children have begun their new topic on fractions.  They have been looking at how fractions are equal parts of a whole and have begun understanding unit fractions. In Science, the children have started their new topic on electricity and began this unit by thinking about electrical appliances and sorting these into groups, depending on whether they are mains or battery powered.  They realised that some appliances are both mains and battery powered, such as mobile phones and laptops. 

In Geography, the children began their new topic all about rivers and looked at the geographical definition of rivers, thinking about and learning some of the correct terminology for their features.  In RE, they commenced their new topic on Lent,  looking at the significance of Ash Wednesday and discussed the meaning of the word ‘sin’ and why admitting to sins can be hard. 

Year 4 also started their new Guided Reading text this week which is ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ by Michael Morpurgo.  It looks like it’s going to an action-packed and mysterious book and the children are all looking forward to reading more of it next week! 

This week in Year 5, the children kicked off their new English unit with a spectacular circus-themed morning! The children watched an exciting Cirque du Soleil performance, enjoyed some tasty popcorn, and used their senses to describe the experience in rich detail through their writing.

They also had a fantastic Art Day, where they explored typography and maps. The children experimented with different fonts to write their names, created bold images on maps, and even designed their own imaginative maps!

In Geography, they turned their attention to South America, pinpointing Brazil on a map and learning about important longitudinal lines that help navigate the globe.

Year 6 been thinking all about the future this week and thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the MCSP Careers Fair at Mossley Hollins. At the event, the children were given the opportunity to visit stalls in small groups and ask questions to a wide variety of people about their careers – there was a police officer, a paramedic, a Laboratory Medicine Scientist, bankers and Railway Project Managers amongst some other fascinating career representatives. The children asked some brilliant questions and there was lots of interaction on each stall.

The event also involved taking part in a workshop delivered by Live ‘N’ Learn. Through a range of problem-solving and interactive activities, the children explored the role that mindset plays in success.  They discussed effective communication, first impressions, teamwork and the fact that success usually only comes to those willing to work for it.

What a busy half term it has been in school. Freddy Fit returned to school on Wednesday to continue training our Play Leaders ready for their Wake Up, Shake Up routines each morning.

The children have also been celebrating Safer Internet Day this week and on Tuesday our Digital Leaders led an assembly to introduce this year’s theme - Protecting yourself and Others from Scams Online. Our Digital Leaders have then been into Nursery and Reception to lead an assembly for them as well as leading workshops over lunchtimes this week to teach children how to protect themselves. They have been fantastic, so well done to our Digital Leaders.

Our Y6 debating team have taken part in this term’s MCSP debate. They argued against Milton St John’s on the topic for ‘This House believes Manchester should have a Clean Air Zone. We are proud to say that our team won their round. Well done team! We are very proud of you!

Nursery have been reading one of their favourite top ten reads this week, ‘Guess How Much I Love you?’  The children have enjoyed lots of activities talking about who and why they love people, what might they do to help those they love and how they can show them they love them. 

The children have made their own heart tokens to give to their loved ones and a special threaded love heart. They can’t wait to share their love with their families and loved ones.

Reception have enjoyed the last week of term and have been learning about Valentine’s Day. The children learnt what Valentine’s Day is and ways that people celebrate. During a circle time, each child shared who they love using the stem sentence ‘I love… because…’. The children then drew a picture of somebody they love and wrote their stem sentence underneath. The children have also been busy making valentines cards.

Their Maths focus has been recapping number bonds to 5 and thinking about ways to make 6; they looked at 10 frames and die patterns.

This week, Year 1 have continued to enjoy working with staff from the Royal Exchange. So far during the project, they have explored characters and story plots and Mrs Moorcroft is hoping that she might be able to arrange a trip to the Royal Exchange next half term!

This week in Year 2, the children have been celebrating all things Art! They have been exploring their unit called ‘Expressive painting’ and have looked at a variety of artists and tried to replicate their brush work in their individual sketchbooks. They have also recapped their knowledge of primary and secondary colours. The children then used a variety of mark making tools to create different marks using primary colours. The final outcomes in the children’s sketchbooks are brilliant and really captured all their hard work.

It has been another extremely busy week this week in Year 3. The children have been making their own volcanoes. They started by making the volcanoes using lots of newspaper, they then painted the volcanoes and made them explode. It was so much fun!

In RE, the children have been designing their own multifaith prayer room and have used their knowledge of what different religions do during prayer to help them. In Science, they have been looking at what their bodies need to stay healthy. The children looked at the different nutrients they need and what they do for their bodies. They have also designed their own healthy meal.  

In Geography, Year 3 have been looking at earthquakes and  have located the four most famous earthquakes on a world map. The children have looked at the impact that earthquakes can have on people and the measurement on the Richter scale. They have also looked at the long term and short-term impacts of earthquakes on the people and on the land.

In Art, they have been ‘painting with scissors’. The children have been creating a Greek temple and Greek Gods using lots of different coloured pieces of paper and demonstrating their fantastic cutting skills.

Year 4’s final week in school before the holidays has been a super busy and fun one as it has been Art week.  The children really enjoyed learning about plinths and how they are used to display sculptures and other pieces of art.  The children learned about ‘The Fourth Plinth’ in London and also studied the sculptors of Thomas J Price.  The children began to appreciate that anything can be art and enjoyed considering how plinths help to display creations, giving artist’s creations status and grabbing people’s attention.  Creating their own plinths and selecting their own objects to be displayed, the children curated their own pocket-sized art gallery. 

As well as doing lots of art this week, Year 4 have also managed to squeeze in Guided Reading, Maths, Spanish, Music, PE and Dance!  I think that they are all ready for their half term break!

It has been a fantastic week in Year 5! The children put their persuasive writing skills to the test by crafting speeches inspired by The Big Good Pig and brought them to life using Animoji for some fun and expressive performances!

The children took part in a special live lesson, assembly and workshop for Safer Internet Day to explore how to stay safe and make smart choices online.

In their unit of work about Ancient Greece, the children have been learning about Greek Goddesses. They created engaging digital presentations using Sparks Video to showcase their knowledge of these fascinating mythological figures.

Their RE focus has been Hajj & Sawm and the children deepened their understanding of Islam by learning about the pilgrimage of Hajj and the significance of Sawm (fasting).

Year 6 have blown us away this week with their determination to succeed as they’ve faced another round of practice SATs. It’s been lovely to see them responding to feedback and working their socks off to ensure that their marks are going in the right direction.

However, it’s not all been about the tests this week! In geography, their exploration of the continent of North America continued with a closer look at Mount St Helens. The active stratovolcano, located in Washington, last erupted in 1980 and was one of the greatest volcanic eruptions ever recorded in the continent. In their last dance lesson of the term, the children worked in small groups and were given independent choice to select a form of dance and a theme – their final pieces were certainly very creative!

This week has been a busy and exciting time in school. On Monday our assembly introduced Children’s Mental Health Week and the children thought about how they can ‘Know themselves and Grow themselves.’ We talked about when we take notice of ourselves and how we feel, we are able to make better choices and be more connected with our feelings and behaviours. Noticing these things can help us recognise when we need support.

On Tuesday some of our Year 5 and Year 6 children took part in the MCSP basketball competition at Mossley Hollins. The team played a number of games against the other Mossley Primaries and they showed good skill and determination.  

On Wednesday Year 5 welcomed Odd Arts and members of the charity Show Racism the Red Card who came to share a performance based on the life of Len Johnson a black boxer from Manchester followed by a workshop which made the children aware of racism and helped them to understand how this can affect themselves and other individuals.

On Thursday volunteers from the NSPCC visited school to lead workshops with Years 2, 5 and 6 based on their Speak Out. Stay Safe programme.

On Thursday afternoon, as part of the Making it Real project, Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 enjoyed a performance. It was lovely to invite Nursery parents, carers and grand parents to join us for the performance and the children thoroughly enjoyed it.

In Nursery this week the children have been concentrating on motor skills, both gross and fine.  The children have been enjoying activities involving pinching, squeezing, stretching, pouring and balancing.  All of these skills are essential to help develop them into good writers. Nursery also watched the Tameside Story Makers session live on zoom, the story was ‘Jonty Gentoo’ by Julia Donaldson. First of all, they had to learn a penguin dance to get their bodies warm, then they played a game of ‘Guess who is missing’ from the characters in the story. Finally, they read the story and finished with a dough disco activity.  It was lots of fun!

Reception have enjoyed identifying facts about Dinosaurs this week. The children learnt what a Non-Fiction text is and enjoyed exploring a variety of texts to find out facts about dinosaurs. They then created their own dinosaur fact file and wrote sentences to share the facts they had learnt.

The children have been creating their own affirmations in light of it being Children’s Mental Health Week. They drew a self-portrait and wrote their favourite affirmation underneath. As a class, they put together all of their favourite affirmations to create a chant to remind them how special, clever and loved they are.

Their maths focus has been comparing amounts; the children have been using the key words ‘more’ and ‘fewer’ to describe and compare groups of objects.

This week, Year 1 have enjoyed creating and acting out stories using the ‘Helicopter Stories’ process.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been using the RekenWrecks in maths to double a number and add 1 more. In Geography they have been naming the world oceans and creating flip flap books to detail key facts for each ocean. 

Year 3 have had another great and busy week in school. In maths, the children have been working hard multiplying and dividing 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers using formal methods. They have used a range of methods and used their times tables knowledge to support them. In English, the children have continued to write their Greek Myths and they have been including some inverted commas for speech.

In RE, Year 3 have been looking at prayers and blessings for the world. They have looked at what they are thankful for, what they would like help with, what they are sorry for and what they would like people around the world to be protected from.

In geography, the children have been looking at earthquakes and they have located on a world map four famous earthquakes. They have looked at the impact of earthquakes on the people and the measurement on the Richter scale. In science, they have been looking at what their bodies need to stay healthy, looking at the different nutrients they need and what they do for their bodies

It has been a really fun and productive week in Year 4.  In maths, the children have just begun their new maths unit on perimeter and length.  They have spent some time converting between kms and m’s and have begun calculating the perimeter of rectangles.  In English, the children have finished off their ‘Escape from Pompeii’ recounts, using their Talk-for-writing to guide them.  The children did a fantastic job incorporating speech into their recounts and correctly punctuating this, as well as including fronted adverbials and powerful vocabulary.

In history, Year 4 pretended that they were archaeologists and compared Roman and Celt settlements, which was great fun.  In RE, they listened to some of Jesus’ parables and discussed what their meanings were.  They also spent a lot of time on their Computing unit this week, programming a screen turtle to draw letters and shapes. 

This week, Year 5 participated in an engaging and thoughtful Red Card to Racism workshop where the children learned about Len Johnson and his experiences with racism. They explored a variety of newspaper articles to understand the impact of racism in society and discussed ways in which they can be proactive in fighting racism and promoting equality. It was an insightful session that sparked important conversations about kindness, fairness, and respect.

Additionally, the children took part in the NSPCC Stay Safe, Speak Out workshop, which empowered them with knowledge about staying safe and speaking up when they need support.

In English, the class had a creative time innovating the ending of The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, showcasing their imaginative writing skills. They also celebrated the effort they put into their homework for the Wicked Writers competition. Their stories were a joy to read, full of creativity and expression, and they should be proud of their hard work.

In Year 6 this week, the work effort has been simply outstanding! In P.E, the children have been refining their volleyball skills. They successfully worked in pairs and small groups to develop their throwing, catching and serving skills. In maths, all of the children have worked incredibly hard to develop their algebraic mathematical skills. On Tuesday, the children were tasked with forming their own algebraic expressions using cubes- all of the children did an excellent job at simplifying and solving expressions.

In science this week, the children have continued to learn more about classification keys, and this week they were given the challenge of producing their own classification key for both vertebrates and invertebrates. The children thrived on this challenge, successfully creating description keys that others could then use.

It has been a busy week in school. Some of our Governors have visited school to see what support is taking place for our children with SEND. They observed a range of interventions and talked to the children about their support.

Year 6 have welcomed visitors into school to talk to them about Child Criminal Exploitation and to raise awareness and recognise the signs of what can happen. They also enjoyed a visit from Safe Squad today which allowed the children to think about a range of safety situations including learning how to perform CPR, staying safe online, fire safety and personal safety.

It has been a fun filled week in Nursery and the children have been learning about ‘Lunar New Year’.  The children welcomed a visitor who taught them how to count in Cantonese and a flight attendant from Jet2 showed us what they do in their job. 

Roleplaying the Chinese zodiac animals has been a firm favourite.  The children have sequenced them, counted them and painted them.

What an amazing time Nursery have had with their parents today when they came for ‘stay and play’.  They loved sharing these special times with them.

Chinese New Year celebrations have been in full swing in Reception this week. The children have listened to traditional Chinese music and tried Chinese food. They have been exploring Chinese New Year decorations and instruments and learnt how to say ‘Happy new year!’ in Chinese.

The children have been working hard using their Phase 3 phonics to write captions this half term and have been writing ‘I can see’ sentences independently. This week, Reception drew a picture of the Chinese foods they tried and wrote a caption to match it.

Their Maths focus has been recognising number bonds to 5. The children sung ‘5 little aliens on a flying saucer’ and learnt that 5 and 1 makes 6.

This week in Science, Year 1 have been exploring their senses. They have had fun investigating their senses of smell, taste, hearing, touch and sight.

In Year 2, the children have been doing a variety of fun activities this week! In Geography, they have used the atlases and globes to name and locate the 5 oceans in the world. The children listened to a very catchy song on YouTube to help them remember the size and order.

In Music, they have been appraising some classic ‘rock and roll’ songs from the 1950’s – this included ‘the twist’ and they even learnt the famous dance. The children loved this song and they enjoyed sharing their dancing video with their parents on Seesaw.

In English, They children have been writing a report about their pirate dinosaurs. Many of them have used a range of excellent adjectives and sentences starters. Well done Year 2!

Year 3 have had another great and busy week in school. In Maths, the children have been working hard when dividing 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers with remainders. The have used a range of methods and including their times tables facts. In English, they have been working extremely hard writing their Greek myths and have included some fantastic descriptions and details.

In RE, the children have been looking at how Hindus pray. They looked at where Hindus pray and how they can pray anywhere. They also looked at the Hindu shrine and thought about their own special items they might put on their shrines.

In Geography, Year 3 have looked at the features of a volcano and the children were able to label a volcano and look at the features of a volcanic eruption. In Science, they have looked at muscles and were able to identify the different muscles in their body they use when carrying out different activities. The children were also able to name how many muscles there are in the body and identify how they can keep their muscles healthy.

This week has been really fun in Year 4! In English, the children have continued writing their recounts of ‘Escape from Pompeii’ using their talk-for-writing to help them.  In Maths, they learned how to divide 2 and 3 digit numbers, using place value counters and part whole models to help them.

In History, the children learned about Boudicca and how she led a rebellion against the Romans.  They acted out the rebellion and then wrote rebellious speeches in the role of Boudicca. In Science, they carried out an experiment using yoghurt pot phones.  They wanted to learn how the length of the string effected the volume of the sound heard. 

In RE, the children listened to the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and discussed what this story told us about Jesus’ character.

This week in Year 5, they’ve had a busy and exciting time in class! In Maths, the children have been working hard with multiplication, using both the base 10 method and the area model to help deepen their understanding. These strategies have really helped them visualise the process and tackle more complex problems with confidence.

In English, the children have begun reading The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, and their creative energy has really shone through in their diary entries. Each student wrote a personal and imaginative entry from the perspective of one of the characters, bringing their personalities to life with vivid details.

In RE, they took a thoughtful approach to understanding prayer in Islam. The children worked on creating guides to help others understand the significance of prayer for Muslims, exploring the importance of faith, reflection, and community.

This week in Year 6 has been absolutely fantastic! The children have worked incredibly hard, aiming high throughout all of their lessons and showing a determination to succeed. In P.E, the children have been developing their volleyball skills and showcasing their competitive streaks. In maths this week, the children have been working really hard to understand tricky ratio problems involving recipes, and we brought these to life by devising our own flapjack recipe for 28 children. The children became mathematicians and used their skills to work out how much of each ingredient was required for the flapjack recipe. They then made the flapjack and it was simply delicious!

In English, they have continued the focus on their story: ‘The Lost Happy Endings.’ The children have used their creativity and imagination to innovate their own ending of the story. We have been thrilled with all of the ideas that the children have come up with and we cannot wait to see their finalised versions. In science, they have been looking at the classification of different animals and plants. The children were tasked with the challenge of developing their own classification systems and they did this in a variety of ways including: vertebrate or invertebrate for different animals, and deciduous or evergreen for different plants. To challenge the children even further, we then proposed the question: which scientist invented the classification system? They were fascinated to discover that it was a biologist named Carl Linnaeus, and the system that he created has been used for nearly 300 years!

This week has been Healthy School's Week. The children have been thinking about how they can keep themselves healthy both physically and emotionally. Our assembly on Monday focused on the Five Ways to Wellbeing and we considered what we can do to connect with others, keep on learning, give, be active and take notice and how considering these things can impact positively on our mental health and wellbeing.

In Nursery the children have enjoyed learning about healthy and unhealthy foods this week, linked to the whole school ‘Healthy Schools Week’.  They have read the book ‘Handa’s Surprise’ and thought about the different fruits that Handa has in her basket.  The children enjoyed making their own fruit kebabs and tasting the different fruits.

Reception had a very exciting start to the week; they came into school to find that their Dinosaur egg had hatched! The children were amazed to watch a video of the dinosaur playing and sleeping in their classroom over the weekend. They brain stormed where it might have run away to and went on a dinosaur hunt around school.

The children used their phonics to write a sentence explaining what happened to their Dinosaur egg and made posters to help find the dinosaur.

Their Maths focus has been number bonds to five this week. The children enjoyed using their five fingers to retell the story and used the stem sentence ‘4 and 1 makes 5’. They also used frog role-play masks and blue cloth to act out the song in groups of five. Using five frames and counters, they also wrote number sentences to represent the number bonds within the song.

The children have enjoyed their learning for healthy school's week. They discussed which foods are healthy and make them grow strong and which foods are a treat. The children made their own healthy food plate using different foods.

In RE, the children learnt that a Church is a special place of worship for Christians. They looked at the different features of a church and drew pictures of stained glass windows.

This week Year 1 have had their first week of working with Tom from the Royal Exchange and Lekhani a freelance play writer who gathered initial ideas with the children to create their own play. The children really enjoyed exploring ideas as a class and in small groups.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been completing their RSE curriculum which has involved looking at a variety of ways they can keep themselves safe. They have explored a range of scenarios and decided what the best course of action would be. The children were confident in identifying their safe adults and what they would do.

In RE, the children have learnt about the significance of the Mezuzzah and they even had the chance to make their own! We were impressed with the children’s prayers.

Year 3 have had another busy week in school. In Maths, the children have been working hard when dividing 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers using visual methods and the partitioning method. In English, they have been designing their own Mythical creature, creating a plan for their myth and they have started writing their opening.

In RE, Year 3 have been looking at how Muslims pray. They have learned about prayer times, which way they face when they pray and how they use a prayer mat. In class, they designed their own prayer mats.

This week for Healthy School's Week, Year 3 have been looking at a range of different themes. This has included safe and unsafe situations and they have discussed how their bodies feel during these situations. They looked at how their body gives them early warning signs to show and tell them when they don’t feel safe. The children have looked at different types of secrets and how they can be good or bad, how to stay safe online and understanding touch and their own personal space.

Year 4 have been learning all sorts this week.  In English, they have been focusing on powerful verbs. They are going to be writing a recount of the ‘Escape from Pompeii’ book and are hoping to be able to apply their learning into their writing.  The children have been using talk-for-writing techniques to help them with this.

In Maths, they have been learning how to use formal methods of multiplication. Initially, the children used practical equipment to help them with this, but now most of them are quite confident to solve multiplication problems without it! 

In History, Year 4 have learned more about how the Roman army were able to conquer and keep control over such a vast area. They used i-movies to help them create a radio broadcast, show-casing their learning. As it has been Healthy School’s Week, they have spent most of their afternoons looking at the Year 4 RSE curriculum.  The children learnt about all sorts of things, including puberty, good and bad touch, peer pressure and bullying.  Some of the Year 4 children also undertook Freddy Fit play leader training!

It’s been another busy week in Year 5! The children have been working hard on writing balanced arguments, this time debating whether the Three Little Pigs should be charged with the murder of the Big Bad Wolf – a great mix of creativity and critical thinking! In Maths, they’ve wrapped up their unit on fractions, with a focus on subtracting mixed numbers, which the children tackled with confidence.

In their Sex and Relationships lessons, the class showed great maturity and curiosity, asking thoughtful questions as they explored important topics such as puberty, sexual reproduction, challenging stereotypes, and understanding different types of families and relationships. They also discussed how to manage their feelings in these situations. It’s been an insightful week of learning and growing!

This week, in Year 6, their afternoon learning has been based on ‘Healthy School’s Week’, which has followed the Tameside RSE curriculum. The topics that have been discussed this week have been approached by Year 6 in a very mature and thoughtful manner. Year 6 began the week splitting into two groups based on gender and the session focused on female and male genitalia and labelling the different parts. After this, they discussed the meanings of different words linked to sexual health. Later in the week, Year 6 explored the rights that they have as individuals and a discussion about forced marriage was met with some very thoughtful contributions and provoked lots of talk.

Some of our Year 6s also attended a Mock Trial Competition at Tameside Magistrates Court last Friday. The children each had a different role to play as part of the Defence team carrying out a trial in one of the courts – we had a Defence Solicitor, a Defendant, an Usher, two witnesses and even a Magistrate. The children were exceptionally professional and definitely did Micklehurst proud – we were a little disappointed that the Defendant was found guilty but our team certainly argued their case with gusto!

It has been another busy week in school and the children are really enjoying learning about their new topics.

Penguins waddle, penguins have flippers and penguins love to eat fish.  These are some of the many facts that the children have learnt this week in Nursery.  The children have enjoyed being penguins, trying to waddle, flap their flippers, tobogganing and trying to carry eggs on their feet!  It was hard to be the Daddy penguin and look after their egg, it kept falling off their feet.

Nursery have had some amazing pictures of penguins painted by the children and can’t wait to display them in school.  On Wednesday the penguins got stuck in the ice and the children had to rescue them, it was hard work but they managed in the end to set them all free.

Reception have immersed themselves in their topic learning this week. They were excited to find a dinosaur egg in their classroom on Monday morning and are eagerly waiting for it to hatch. The children have enjoyed role play in the dinosaur role play area, writing dinosaur names and digging for fossils.

The children have created a text map for their focus story, ‘Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp’ and have enjoyed using actions to orally retell the story. The children then used their phonics knowledge to write simple captions to retell the story.

The children have been practising ‘I can see’ sentences. With lots of modelling, the children are now writing a simple ‘I can see’ sentence before the register in the morning.

Their Maths focus has been numbers to 1 to 5. The children have been ordering number blocks to 5 and recognising the ‘1 more’ pattern. The children have been playing subitising games to 5 using dice and picture cards and have worked well in pairs to do this.

In RE this week, the children went on a walk around school to recognise special and important places to them. Their favourite places were the tyre park, the adventure playground, the dinner hall and their classroom. The children drew pictures of their favourite place.

In Art this week, Year 1 have been exploring Watercolours and the different effects that can be made with them. The children really enjoyed exploring this media and creating different effects.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been looking at different ways we can speak out and stay safe. They watched an NSPCC online assembly and discussed who their ‘safe adults’ are and they created some excellent posters with all their key learning on.

In Geography, the children have been identifying the seven continents in the world. The used atlases and a very catchy song to learn the different continents and they also put them in size order! In RE, they enjoyed looking at a range of Jewish artefacts – the children loved dressing up and using some of the artefacts as part of their role playing.

Year 3 have had another busy week in school. In Maths, the children have been working hard multiplying 2 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers using visual methods and using the column method. In English, they have been retelling the myth Theseus and the Minotaur and have created a story board about the myth. They have worked very hard when creating a wanted poster for the Minotaur using a range of descriptions.

In Science, the children have continued their new unit called ‘Animals including Humans and have looked at the function of the skeleton. They discussed the reasons why they have a skeleton and looked at some of the joints in their bodies.

In Geography, Year 3 have been looking at the earth’s tectonic plates and have been labelling these on a world map, identifying which plate they live on. In RE, they have been looking at why they talk and have created a list of different reasons why they talk and discussed special people they could talk to. In Computing, the children have started looking at their new unit which uses an app called ‘Scratch’. They had great fun navigating around it.

This week, Year 4 have enjoyed reading more of their class text ‘Escape from Pompeii’.  The children have had fun acting out one of the scenes from the book and using this to help them to complete some work on speech and how to correctly use inverted commas. 

They have also delved deeper into their class topic on Romans, learning about the highly organised and skilled Roman Army, what life was like for Roman soldiers and what equipment and clothing they had.  In RE Year 4 have looked at different representations of Jesus across the world.  They really enjoyed thinking about why different people and countries might visualise Jesus in different ways. 

The children also began their new Science topic on sound this week. They began their topic by carrying out a variety of experiments which helped them to think about what sound actually is.  In the end, they all understood that sound is caused by something vibrating.  And finally, in Maths the children have continued their topic on multiplication and division, looking in further detail at how to multiply and divide numbers by 10 and 100. 

What an exciting and engaging week it’s been for Year 5! The children took part in the NSPCC’s Speak Out Stay Safe assembly, where they learned about the importance of keeping themselves safe and seeking support when needed. In English, they’ve been exploring their Twisted Fairytales unit, using drama strategies to retell The Three Little Pigs with a fun and imaginative twist.

In science, they investigated how a foetus grows during pregnancy by plotting scatter graphs to analyse data and observe patterns. A particular highlight of the week was watching a fascinating live lesson about creating a factory of the future, which inspired some wonderful discussions about innovation and teamwork.

The progress Year 6 have made with their understanding of ratios in maths has been very evident this week. They now know and can use ratio language as well as using the symbol of ratio accurately.  Their ability to identify patterns when problem solving has also improved.

Receiving a sack filled with strange objects proved incredibly intriguing for Year 6 in English this week and they needed put their expert detective skills to the test when exploring the items within the sack, which ranged from a woolly hat and scarf to a glove with six fingers! As each item was removed, Year 6 made predictions about who the items might belong to and what the new text might be. The deductions and inferences they made were very impressive; there are definitely some budding sleuths in Year 6. 

Exploring what makes a good website in computing proved a lively discussion with the children giving some very thought through responses to the question based on their own experiences.    

Happy New Year! Welcome back to School. We hope you have had a lovely Christmas and a well-deserved break. It has been lovely to welcome the children back and find out all about their exciting Christmas news.

Nursery have had a great first week back, the children have enjoyed talking about their Christmas gifts and having fun in the snow. Their topic for the next two weeks is Winter.  It has been great that the weather has been very wintery and has given the children and staff lots to discuss and see and it has allowed the children to experience WOW moments.  They have come up with some amazing words to describe the cold weather – freezing, slippery, chilly and many more.

Reception have had a lovely first week back at school and have enjoyed telling us all about their Christmas holidays. During circle time, the children shared one special present they got for Christmas. They then drew a picture of their present and used their phonics knowledge to label it too.

This half term’s topic is Dinosaurs and their focus book is ‘Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp’ by Carol Diggory Shields. The children enjoyed reading this story to introduce them to the new topic and exploring the dinosaur role play opportunities in the classroom.

Following our Mastering Number scheme, the children have enjoyed lots of subitising in Maths and have been ordering numbers 1-5.

Year 1 are lucky enough to have been chosen to take part in a project where they will be working with the Royal Exchange in Manchester. The children will be working with a professional play writer to write their own play. This will then be performed by professional actors at The Den in Stalybridge. Tom from the Royal Exchange came into school to introduce himself and the children had a great time playing games, making stories and sharing what they already know about the theatre.

It has been a very exciting week in Year 2. The children have been visited by an enormous T-Rex! He left them a fantastic book and asked them if the could create their own dinosaurs to join his pirate crew – the children found this very exciting. In Music, they have learnt how to appraise a piece of music and explored how Music makes them feel. They then learnt a song called ‘Rainbow’ before learning how to play the recorder. The children learnt how to play the notes ‘G’ and ‘A’ and Mrs Willcox was very impressed!

Year 3 have had a great first week back at school and they have been extremely busy with all of their learning.

This week in English the children have been looking at the Greek Myth ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’. They have looked at the maze where the Minotaur was kept and have tried to find their way out and they have been thinking of questions to ask the characters in the myth.

In Maths, they have been looking at using related calculations to help with multiplying and dividing and completing times tables and arithmetic tests. In Science, the children have started their new unit of learning entitled ‘Animals including Humans’ and they have been looking at the human body and labelling the skeleton with both the common name and the scientific name. The children worked scientifically by conducting their own research to name the bones.

In Geography, Year 3 have started to look at volcanoes and earthquakes and this week they looked at the layers of the earth and were confident to label them and name some facts about each layer.

During the first week back at school, Year 4 have begun their new History topic on Romans, looking at art-work and maps of the Roman Empire which showed some of their invasions and how the Empire expanded.  Linked in with this History topic, the children have begun reading their new class text ‘Escape from Pompeii’ by Christina Balit.  They enjoyed reading the first few pages together which describe what Pompeii is like and exploring their senses, thinking about what they might see, hear, smell and feel there.  The children had fun smelling some mystery items and seeing if they could work out what each smell was. They have also enjoyed acquiring some new vocabulary this week, using thesauruses to find synonyms for some familiar words. 

As well as this, Year 4 have begun reading their new Guided Reading text ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes.  In Maths, they have been looking at factor pairs and have also begun learning how to multiply decimal, one, two and three digit numbers by ten.  Their new RE topic is all about Jesus and why some people find him inspiring.  The children began this topic by considering who their own heroes/heroines are and discussing why they were inspired by them.

 Year 4 also enjoyed their first Dance lesson of the year on Wednesday.  The children had fun learning new dance moves, working in teams and showcasing their own dances.

Year 5 have had an exciting and productive first week back at school, and it’s been wonderful to see all the children eager to dive into their learning!

Their week kicked off with a special Computing Day, where pupils explored the world of video production. They learned about the importance of camera angles, positioning, and simple editing techniques to bring their creative ideas to life. It was a fantastic opportunity for everyone to develop their technical and creative skills.

In Design and Technology, the children turned their attention to programming and coding with micro:bits! They worked hard to create temperature sensors that can alert pet owners if their environment becomes too hot or cold. As part of this project, they used Tinkercad on iPads to design innovative housing solutions for their sensors.

The enthusiasm and creativity displayed by the children have been inspiring, and we can’t wait to see how they continue to grow in the weeks ahead!

It’s been a busy start to the term in Year 6. This week, they’ve embarked upon a brand new Graphic Design project as part of their art curriculum. The children brought in samples of cardboard packaging from home and they explored the design elements of each box and thought about what appeals to customers. The children also investigated a number of artists tasked with re-branding familiar products for supermarket shelves. They then explored the nets of their packaging and redesigned each one using different media and techniques – the children have really enjoyed learning about Graphic Design and it seems like it could be quite an interesting future career prospect for some!

There’s always a sense of excitement when a new text is introduced and this week has been no exception! Whilst the children are yet to discover the title of their upcoming fantasy picture book, they have been introduced to the villain! Our keen linguists used a range of descriptive writing techniques to describe the witchy-looking rogue and then used marbling and silhouetting to display their work in a brilliantly vivid and creative way.

It has been a very busy last week of term in school. The children have had so many exciting activities to get involved in, I don’t know how we have fitted everything in! They have enjoyed their Christmas parties and a surprise visit from a very special person who delivered a gift for every child. Christmas dinner was lovely on Thursday and the children enjoyed pulling crackers with their friends, telling each other jokes and eating their roast turkey and pigs in blankets.

On Thursday it was Christmas Jumper Day and we raised money for a local charity ‘Once Upon a Smile’ who support children who have suffered a bereavement by participating in a Santa Dash around school. It was amazing to see the Santa hats bobbing through the streets and hear the children singing carols. We also delivered handmade cards that Year 6 children had made to our neighbours to spread the Christmas cheer.

Our Christmas Bingo went down a treat with the children trying their best to win some chocolatey treats. Some of our children also enjoyed their Top of the Tree reward days and the visited Summit Up, Bounce Central and Tumbles.

On Tuesday our choir enjoyed a tour of Tameside! They sang carols for the Christmas shoppers at Mossley Co-Op, entertained the residents at Sandon House and then spread some festive cheer at Tameside Hospital. They were amazing!

We finished our week with a whole school Carol Service led by our Ethos group and it was a very festive affair to finish the term. We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

What an amazing final week in Nursery this term. The children performed their show ‘Whoops a Daisy Angel’ for their grown ups, had their EYFS party, played Bingo, completed the Santa Dash and watched a pantomime. 

PHEW!! I’m surprised they had any other time to make lots of Christmas fun food and enjoy a variety of other craft activities. HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE FROM NURSERY!

Reception have had a week full of festive fun. On Monday morning, they were superstars in their Nativity performance of ‘Whoops-a-Daisy Angel’. They also had lots of fun at their EYFS Christmas party, Santa dash, bingo and they enjoyed their Christmas dinner.

The children worked hard to decorate their toilet roll reindeers and they finger painted colourful fairy light pictures. They also made festive elf door hangers to take home and designed their own Christmas jumpers.

Year 1 had a great time at their Christmas Party! The enjoyed playing pass the parcel, dancing and eating their party food.

This week, Year 3 have been enjoying a range of Christmas activities. They ended the fun filled week with a traditional ‘Santa Dash’ around the local area spreading festive cheer with their singing. The pupils enjoyed a Christmas party which included party food and pass the parcel. At dinnertime they ate a delicious Christmas dinner and enjoyed a friendly game of Christmas bingo. The children have worked incredibly hard this year, and these treats were well deserved.

The final week in year 4 has been packed full of learning, fun and festivities.  In RE, the children learnt about the Jewish celebration of Shabbat and why this weekly day of rest is so important to Jewish families. In English they simply enjoyed listening and discussing ‘The Pugs of the Frozen North’ by Phillip Reeve. 

Year 4 also enjoyed sharing their Design Technology learning with the Year 2 children.  They showed them their kantha purses and they showed us their fabric Christmas stockings that they had made. The children also made some beautiful Christmas cards and learned how to make festive Fortune Tellers out of paper.  Things started to get super festive on Wednesday though when they enjoyed their Year3/4 class party.  Thursday was a day of serious festive fun too, with everyone wearing Christmas jumpers, completing a Santa Dash around the streets of Micklehurst and playing Christmas bingo.  On Friday, they all enjoyed watching a film in class and making their Christingles for the Christmas Carol service.  It was a really joyful and peaceful end to the week.

Year 5 have had an incredibly festive week, filled with holiday cheer and exciting activities! The children enjoyed Christmas bingo, a lively Christmas party, a fun-filled Santa Dash, and plenty of creative Christmas crafts and games. It’s been a wonderful way to celebrate the season together!

They’ve had a brilliantly festive end to the term in Year 6. The children have taken part in several Christmassy activities throughout the week and have thoroughly enjoyed getting in to the festive spirit! They’ve tried their luck at Christmas bingo, donned Christmas hats for our Santa dash, used a range of artistic techniques to produce some watercolour Christmas cards and crafted some mince pie themed ones too. The children also showcased some impressive dance moves at the Christmas Party!

In English this week, the children planned and wrote a set of instructions inspired by our Christmas performance of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. They planned some deliciously evil plots to steal Christmas and produced some fantastically festive decorations to make their work look superbly impressive!

It has been a festive week in school! Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 have put on two fantastic performances this week for their families, and they all did so well. We are very proud of them!

Our Key Stage 2 Dance group took part in the Tameside Believe and Achieve Dance Festival at Great Academy in Ashton on Wednesday and they really enjoyed performing to their parents. They were very excited when the team received their trophy for taking part.

Our School Councillors have been up to Mossley Library to donate the Christmas toys that we have donated to Tameside’s Toy Appeal. Thank you to all families who supported this initiative, we know it will make a difference to many children this Christmas.

The Christmas story has been the focus this week in Nursery.  The children have learnt about Jesus and the story of his birth.  They have retold the story using mask and puppets.  It has also been lots of fun rehearsing for their EYFS nativity next week, they are amazing singers and actors now.

On Wednesday the children enjoyed the Tameside libraries zoom Story Makers session, they played a game of hide and seek, what can you find? danced to Nellie the Elephant and listened to the story ‘The Elephant Detectives’.  The session ended with dough disco, the children had lots of fun.

This week in Reception, the children have enjoyed making Rudolph crafts using toilet rolls, paint and lots of glitter. They wrote gift tags and attached them to their Reindeer to gift to their families.

The children have been busy rehearsing and practising their lines for our Nativity. They have also been recapping their phase 2 phonics and have been spelling Christmas CVC words.

In Maths, they have been focusing on finding one more and one less of numbers up to 5. The children have been introduced to five frames, recognising when they are full and counting the spaces.

Year 1 visited Portland Basin to complete workshops about Victorian Toys and a Victorian Christmas. The children had a great time finding out how Christmas was celebrated in Victorian times and enjoyed having a go at some of the activities.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been getting into the festive spirit by designing and creating their own Christmas stockings. This has involved learning how to create a template, how to cut felt and how to join two pieces of material using a running stitch – this was very tricky but the children did a great job! They have also been creating some stunning Christmas cards and have performed their Christmas Nativity. What a busy week!

This week, Year 3 have been practising for their end of year Christmas performance but the drama hasn’t ended on the stage. They have also created their own dialogue, based on the book they are reading named ‘Stone Age Boy’. The children wrote the dialogue, rehearsed it and performed their scenes in front of the class.

This week has been Year 4’s Design Technology week.  The children have learned all about the tradition of Kantha in parts of Southern Asia.  For those of you that don’t know, Kantha is the process of recycling and repurposing of old saris and fabrics into new blankets and garments.  Kantha purses are sewn together using running stitch, so they practised this stitch in a needlework lesson.  They also learned about different kinds of fastenings (zips, buttons, Velcro, toggles etc).  The children thought about the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of fastening before deciding which kind they wanted to use for their purses.  They also spent some time looking through sari scraps and deciding which bits they might incorporate into their designs.  The children then spent time designing their Kantha purses (including a paper prototype), before making them.  They really enjoyed designing and making their purses. 

Year 4 did also manage to squeeze in some Maths, Guided Reading, Music, Spanish, PE and Christmas performance rehearsals this week too! 

This week, Year 5 have been hard at work crafting creative instructions inspired by The Grinch. The children have been writing detailed guides on "How to Steal Christmas." The children embraced their inner Grinch with enthusiasm and produced some fantastic work—well done to everyone!

They’re also thrilled to share that they’ve started an exciting telecommunications project with a school in Spain. To kick things off, the children created beautiful bilingual Christmas cards, blending English and Spanish to share holiday cheer.

Finally, the highlight of their week has been the children’s dedication to rehearsing for their Christmas performance. Their hard work truly paid off with an incredible show that made us all proud. A big thank you to the children for their effort and to our families and carers for their support!

Year 6 produced two fantastic performances of ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ this week! They wowed and amazed us, from their energetic singing and dancing, to their superb acting skills, they brought the show alive!  Well done Year 6!

The Grinch theme continued into our English lessons this week! Receiving the task of writing a set of instructions about ‘How to steal Christmas’ excited Year 6 and when they realised their finished work would be part of a competition, they were fully immersed! To begin, they identified structural and linguistic features of a set of instructions. Next, they worked together to plan ideas for their instructions. Based on these ideas alone, we know that whoever is tasked with judging their final pieces will have a very difficult decision.

In Computing, Year 6 enjoyed entering information, about the journey times to different attractions, into a spreadsheet and then proved very competent in inserting a formula into a cell to calculate how much it would cost in petrol to get to the attraction. 

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas in school! The children have been busy practising their Christmas performances and are really looking forward to performing for all their parents and carers next week.

Christmas has certainly arrived in Nursery this week, with the arrival of their Elf Sprinkle.  He has been up to no good and the children had to use their Elf boards to write messages to Father Christmas to let him know.

They have also been busy making their Christmas list to send to Father Christmas, we know he is going to enjoy reading them.

Our Christmas show is in production and the children are singing and acting beautifully.

This week Reception enjoyed reading the Nativity story and re-enacting the story in their Nativity stable role play area. The children were also excited to meet their Christmas elf- Belle and to decorate the classroom for Christmas.

The children used their cutting skills to make a nativity scene and labelled some of the nativity characters.

Their Maths focus has been making 5 and the children used blocks to make towers of 5. They also practised their subitising to 5 and sung the song ‘5 little speckled frogs to develop their understanding of how 5 is made. 

The children have also been practising spelling CVC words using their phase 2 sounds ahead of starting their phase 3 learning next week.

To celebrate all their hard work this half term on their text Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers, Year 1 have enjoyed a penguin party. The children made penguin hats, had a penguin biscuit and drink, searched for chocolate baubles and then sang a snowman song. They had a great time!

In Year 2 this week, the children have been exploring what humans need in order to be healthy. They learnt how to find their pulse and then they explored which exercises would increase their heart rate the most. The children found this very tiring!

In their Mastering Number work, they have been looking at the composition of the number 9 and the used 9 squares and counters to write their equations – this was lots of fun!

This week, Year 3 have been comparing igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. They tested how durable and permeable they were. The data was then collected in a table and discussed. In Spanish, the children have continued to learn everyday phrases that they may use in the classroom.

As always, it has been really busy in Year 4.  In Maths, the children have continued working on multiplication and division, looking at what happens when you divide a number by 1 or itself.  They have also learnt how to multiply three numbers together.

In English, the children have begun writing their character descriptions, based on characters from their class text Pugs of the Frozen North. In Science, they learnt about the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees and used classification keys to help them identify different leaves.

In RE the children have learned about how Jewish people celebrate Shabbat every week and the important rituals and rules that they follow when they do so.  Year 4 have also spent lots of time practising their songs and lines for Micklehurst’s Christmas production.  They are all feeling very festive now!

This week has been a busy one in the classroom, as Year 5 have been focusing on assessments. Mrs Fernandez is so proud of how hard each child has worked. Their focus and effort have truly been impressive, and it's clear that they are giving their best in everything they do.

The children approached each task with dedication and determination, and I can already see the progress they've made. With so much hard work behind them, I thought it was only fair to give them a little reward. So, to celebrate their perseverance, Mrs Fernandez has decided that this week will be a no homework week!

With rehearsals for the Christmas performance in full swing, learning time in Year 6 this week has focused on completing end of term assessments. Year 6 have wowed us with their resilience and perseverance when completing these assessments! The progress they have made has been fantastic to see too! 

In Spanish, our budding linguists have been learning all about healthy lifestyles. Over the last few weeks, the children have been acquiring lots of new vocabulary and building sentences to share their healthy and unhealthy habits. This week, they were able to plan, write and decorate their very own Spanish paragraphs - they were certainly very impressive!

It has been another busy week in school. The children have met with some of our Governors to talk to them about all the things they learned about during Black History Month and to share the work they had produced. Our Governors were very impressed!

The children have started to practice their Christmas performances and learn their Christmas songs, and some have even been decorating their class Christmas trees so it has started to feel very festive in school!

In Nursery this week, the children have been continuing their learning about the Gingerbread Man. They have been creating their own class gingerbread man, baking gingerbread men and going on a gingerbread man hunt. They had lots of fun.

This week in Reception, the children have been finding out all about nocturnal animals, what nocturnal means and which animals are nocturnal. In Maths, they have been learning all about the part whole model and have been adding two numbers together to make five.

This week in Science, Year 1 have been exploring seasons. The children have completed a few experiments to remove colour from the leaves as they have observed happen in Autumn and they have also been making snow and ice crystals like they see in Winter.

In Year 2 this week, the children have had a very exciting visit from some Gingerbread men! They also received two letters from Granny and she delivered a special book all about their adventures. In Maths they have been learning about the properties of 3D shapes – this has included looking at the number of vertices, edges and faces.  

This week, Year 3 have been continuing their research on the stone age. In History, they studied how their ancestors recorded what they saw or believed by painting and sketching on cave walls. In Art, they replicated and then created some of their own stone age paintings.

Year 4 have been very busy again this week.  In Maths, the children continued working on multiplication and division and they have been multiplying and dividing by 7, 11 and 12.  In English, they have created a persuasive poster as well as completing some sentence level and drama work, which will help them when writing character descriptions next week. 

In Geography, the children used atlases to locate the main mountain ranges and significant mountains across the UK and in RE they learned about why and how Muslims celebrate Eid and compared this celebration to Easter, thinking of similarities and differences between them. 

Christmas preparations have also commenced this week, with Year 4 practising their lines and Christmas songs!  They have had loads of fun and can’t wait to continue their learning next week!

In Geography this week, Year 5 have been learning all about the layers of the rainforest and finding out all about the climate, plants, animals, food and medicine that can be found there. The children produced some fabulous double page spreads using information they found.

In English, they have been planning and writing newspaper articles about how the Gritterman lost his job. They will be typing them up on to pages using a newspaper template so that they look professional.

In maths the children have continued with fractions and adding and subtracting fractions with the same and different denominators and adding mixed numbers.

What a busy fun-filled week it has been in Year 6! It began with bringing together everything the children had learnt about fractions over the past couple of weeks to solve problems involving the addition and subtraction of fractions and mixed numbers. Not only did they wow us with their knowledge and written methods of working, they impressed us with their ability to explain and model on the whiteboard how they went about solving the problems. There are definitely some budding teachers in Year 6!

In English, the poem ‘The Highwayman’ continued to captivate and engage Year 6. This week, their focus turned to the structure of the poem and having identified the features of a single verse, they wrote an extra verse for the poem. The verses they wrote were fantastic and they loved sharing them with each other too. There are definitely some budding poets in Year 6 too!

Year 6 impressed the sports coach during their hockey lesson, demonstrating a great awareness of the game and a better understanding of how to defend effectively.

It has been an exciting week in school. Mrs Brown and Mrs Larnder-Cox have been to visit some of our Nursery children at home to read a story with them. This is part of our Making it Real project and the children and parents really enjoyed it.

Year 2 have been to the Fire Ground Museum in Rochdale to enhance their learning about the Great Fire of London. The children were able to look at an old fire engine, use the fire hose to put the flames out of the Tudor houses and compare todays fire equipment with that of the past.

We have welcomed lots of prospective parents and carers into school for our open morning this week and it was lovely to show them around school and listen to our children describe how special Micklehurst All Saints is.

Our choir are also looking forward to their attendance at the Micklehurst Light Switch on later where they will be singing a range of carols and meeting Santa!

This week Nursery have been reading ‘The Gingerbread Man’.  The children have been very enthusiastic with the language in the story and can all recite the repeating phrase “run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man.”

They have made a whole class gingerbread house and a gingerbread man using shapes and patterns. The children enjoyed making gingerbread men out of playdough and retelling the story in the tuff tray.

Reception have been learning all about Autumn this week. The children enjoyed their Autumn walk to observe the seasonal changes. They found lots of half bare trees, colourful leaves and it was very windy! Following this, the children made an Autumn booklet. They used their phonic knowledge to write what they saw on their walk.

The children also worked hard to paint Autumn trees using lots of warm autumnal colours.

Part whole models were their Maths focus this week. The children learnt that a whole jigsaw is made up of lots of different parts and they learnt what a part whole model looks like. They then had a go at making 3 using a part whole model and numicon.

In DT, Year 1 have completed their puppets this week. They have decorated their puppets, evaluated them and shared them with the children in Year 6. They have really enjoyed this project!

This week, Year 3 have been learning about the different properties of rocks. As a class they agreed on four characteristics to categorise the different rocks. After that, they decided on their own and then shared their findings with the class.

Year 4 have been up to all sorts of fun things this week.  In Maths, they have continued with their multiplication and division topic, looking at the 3, 6, 9 and 7 times tables and identifying patterns within them.

In Geography, the children have been looking at what the climate of a mountain is and how this influences the lives of those people that live near them.  In RE they have learned more about the Hindu celebration of Diwali and in Science they have been looking at animal classification keys. 

Year 4 have also been busy with their daily Guided Reading and arithmetic as well as spelling and handwriting practice, not to mention Music, PE/Swimming and Music lessons.  I’m never quite sure how they manage to fit it all in, but they do!

In Year 5 this week, the children have been learning all about fractions; they have been converting mixed numbers to improper fraction and vice versa. In English, the children have written some brilliant descriptions full of rich imagery and higher order vocabulary.

In Science they have been comparing life cycles and they even made magnets! The children rubbed paperclips along the blade of some scissors to manipulate the electrons inside to create a uniform pattern in the paperclip to create a magnetic field.

This week in R.E., Year 6 explored the life of the Prophet Muhammad by reading a short extract about his life. After reading this, they identified character traits of the Prophet Muhammad and highlighted examples in the text. Then, Year 6 considered why he is so important to Muslims, ranking statements about him from what is most important to Muslims to what Year 6 considered is least important. 

In English, Year 6 discovered whether their theories about what had happened at the crime scene were correct. There were many shocked and surprised faces when the truth was revealed. Before reading The Highwayman, Year 6 made inferences about the poem based on the front cover as well as posing questions about the text. After reading the poem, they then identified any unfamiliar words and considered the meaning of them. Watching Fleetwood Mac’s music video version of The Highwayman not only brought the story alive but really engaged Year 6. 

It has been another busy week in school as we celebrated Anti-Bullying week and Odd Socks Day. This year’s theme was Choose Respect and the children discussed how we can show respect to others. They also wore odd socks to celebrate how everyone of us is unique.

On Monday morning we had our Remembrance Service in school and we remembered the soldiers who had fought for our country in the World Wars. The children took part in a two minute silence and Mr Orr, our Music teacher, played the Last Post. It was a lovely service and the children showed respect and compassion as they remembered those who had lost their lives.

Year 4 have enjoyed a visit to Mossley Library this week. They were able to explore the library and the books they on offer and they found out how to find books of interest. They were also able to join the library if they weren’t already a member and the children were excited about their visit when they returned to school.

Some of our Year 6 children took part in the MCSP Matsh Challenge on Wednesday and they really enjoyed working together to solve a range of mathematical puzzles and problems.

Today our Y5 and Y6 children have been involved in a performance by Blind Side, a 20 minute monologue followed by a facilitated workshop and discussion on the topic of violence against women and girls. The children really enjoyed the performance and the workshop generated some really insightful questions and comments.

We have also raised money for Children in Need by coming to school dressed in spots, Pudsy themed paraphenalia or anything yellow. 

What an amazing week the children in Nursery have had! They started the week looking at poppies and why they are special on Remembrance Day.  The children were all silent at 11 o’clock for two minutes, then they went to paint poppies, make them in the playdough, colour some wreaths and have a go at drawing poppies. They then colour washed them during squiggle and write.

At the end of the week Nursery took part in raising money for Children in Need. They decorated cakes, painted their faces with spots and played Pudsey I spy.

This week Reception learnt about the importance of Remembrance Day. They learnt that the soldiers fought in the war for us and that poppies are a symbol of remembrance and hope for a peaceful future. The children worked hard to paint a picture of poppies in a field.

Their maths focus has been comparing quantities. They have been comparing quantities of 2 sets of objects by matching them 1:1 and observing how many objects are left over. The children have been using their fast eyes to practise subitising to 4.

The children have been working hard on their phase 2 phonics and have been using their handwriting boards to spell simple CVC words and simple sentences matched with their phonic knowledge.

Reception have been learning about people who help us in RE this week. They discussed special jobs in society such as nurses, police and farmers and drew a picture of what they might want to be when they grow up.

This week in Year 1 the children have been designing and making a puppet as part of their Design and Technology unit of work. Last week they found out about different types of puppets then designed four different ones. The children then completed their favourite design and the one that they wanted to make. This week they have worked hard to sew their puppets together.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been learning all about Remembrance. This has involved writing a variety of poems and letters to show their thanks to the soldiers.

During their Anti- Bullying lessons the children have thought about different ways they can show respect to others. They have also been celebrating their differences and have created some fantastic posters to decorate their classroom.

This week in Year 3 the children have been following instructions to create a sun out of card, tissue paper and PVA glue to cheer up ‘The Weather Monster’ which we have read in class. All children were able to follow instructions and make a brilliant model, well done!

It has been a really busy in Year 4 this week.  The children started their week with a trip to Mossley Library.  The children were really inspired and lots of them became library members which is fantastic. In English this week, after planning them carefully, they have begun writing their non-chronological reports on Pugs and they will continue with this writing next week too.

In Maths, the children have continued with their multiplication and division topic, looking at patterns and using little tricks to help them remember some of their times tables.  In Geography, they have started to learn about the different types of mountains and how they are formed.  The children used plasticine to construct models of the different mountains. 

In RE, they have been looking at why Holy Week is a special time for Christians and they looked at some of the symbolism associated with this celebratory week. 

This week in Year 5 the children have enjoyed taking part in the England Rocks competition on TTRockstars where they have been competing against over 4,000 schools. The children were amazing and worked so hard!

In Science they started their new unit; Living Things and their Habitats. The children played a game of Headbands where each child had a picture of an animal and had to ask each other yes or no questions to find out which animal they had! Lots of brilliant scientific questions were used!

For Remembrance Day, Year 5 made some wonderful landscape art. The children enjoyed this activity and used the quiet time for reflection.

Year 6 started the week with reflection and a thoughtful decision about Remembrance Day and what they understand Remembrance to mean. After observing a two minutes silence, Year 6 read a poem, entitled Remembrance Day, and discussed the structure of the poem realising that each line of the poem contained a metaphor. Creatively and sympathetically, Year 6 generated their own metaphors to describe Remembrance and using the opening, ‘Remembrance is…’ they produced superb poems! After completing a first draft, they edited them and finally, they rewrote their poems neatly. Keep an eye out for a display outside Year 6 to celebrate this amazing work!

Beginning the latest computing unit, ‘Data and Information’, engaged Year 6 and the opportunity to generate and organise their own data proved very exciting. Working with a partner, their task was to roll a dice five times each and to work out who achieved the highest score recording the data in a method they chose. Using Numbers on their iPads, they inputted the data they had obtained.

Making blood in science was another particular highlight this week! Year 6 thoroughly enjoyed using different items to represent different components of blood. By the end of the lesson, they could identify the five main components of blood.

Welcome back to school! We hope you have had a restful half term and are looking forward to the term ahead.

Nursery have had a great first week back, their theme this week has been Diwali and Bonfire Night.  The children have enjoyed making firework pictures to celebrate Diwali, using their fine motor skills to make diva pots out of clay and learnt a new Diwali dance.

They also enjoyed having the parents in for ‘stay and play’ on Friday morning.  Thank you to everyone who attended.

Reception have enjoyed their week celebrating Diwali. The children read ‘Binny’s Diwali’ and watched a video of a Diwali celebration. The children drew mehndi patterns, made diva lamps with playdough, used their cutting skills to make Rama and Sita cone people and drew pictures of the different ways we celebrate Diwali. 

Reception also enjoyed learning about Bonfire night and made edible breadstick sparklers.

In Maths, their focus has been on the number 5. The children sang ‘5 currant buns’ and ‘5 little peas’ and acted out the songs using props and counters.

During their last week at Forest School, Year 1 experienced making a fire, toasting marshmallows and tucking into smores.

In Year 2 this week, the children have started their new topic in Science, based on animals including humans. They watched a variety of videos and learnt all about how animals have offspring.  

This week, Year 3 researched facts about the stone age and worked together to record their findings. They learned why it is called the stone age, when it was and what life was like. They also celebrated bonfire night by writing an acrostic poem and sharing them with the class.

The first week back in Year 4, has been full of new topics and fun.  In Maths, the children have begun their new unit on multiplication and division.  They have been focusing on the 3, 6 and 9 times tables and their corresponding division facts. In English, they have started to read ‘Pugs of the Frozen North’ by Philip Reeve and have been looking at some of the figurative language used in the book, including similes, personification and onomatopoeia.  The children have also begun looking at the features of non-chronological texts and carrying out research in to the Pug breed as the are going to be writing their own non-chronological reports next week. 

In Science, Year 4 have begun their new topic on animals and their habitats and have looked at how and why animals are classified as well as thinking about some of their own ways of sorting them.  In RE, they began their new ‘Celebrations’ topic.  They discussed a variety of celebrations that they know about and sorted them into religious and non-religious celebrations.

In Geography, the children began their new mountain topic and learnt what the correct definition of a mountain is and the geographical features that a mountain always has.  As well as being introduced to lots of new topics, Year 4 have also completed their usual daily/weekly activities too; lots of guided reading, arithmetic, spelling, Music and PE/Swimming. 

What an amazing week back after half term! Year 5 started the week by listening to The Gritterman in their PJs, the story was lovely alongside mesmerising songs and of course a warm hot chocolate. Since reading the story the children have been creating character descriptions and feelings graphs.

On Thursday they had ‘Astronaut Training Day’ where they took off to the Micklehurst Space Station. The children had the opportunity to spend their morning inside a massive inflatable planetarium in which they learned all about the International Space Station with Tim Peake and took part in lots of different activities. They all had an amazing time!

What a productive and busy first week back in Year 6! It began with Year 6 throwing themselves into a new fractions unit of work in maths. Competently and confidently, they were able to explain what it means for a fraction to be in its simplest form and they used their knowledge of common factors to simplify given fractions.

Year 6 enjoyed joining Year 5 to take part in a KoothKlass webinar based on the topic of ‘Friendship and Boundaries’. During the session, they were informed about Kooth.com, which is a free, anonymous, online counselling and emotional wellbeing service for young people aged 10+. They were shown how to navigate the website and how to set up their own accounts. Many of the topics discussed during the webinar proved incredibly thought provoking and Year 6 gave some fantastic responses.

With the first MCSP Debating Society debate taking place at the end of the week, their English work has focused on researching the topic for the debate which is whether all students should wear school uniform. Working in groups, they considered arguments for and against the topic and then used iPads to research statistics and data to back up their arguments. Once this research and preparation was complete, Year 6 engaged in a debate of their own. With a speaker of the house leading the debate, both sides made convincing arguments and did so using some brilliant persuasive techniques. With this work behind them, our team were victorious in the first debate of the year!

This week has been a lovely end to a very busy half term! Today in a special sharing assembly, the children have showcased the work they have been covering during Black History Month. We have found out about Martin Luther King, Alma Thomas, Ruby Bridges, Floella Benjamin, Mae Jemison, Paul Stephenson, Whitney Houston, Bob Marley, James Brown, Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald.

Our Eco Councillors have been very busy this week organising a costume swap to recycle any unwanted fancy dress costumes. This was really successful and many children having donated some of their unwanted costumes, were able to choose a new costume for their upcoming fancy dress parties.

Year 6 have enjoyed their residential to Crowden Outdoor Education Centre in Glossop where they experienced a range of activities including canoeing, crate stacking, weaseling, orienteering and the night walk, to name but a few. For some of the children this was their first time away from home and the first time to have taken part in activities like these, so many of them have faced personal challenges throughout the few days they were away. We are very proud of them and are thrilled that they have all enjoyed achieving their personal goals.

This week in Nursery has been all about Owls and how they are nocturnal animals.  The children have found out lots of facts, for example owls like to eat mice and worms and they have amazing hearing. They have enjoyed painting and decorating their own owl and they look fantastic on the class display.

During phonics Nursery have been following a beat using their tapping sticks, they are getting very good and will soon be able to use them to follow a nursery rhyme.

Reception’s topic book for this week has been ‘Leaf Man’. The children enjoyed exploring the tyre park hunting for autumn leaves and conkers and observing the seasonal changes. The children then used autumn leaves and googly eyes to make a stick person.

Reception have also been sharing ideas of how to be a good friend. They drew a picture of things they can do to show love to their friends.

In Maths, the children have been using new mathematical language ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to describe collections of objects.

Year 1 had a lovely Autumn Walk on Wednesday. They went to the woods at Egmont Street to look for signs of Autumn and then made the most of a good excuse to play on the park. The children had a lovely morning!

In Year 2 this week, the children have been enjoying art week. They have been looking at spirals and drawing spirals using a range of media.

This week, Year 3 conducted an experiment measuring shadows. An object was placed at different distances away from a screen. The children discussed their results and wrote a conclusion using scientific terminology, analysing what happened to the height and appearance of the shadow.

The final week at school before the holidays has been fun-packed in Year 4. In Maths the children have begun their measurement unit on area and they calculated the area of shapes by counting squares and have then compared the area of different shapes. 

For the remainder of the week, they have been looking at patterns in art and exploring the work of various artists who use repeated patterns in their creations.  They created their own tessellated pattern artwork based on Morris Escher and Bridget Riley. 

The children also enjoyed performing their Black History Month song ‘Hit the Road Jack’ by Ray Charles as well as reading some of their poems inspired by Paul Stephenson, leader of the Bristol Bus Boycotts of 1963.  They shared these with the entire school in an and of term assembly and also got to share the songs and work created by the other year groups.

This week in Year 5, the children have made an amazing collage of Mae Jemison in homage to Black History Month. They also created Adobe Spark Videos about people who inspired Mae Jemison and were also inspirational black people. They have been practicing their song, ‘Shackles’ all week long and performed it amazingly!

In Maths the children have been learning all about factors, prime numbers, square numbers and cube numbers.

In Art they have used watercolours and pens to create beautiful landscapes. The children have worked really hard and created some eye catching pieces in their sketchbooks.

Our Year 6s have risen to the challenge of a Crowden Residential this week – they’ve proven to be daring, adventurous and resilient team mates and have made memories that will last a life time. The children rose to every challenge with gusto – they weaseled their way through caves, climbed crate towers, honed their shooting skills in archery and canoed their way across the cold waters of Crowden. We even ventured out in to the dark each night as we went for a walk under the stars and mastered an orienteering course that really put our team working skills to the test. With all that said though, it seems that the toughest challenge of all was making their own beds – there were definitely some interesting methods on show!

It has been an exciting week in school. The children have been learning about Black History Month throughout October and on Tuesday the children took part in the Black History Month Big Live Assembly. They have also been learning about significant black people and singers who have made a significant impact during their lives. 

The children have all had their photographs taken this week either individually or with their siblings and the younger children thought this was very exciting!

In Nursery this week, the children have continued learning about Autumn. They have been collecting autumn things in the outdoor areas and have been making hedgehogs.

This week Reception’s learning focus has been ‘big feelings’. The children enjoyed lots of emotion stories such as ‘The Colour Monster’ and ‘The Weather Inside Me’. They enjoyed joining in with the actions.

In circle time this week, the children passed around their class teddy and shared how they were feeling today. They then did an action or a facial expression to represent their emotion.

In Maths, the children have continued using their ‘fast eyes’ to subitise to 4 and have been making their own repeating patterns.

Year 1 are loving this year’s Forest School! This week the children enjoyed making bird feeders and jewellery along with their usual mud kitchen, swings and hammocks!

In Year 2 this week, the children have been having an ‘eggcellent’ time during their Science lessons. They have been investigating which material would protect Humpty Dumpty when he had a great fall. They had some super ideas to investigate and it was lovely to see the children using their working scientifically skills. It was a very memorable lesson.

This week, Year 3 have been learning about sketching in Art. The children took photographs of leaves around school, chose their favourite and carefully sketched and coloured the leaf in their sketchbook. They then evaluated their sketches and attempted another sketch with improvements.

This week in Maths, Year 4 have been consolidating their knowledge of how to use the column method for addition and subtraction.  They have spent lots of time applying their knowledge so that they can solve word and reasoning problems.

In RE, they have spent some more time looking at how and why the Hindu culture is so vibrant as well as preparing some interesting questions for their trip to the mandir.  On Friday, they had a lot of fun when they actually visited the mandir.  It was so interesting being able to explore the mandir and to learn a little more about how Hindu people worship.

In science Year 5 have been learning how night and day happens with the Earth’s rotation. They used globes and torches to conduct an investigation.

In English, they have been writing their very own stories based on Weslandia. Their story writing skills have been amazing! They all made sure to include dialogue and relative clauses too.

In computing, the children have been busy learning how search engines work and comparing different ones, the children were surprised that there were more than just Google.

This week, as part of their Black History month celebrations Year 5 took part in a live online assembly addressing issues black people face today and celebrating famous black people in history.

Our Year 6s found themselves tasked with quite the challenge this week as they were presented with a series of clues. Each clue came in its own envelope and revealed a section of a bigger picture – the children were invited to use their visual literacy skills to make inferences about the images and predict who might be in the photograph, when it was taken and what was taking place. Each group of detectives came up with some brilliantly intelligent inferences and predictions before the full image and its context was revealed. The children learned that the photograph was of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old being escorted to school by US Marshalls amid a riot of protestors because she was the first black pupil to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.  The children were really inspired by her story and are now carrying out their own research in order to produce an Adobe Sparks Video about her life and the impact her actions have had on future generations.

They’ve also been developing their spelling knowledge this week by looking at a range of compound adjectives. The children worked in pairs to match the adjectives and add the all-important hyphen before using some of them in their own sentences.

It has been another exciting week in school. Year 5 and Year 6 took part in an interactive workshop led by the charity ‘Show Racism the Red Card.’ They watched a performance online and discussed in groups key questions around the theme of the performance.

Some of our Year 5 and Year 6 children took part in Tameside Lionesses Football event on Thursday at Curzon Ashton Football Club. The team played a number of matches to develop their football skills and started to learn how to play as a team. They had a great time.

In Nursery this week, the children have been learning all about Autumn. The children have enjoyed finding out about conkers, acorns and pinecones and have been conker rolling in paint, printing with the pinecones and investigating whether the items sink or float. They have also been collecting leaves on the playground to cut up.

This week, Reception’s learning focus has been ‘my body.’ The children started the week by singing the action song ‘I have a body’ and drawing around Tobie on a large piece of paper. Together, the children drew Tobie’s body parts and labelled the initial sounds.

The children have been working hard on their Phase 2 Phonics this week and have learnt the graphemes ‘g’, ‘k’ and ‘e’.  The children are now progressing from spelling using manipulatives such as bottle tops and magnetic letters to writing on the handwriting boards. The children learnt that we have the sky, grass and ground and that their letters sit on the grass.

Their Math’s focus has been the numbers 2 and 3. The children have been using their fast eyes to subitise up to 3 and they know that 3 is made of ‘one and another one and another one.’ The children went on a number 3 number hunt and collected 3 objects in a hoop.

On Friday Year 1 enjoyed another Forest School session! The weather has been very kind to them so far.  This week the children enjoyed learning how to tie knots and then had a great time working in teams to build shelters.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been using their tens frames and counters to add by making 10 – using the manipulatives has helped the children to see how many more they need to add to make ten. In Computing, they looked at how the quality of lighting can impact the pictures we take. They enjoyed using torches, lamps and natural light to take a variety of pictures.

In Geography, the children used maps and atlases to locate and label the islands surrounding the United Kingdom. They also looked at interesting coastlines such as the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.

This week, Year 3 have been fortunate enough to go on two school trips. Firstly, the children attended ‘Experience Harvest’ at Mossley Methodist Church. They learned all about harvest through a carousel of different activities including paper boat making, food tasting and clay sculpting. Later in the week, they visited Mossley Hollins High School for a morning of Spanish learning. The children learned how to say colours, numbers and different types of food, followed by a dinner where they could sample Spanish cuisine. They had a fantastic time!

It has been a busy week again in Year 4.  In Maths, the children have begun looking at the formal method of column addition and subtraction.  They learned how to do this in Year 3, so this Maths unit consolidates their learning as well as taking them on to trickier word problems and reasoning tasks. 

In English, the children finished writing their instructions about how to make Canopic jars.  They edited their work and wrote their instructions up neatly as they wanted to show-case how hard they have been working on their handwriting and presentation skills.  After the half term, we are going to give our instructions to another class to see if they can follow them.

In Science, Year 4 learned more about animal teeth and began looking at food-chains and in RE they looked at how vibrant Hindu life in Britain is, but also considered how it might be difficult being part of two cultures (British and Hindu) at times. 

On Friday, the children had a pyramid day in Year 4, where they learned about the Great Pyramids of Egypt, did some Maths work on 3D shapes, completed some pyramid sums and enjoyed constructing their own pyramids out of a variety of materials. 

This week in Year 5, the children interviewed Brian James, for a Christian opinion about their big RE question this half term, is God real? The children asked some very thoughtful questions and listened carefully to Brian’s opinions.

In History they have learnt about Viking life and created some eye-catching double page spreads full of information and research.

They took part in a workshop led by Show Racism the Red Card where they learnt about the lives of Len Johnson, who’s life has proved an inspiration to others throughout the decades since he died, and Ruby Williams who wants UK schools to have better guidelines on uniform policies so that people can’t be discriminated when walking into school.

Learning to use the prefix co and re proved very exciting this week. Year 6 loved creating their own words using these prefixes and they all knew to put a hyphen between the prefix and the root word. When Year 6 were questioned about whether they were using a hyphen, they knew they were splitting the prefix from the root word because there would be two vowels together. Later in the session, they were able to put the words in the context of a sentence. 

Continuing to develop their computing work also engaged and excited Year 6 this week. Collaborative learning was the focus of this week’s session and it entailed creating a Padlet about Crowden (the destination of their up-and-coming residential). They enjoyed researching information about Crowden and then uploaded this onto their group’s page.

In science, Year 6 developed their understanding of natural selection, the process behind evolution. It started with them listening to the story, Moth: An Evolution Story, which was read by different Year 6 children. Later, they chose two animals and researched how the animals adapted to suit the environments they inhabit. They used Seesaw to produce informative pages about this.

This week we have celebrated Harvest, and the children enjoyed our Harvest Festival today which was led by our Ethos Council. It was lovely to see so many parents, carers and family members join us for the service in school. There were lots of donations from our families which will support our local Food Bank in the community.

This week, Reception have been exploring their five senses. They enjoyed listening to different music genres, smelling perfume, tasting zesty lemons and oranges, touching sensory toys and looking at different colours.

The children went on a ‘listening walk’ outside to listen out for different sound such as birds, rain (lots of it) and dogs barking. Reception then drew pictures of what they could hear and labelled the initial sounds.

The children were very excited to meet their new puppet Honey Bear in Maths this week. Honey Bear taught them the different counting rules such as counting one object at a time using our magic counting wand and that the last number we say when counting tells us how many objects there are all together. The children also counted sounds such as bangs on a drum.

This week in Maths, Year 1 have been working with whole part models to complete addition calculations. In PE they have been developing their teamwork and ball skills.

In Year 2 this week, the children have continued to develop their confidence in using the rekenreks. They have been using them to secure their understanding of number bonds to 10. In Science they thoroughly enjoyed exploring how they could change the shape of different materials by applying different forces. The children were quite surprised by some of their findings!

This week, Year 3 have continued to research Europe and Italy. They have used their computing skills to find fun facts and select the country they are most interested in in Europe. They then shared their newfound knowledge with the rest of the class.

This week, the children have once again been super busy in Year 4.  In English, they have finished off their stories based on the Egyptian Cinderella book.  They spent a lot of time proof reading and editing them to make sure that they were their best efforts.  In Maths, the children have continued with their place value work, rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. 

In History this week, Year 4 have learned all about Ancient Egyptians beliefs about the afterlife, including the mummification process and the use of Canopic jars.  They made and decorated their own Canopic jars and then wrote instructions explaining how you can create them.

In Science, they have continued learning about teeth. The children looked at their egg experiment and the damage that different liquids had done to the eggshells.  This helped them understand what liquids are good and bad for their teeth. After that, they looked at animal’s teeth and spent some time identifying the different teeth that herbivores, omnivores and carnivores have and why this is. 

The children have also fitted in their usual Guided Reading, RE, swimming, dance, Spanish and Music lessons this week too.

This week in Year 5, the children have been using column method for addition and subtraction in Maths. They used counters with place value charts to help visualise the maths working then used the column method in their books.

In English, the children have been presenting their innovated ideas for their own ‘Weslandia’ stories. They used Keynote, videos and Seesaw to present their ideas in a 3-minute presentation to the rest of the class taking questions at the end.

In Science Year 5 discussed how the Earth is spherical and made a model to explain the movement of the Earth and Moon around the Sun over a year. They then explained this on Seesaw afterwards.

Year 6 have been super mathematicians this week, exploring different maths talk activities all with the purpose of developing their ability to verbally explain their mathematical thoughts and ideas. When asked to ‘convince me’ of their viewpoints, Year 6 did so confidently and using the correct mathematical language.  Using cubes to develop their understanding of cube and square numbers proved enjoyable and engaging for Year 6. They could use cubes to explore why some numbers are not square numbers and how a square number is different to a cube number.

With autumn days setting in, a wet P.E lesson did not stop Year 6 from having an enjoyable time. An indoor game of ‘cone it’ proved a very big hit with the Year 6s and with couple of last minutes ‘hits’, there were some very elated teams too!

This week we have enjoyed having the Book Fair in school and the children have been very excited about buying a new book to read. It was lovely to see so many parents, carers and family members join us in school.

We have also celebrated our Macmillan event this week and the children enjoyed having a cake and showing their parents, carers and family members their new classrooms and meeting their new class teachers.

In Nursery this week, the children have focussed on all the colours from the colour monster story.  They’ve talked about the objects we might see around us and their different colours.  The children have made colour collages, sang colour songs and matched pictures.

They have been doing so well with their listening ears during phonics, the musical instrument activities have been their favourite.  The children are very good at using their listening skills to identify environmental sounds.

This week Reception have been learning about their families. They enjoyed a circle time sharing who lives in their house and then drew and labelled a picture of their family and pets.

The children began their ‘Mastering Number’ scheme of learning and learnt the new vocabulary ‘subitising’. They used their fast eyes to quickly recall how many dots they could see and used their fingers to represent numbers.

In RE this week the children learnt about the Bible. They talked about it being a special book for Christians with stories inside. The children then read the bible story ‘Jesus and his Disciples’ and re-enacted the story as a whole class.

This week in English, Year 1 have continued to focus on the story of The Three Little Pigs and have followed instructions to make a pig mask. In Science they have been looking at materials and sorting objects.

In Year 2, the children have been ‘Mastering Number’ this week with the introduction of our new Maths programme. This has involved the children learning how to use the rekenreks! In Science, they have been exploring how they can change the shapes of different materials.

In Computing, the children learnt how to take pictures in both landscape and portrait mode. They then uploaded their work to Seesaw and looked at how they could edit the size of their images.

This week in Year 3, the children have used place value counters to add and subtract 1s, 10s and 100s. In their science lesson, they created a reflection tester using a piece of card and a torch. In groups, they then tested the most and least reflective materials.

It’s been another busy week in Year 4.  In Maths the children have been comparing and ordering numbers to 10,000.  They have also looked at Roman Numerals, as well as rounding numbers to the nearest 10.  In English, they have continued with their Egyptian Cinderella story writing.  They are focusing on using exciting vocabulary and using fronted adverbials in their writing.

In History, the children have enjoyed learning about how archaeologist, Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb.  They looked at different sources relating to this and used these to help them write their own diaries, as though they were with Howard Carter when he made his exciting discovery. 

In Science, Year 4 have been learning all about teeth.  They spent some time looking at their own teeth and identifying the different teeth that they have.  The children also learnt about their different shapes and functions.  They have set up an experiment in their class to explore the effect that different liquids have on their teeth.  They are using hard boiled ages for this and they will be observing what happens to the eggs shells when they are placed in different liquids.

The children have also fitted in their usual Guided Reading, RE, Computing, swimming, dance, Spanish and Music lessons this week too. 

This week in Year 5, the children have been learning all about Fairtrade. Collaboratively, they came up with a Fairtrade poem and performed it using the green screen. In English they started to write their stories for the BBC competition ‘500 words’. The children had some very exciting ideas, I can’t wait to read all their stories. 

In Science they looked at the phases of the moon and even learnt a rap! They enjoyed music this week and have learned to play notes C, D & E on their brass instruments!

Having researched last week in science about Charles Darwin, this week's lesson focused on his theory of evolution by natural selection. Year 6 loved exploring to see how Darwin came to the conclusions he did about the evolution of finches. After testing the ability of different utensils (beaks) to pick up different foods, they made fantastic links between their experiment and the conclusions Darwin came to.

In English, having discovered that Jemmy Button did leave his homeland to seek a new life in a civilised part of the world (much to the disappointment of some of Year 6), Year 6 made comparisons between his journey and the journey detailed in the poem 'Windrush Child' by John Agard. The children then used this model to write their own and their finished poems are superb! They loved sharing them on Seesaw for grown-ups at home to enjoy too! 

It has been an exciting week in school. The children have enjoyed playing out in the sunshine. Year 6 have enjoyed developing their skills and confidence cycling on the roads throughout their Bikeability course and they have achieved their Level 1 and or Level 2 certificates. We are very proud of them!

Reception’s learning focus this week has been ‘I am growing’ and the children have had a wonderful week exploring this. On Monday, staff shared photos of the children when they were babies and explored things a baby might need such as milk, a cot and cuddles. On Tuesday they had a circle time discussing the things they could do when they were a baby and the things they can do now they are bigger. The children came up with some lovely ideas such as riding a bike and swimming. The children then worked hard to order pictures to show the different stages of growth from babies to the elderly.

Their RE focus this week was ‘I am special’. The children had a lovely class discussion sharing objects that are special to them and why. They then drew a picture of their special object.

In Maths, the children have been grouping objects by colour and size and finding matching pairs of objects. They chose an object from the feely bag and searched around the classroom to find it’s matching pair. 

On Friday, Year 1 enjoyed their first Forest School session of the year! They had gorgeous weather and the children enjoyed a range of activities including drawing, litter picking, the tree swing, a swinging hammock, the mud kitchen and playing ball. They finished off the session with a drink of juice, a biscuit and a reflection with their Colour Monster book.

In Year 2 this week, the children have continued learning about their exciting materials topic. This involved looking at the suitability of different materials and questioning why they had been used to make different objects. In Music, they completed a variety of warm up exercises before listening and appraising a piece of ‘soul music’ called ‘Music in my soul’. The children identified the pulse, what instruments were being used and what the tempo of the music was.

This week, Year 3 have been learning about Fairtrade 2024. The children discussed the importance of Fairtrade and they have planned how to further the Fairtrade cause. They are imploring MPs to sign the Fairtrade Be the Change pledge and commit to working with Fairtrade and Fairtrade campaigners here in the UK and  to listen to the farmers and workers around the world.

This week Year 4 have been as busy as ever! In Maths, they have continued with their place value work, looking at number lines and plotting numbers to 10,000 on them.  In English, the children have begun preparing for their story writing.  They will be writing a story based on The Egyptian Cinderella and so they have done some drama and drawing to help them with ideas for this. 

In Science, the children had a lot of fun carrying out a digestive system experiment.  They used food and a variety of apparatus to create the journey that food takes in their digestive system.  It was a lot of fun, but pretty messy!  In History, Year 4 have begun looking at Egyptian pharaohs.  They already know a little about them because there is a pharaoh in The Egyptian Cinderella story and they have discussed him a little. 

In Music, the children enjoyed more singing and continued to develop their recorder playing skills.  They also attended Copley Baths this week to complete swimming assessments.  They will find out soon, who will continue to undertake swimming lessons on a weekly basis.

The Wondrous Book Club box arrived this week in Year 5 which caused quite a stir! This term’s theme is ‘Family’ and all children received a gift wrapped book. They all opened them at the same time and were very excited to begin reading their new books. A few of the books were even signed by the author!

In Science, the children investigated the planet’s relative distances from the sun by measuring the distances with a trundle wheel. They were surprised to see how far Neptune was! In RE the children were investigating the question; ‘Is God Real?’. They looked at bible quotes and their meanings and the children wrote beautiful, thoughtful poems inspired by Maimonides about what God is not.

This week in Year 6 has been all about physical activity and it began on Monday with their first tag rugby lesson of the half term. From the outset, they displayed focus and attacked each part of the lesson enthusiastically! They could confidently tag each other and when it came to passing a rugby ball to a partner, they did so with control and accuracy.

Learning skills for life has also been a theme this week and it was very apparent during two full days of bikeability. For some of Year 6, these two days focused on learning how to ride a bike and for others, it focused on becoming a competent cyclist on the road. Regardless of their starting point, they all thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. They will definitely sleep well this weekend! 

We have had a lovely week in school. I have enjoyed visiting all classes in school to see how they are settling in and it was lovely to see them all engaged and excited about their learning.

What a great week the children had as they welcomed more new children into nursery and made lots of new friends.  The children have been exploring sensory play as well as learning new songs, dancing and beginning phonics phase 1.  They loved the musical instruments and began to play in time to some of our new songs.

This week, Reception have been continuing to learn their class routines such as lining up, tidying up and following their carpet rules. They have enjoyed singing lots of counting songs and acting them out with puppets. Their favourite was 5 currant buns! The children have also been using some fantastic mathematical language such as ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’ and enjoyed using the scales to weigh different objects.

Their topic focus this week has been ‘I am special’ and the children have been exploring what makes them special and unique. They developed their artistic and fine motor skills through painting self-portraits for their class display.

Year 1 had a very exciting visit to a ‘Builders Yard’ this week. They took great care to ensure they were safe by putting on their hard hats and jackets and checking the equipment. They also enjoyed looking at different house designs and having a go at building a house for the three little pigs.

In Year 2 this week the children have been developing their understanding of two digit numbers by using Base 10 in maths. They have enjoyed using the equipment to partition in different ways. In Science, they have started their new materials topic which involved a materials hunt around the school. The children found lots of different materials in our hall!

In Computing, the children have used the iPads to take a variety of photographs as part of their photography unit. They looked carefully at what makes a good photograph and they really enjoyed taking photographs of their friends. 

In Year 3 this week, the children have been reading 'Owl Babies' and have been renacting the story using drama.

It has been another busy week in Year 4. In English, the children have written diary entries in the character of Rhodopis from ‘The Egyptian Cinderella’ and have used lots of powerful vocabulary, fronted adverbials and comparative conjunctions in their writing.  In Maths, they have continued their work on place value, plotting numbers to 10,000 on a number-line and estimating where numbers might go on blank number-lines. 

In History, The children have learnt about the location of Egypt and why The River Nile was so important to the ancient Egyptians.  In RE, they have begun looking in more detail about Hindu’s beliefs about god and how they worship, exploring bhajans (religious music) and how it is used in worship.

Year 4 began their new Science topic this week too.  They will be learning all about humans and animals this term and they started this topic by thinking about food and digestion.  The children all enjoyed a biscuit and thought carefully about what happens to it from the moment it enters their mouth.  Once they had shared their ideas, they learnt about the different parts of the digestive system.

The children also enjoyed their first Music lesson in Year 4 this week. They had a lot of fun singing and have been introduced to their new instrument; the recorder!

In Year 5 this week, the children have been learning all about methods of transport in Spanish. They demonstrated some great Spanish accents, the teacher found it difficult to choose only 3 stars! In English they revealed their new book; ‘Weslandia’ and the children wrote an informal letter of advice and used their inference skills.

In Maths, they have continued with Place Value and portioning numbers to 1,000,000. In Science they created their own solar system in their pockets and learned all about the order of the planets and their movement and position in relation to the sun.

It’s been another busy, fun-packed week in Year 6! In science, they’ve started their new Evolution and Inheritance unit of work – they began by creating a physical timeline of the Earth’s history. Learning that humans have been on Earth for only a fraction of its existence proved mind-blowing for Year 6. The lesson also focused on fossilisation and understanding that fossils provide information about living things that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago. Year 6 enjoyed ordering pictures to show the stages of fossilisation and then they created their own posters to detail each stage.

In English, Year 6 identified features of persuasive writing and some pairs even identified the red herrings that they’d been given too.  They received another postcard thanking them for their brilliant persuasive pieces along with their new book: Jemmy Button. They’ve enjoyed the start of the book and are already intrigued by the central character and whether he should venture to a new land with the visiting explorers – they even held their own debate to consider the question!

Year 6 fully immersed themselves in their new guided reading text: Holes. The predictions they made about the book based on the front cover were superb and they enjoyed finding out interesting facts about lizards too.

Welcome back! We hope you have had a good summer and are excited about the term ahead. It has been lovely to see all the children and welcome our new Nursery and Reception children, as well as couple of other new pupils across school. We have all enjoyed hearing all their news!

This week we have welcomed lots of new children into Nursery. They have settled well and begun to make new friends.  We have been finding out where to put our coats, bag and snacks as well as learning about the classroom.  In the craft area we have all decorated the first letter or our name to go on the wall with our first day at Nursery picture.

The children have had a wonderful first week settling into Reception in small groups. They have made lots of new friends, explored their new classroom and learnt the carpet rules. The children have been getting to know our routines, practising writing their name and singing counting songs to 5. They are looking forward to another busy week of learning and playing!

Year 1 have settled well into their new classroom and class routine. The children have worked hard to complete English, Maths and PSHE tasks. They have also created their class charter and enjoyed new experiences like church assembly. The children have been completing a sorting task in Maths and describing the three little pigs in English.

Wow, what a wonderful first week back for Year 2! The children have all settled in really well and have enjoyed starting their new topics. In Maths, they have been using the base 10 to make two digit numbers and in English the children have been creating very interesting predictions about what they think will happen to Erin in ‘The Secrets of Black Rock’.

In Geography, the children were able to confidently use their knowledge from Year 1 to identify the four countries within the United Kingdom. They then moved on to identifying different settlements within the UK and the children LOVED using the atlases.

The children have really enjoyed their first week back in Year 4 which has been full of fun and learning.  They started their new history topic on Ancient Egypt and began reading their class English text ‘The Egyptian Cinderella’.  They compared this book to the original version of Cinderella and used comparative conjunctions to compare the main character, Rhodopis, to the servant girls. 

Year 4 have also begun their Guided Reading text, James and the Giant Peach and are really enjoying this book.  In Maths, the children have been consolidating their understanding of place value of numbers up to 1000 and have used practical equipment and drawings to help them with this. 

Their new RE topic is all about Hindus in Britain today.  They already know quite a lot about Hinduism because of their lessons in Year 2 and 3, so they will be delving deeper in to this religion during this term.  Year 4 have also enjoyed their first dance lesson of the term.

The children have had a fantastic start to Year 5! This week, they created artwork inspired by their Guided Reading novel, Wonder. The children drew self-portraits in the style of the book cover, used watercolour paints to decorate them, and added positive words to describe themselves and their classmates to complete their portraits.

In Maths, they’ve dived into Roman Numerals and Place Value. The children worked with Place Value charts and counters to help them visualise and understand numbers up to 1,000,000.

The class have eagerly chosen their first books of the year and enjoyed reading them in their cosy reading area. The children are all excited to see where their learning will take them next week and throughout Year 5!

Year 6 have really hit the ground running this week and made a brilliant start to their final year at Micklehurst! They have showed some real creative flair already by using mixed media and a range of techniques to produce self-portraits that express their personality. They’ve also enjoyed working together to produce their class charter and setting their goals for the year.

The children loved exploring the world of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse and discussing the themes of the beautifully illustrated text. They then combined their superbly creative artistic skills with their own quotes inspired by the examples in the book and the results were incredibly impressive.

Not only have they been displaying their artistic talents, Year 6 have also been demonstrating the excellent knowledge they have of place value in maths. They used place value charts and counters to represent numbers to 1,000,000 and 10,000,000 and used them effectively to solve problems.

It has been a lovely final week of term. The children have enjoyed their end of term activities, parties, Y6 hyperbowling experience and our summer raffle! I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy and restful summer. Enjoy the holidays and we will look forward to seeing you on 3^rd September.

In Nursery this week, the children have enjoyed a fantastic pirate party. The costumes were amazing and the children enjoyed a pirate feast and games.

Reception have enjoyed their last week of the summer term. They have been learning about pirates and enjoyed their EYFS Pirate party!

The children enjoyed playing ball games in PE where they learnt different ways to throw. They also developed their concentration and fine motor skills by making loom bands this week. They showed lots of perseverance and made jewellery for their friends!

Year 1 have had a Superhero party to celebrate the end of year. This tied in with their English text ‘Nat Fantastic’ and the children have enjoyed becoming Superheroes for the day!

It’s been the final week in year 5 and what a week it’s been! To end the year with a bang Year 5 held their very own talent show. From comedy to gymnastics, to football and magic, we saw it all! The children enjoyed watching each other and cheered everybody on. What a lovely way to end the year!

We can’t quite believe that the final week of term is upon us and our Year 6s have certainly been making the most of their final few days as Micklehurst pupils. As well as working hard to prepare for their Leavers Assembly on the final day of term, the children were treated on Wednesday to a hyper bowling trip. They travelled to Denton Wellness Centre where they battled it out to see who would reign supreme on the bowling alleys. The children loved the range of interactive games available from hyperbowling to mad bowling and there were certainly a fair few strikes to celebrate! Year 6 have also been competing wholeheartedly in our final ever round of The Pirate Game - the children eagerly plotted their coordinates and hid their treasures before competing in a fearsome fight to destroy their enemies and build the healthiest bank balance in the class. 

On Friday afternoon, Year 6 came together around the campfire and enjoyed their final afternoon at Micklehurst by toasting s’mores and sharing some of their favourite primary school memories. We wish them every success as they take their next steps and hope they will come back and visit us next year! 

It has been another fun week in school. On Monday, some of our Key Stage 2 children took part in the Mossley Olympics at Mossley Hollins. It was a fantastic afternoon and the children took part in a range of events including long jump, the javelin throw, an egg and spoon race, a skipping race, a sack race, the 50m sprint and the relay. Our team performed really well and lots of them received medals. The winners were St Georges but well done to everyone who took part.

On Thursday, two of our Y6 children had the privilege of carrying the Olympic torch to Buckton Vale Primary School where they handed it over to two pupils before it continued its journey to Millbrook Primary.

On Thursday, we also had the Bouncy Castle in school and the children thoroughly enjoyed bouncing with their friends. Friday was our Summer Fair and the children were excited to have their faces painted and then spend the afternoon winning prizes and taking part in a range of games. Thank you to everyone who has supported the event.

Africa has been the topic this week in Reception. The children found Africa on a map and noticed it was far away from England. The children learnt that Africa is hot as it is near the equator and they have been learning about animals they might see on a Safari. The children enjoyed watching videos of elephants, zebras, hippos and a lion with its almighty roar and writing sentences to describe them.

In Maths, Reception have been delving deeper into the concept of heavier and lighter. They tested four different boats in the outdoor water tray, investigating how many marbles each boat would hold before it sinks. They found that the paper boat sank with only four marbles and the plastic boat was the strongest, holding all twenty of their marbles! The children then got busy creating their own boats to test.

In Year 1 it has been the final week of Arts and Crafts club and the children have completed a collaborative large-scale model of a wave. They have then decorated it with sea creatures. They are super proud of their model.

In Year 2 this week, the children had a fantastic trip to St George’s Church in Mossley as part of their RE unit based around special places of worship. Before the visit they had generated many questions that they wanted to ask Reverend Denise about the Church and how she came to be in her role. The children loved exploring the Church and listening to Mrs Chapman playing the organ! The children’s behaviour was exemplary, and they were a credit to the school.

This week, Year 3 have been engrossed in their guided reading text, The Butterfly Lion. They made some super inferences about the main character called Bertie and they could verbally back their ideas with evidence from the text. The disgruntled groans that rang out when the final session of the week ended and on a cliffhanger too was a definite sign they are hooked.

In English, they have continued to write their own innovated version of the story ‘The Man on the Moon’. They used some super expanded noun phrases and some fantastic prepositional phrases too. They are looking forward to sharing them when they are finished.

In Science, Year 3 have loved learning about famous scientists. They thoroughly enjoyed learning about the work of Marie Curie and they loved researching about her life with many children finding out more information than they needed due to their interest in her. They were equally as fascinated when learning about the work of George Washington Carver and the number of uses he discovered for peanuts. 

This week has been another busy one in Year 4.  In Maths, the children have continued their unit on shape, looking at quadrilaterals and their properties as well as other polygons.  In English, they have been using interesting pictures as stimulus for their writing.  The children have enjoyed undertaking some creative writing challenges where they have been able to show-case everything that they have learned this year in terms of vocabulary, spelling and punctuation. 

In History, they have learned more about the impact of the railways in Britain and in RE they have explored why people choose to get married and how different religions prepare for and celebrate marriage.  The children have also enjoyed lots of other fun events this week, including Mossley Olympics, the bouncy castle and the school’s summer fair.  All events were a great success and were enjoyed by everyone who attended.

This week in Year 5 the children have been extremely busy collecting all the donated raffle prizes for our Summer Fair. We are super grateful for all the donations we have received and we are really proud of the children's efforts in collecting all the raffle prizes, well done everyone. The children have completed their very first SATs papers this week ready for Year six. The children absolutely smashed it, and I am sure they will do great when it’s the real thing! 

It’s been another busy week in Year 6; the children have been working hard to prepare for our upcoming Leavers Assembly and the classroom has certainly been abuzz with the sound of music. It promises to be an impressive celebration of our wonderful Year 6s and the children cannot wait to share it with their friends and family. 

The children have also been putting all of their electricity knowledge from our science unit in to good use in our Design & Technology lessons this week. They have been tasked with researching, designing and making a Steady Hand Game complete with a working circuit to bring the game to life. There have already been some brilliantly creative design ideas from cars manoeuvring around race tracks to rockets touring the solar system and we can’t wait to make our games next week!

It has been a brilliant week in school because we have celebrated Science Week! Our week began with an exciting assembly led by Katriana from Science Boffins. The children loved watching a range of experiments and observing the chemical reactions that took place. They have then been involved in a range of activities throughout the week including making their own marble runs, making slime and finding about famous scientists to name but a few!

On Tuesday, Year 3 and Year 4 showcased their musical talents as they performed for the school and their parents, carers and family members. It was a fantastic performance and the children demonstrated super concentration and enjoyment.I was very impressed with how much progress they have made and how well they played their ukeleles and recorders. Good job everyone!

Our KS 1 and Y3 Cheerleading team took part in Tameside’s Cheer Fest at Copley on Wednesday and the children had a fantastic time performing. They have worked so hard practising their routine and they came in fourth position. Well done to the team!

Science week in Nursery has been amazing.  The children have been trialling a variety of experiments and have been predicting, changing variables and evaluating.

Experiment 1 – the children used skittles and hot and cold water for this experiment.  They laid the skittles in circles on a plate, then they predicted which plate of skittles would make colours the fastest using hot or cold water. The hot water worked the fastest.

Experiment 2 – the children mixed different colours to see what they would make, then they painted with them.

Experiment 3 – with celery, food colouring, water and a glass. Does water travel up the celery? The children put coloured water in the cup and waited to see if the water travelled up the celery and made it a different colour.  Lots of them didn’t think it would work but it did, and the celery turned blue inside.

Experiment 4 – Can an egg bounce?  The children didn’t believe this, so they set about trying to find out if it was possible.  They filled a jar with white vinegar, placed an egg in the vinegar, put the lid on the jar and waited for 24 hours.  They are still waiting to see if an egg can bounce!

Reception have been Scientists this week and have enjoyed their experiments. The children observed capillary action in a rainbow colour mixing experiment. They also enjoyed adding raisins to sparkling water and watching them ‘dance’. Making slime was their favourite activity this week as they loved getting messy!

In line with Science Week, the children have been learning about Marie Curie. They learnt that she invented X-rays during the war, so the children used white paint and art straws to make their own model of an X-ray.

Their maths focus has been making complex maps and drawing a map of their journey to school.

In RE, the children read the story of Muhammad and the kittens. They reflected on how they can care for animals and thought about what their favourite animals are and why.

This week in Year 1, the children have been exploring and observing changes over time. They have explored how chocolate, ice and a stone changed when they held it in their hands for 3 minutes. The children had a good discussion about how some of these items changed and why. They have also completed the skittle experiment but changed the variables from water to milk.

In Year 2 this week, the children have LOVED celebrating whole school Science week. They enjoyed kick starting the week with some fun experiments with Science Boffins, this involved creating their own lemon sherbet and it really got their taste buds going! In class they have been exploring the concept of time – this has involved creating their own marble runs that had to start and finish in 15 seconds. They enjoyed working as a team, trying different angles on their runs, and using the timers to measure how successful they had been.

Science Week has not disappointed in Year 3 and it began with an explosive start. Rockets launched, containers exploded and taste buds where all tested during the Science Boffins workshop.

Learning about the famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton also caused a buzz of excitement and discovering about his law of gravity got Year 3 asking many questions. They loved finding out about the moment Newton discovered gravity and re-enacting the moment the apple fell from the tree sparked lots of enthusiasm too. Year 3 really enjoyed the opportunity to share their research about him in their own way. Some children made posters, leaflets, books and some used Seesaw to create informative slides about him.

With time as the focus for the week, Year 3 explored boats through time. Having found out about the three important things a boat must do, they then experimented with different natural materials to find out which could float, which could travel in a straight line and which of the natural materials could carry a strong load. Following the investigation, they made super conclusions about which material would be most suitable to make a boat. Having found out that the sailing boat came next, they loved making their own sailing boats and loved testing them to see if they could float and move in a straight line.

Year 4 have had a really exciting week.  This week, it has been Science week, and the theme has been ‘time’.  The children have therefore conducted a variety of experiments and carried out research linked in with this theme.  They have looked at reaction times as well as creating different pendulums and recording how many swings in a set period of time.  They have looked at patterns and tried to create their own hypothesis based on their scientific knowledge. 

They have also learnt about the planets in the solar system and the varying lengths of days and years on each planet and why this is.  The children created solar system mobiles to help them remember the order of the planets from the sun.  Linked in with space, they also learnt about Mae. C. Jemison, who was the first African-American woman in space.  Year 4 carried out research into her life, achievements and legacy and created Mae. C. Jemison biographies. 

They have also managed to fit in their usual Maths lessons this week where they have learnt about the properties of different triangles, quadrilaterals and polygons.  On Tuesday, the children showcased their performance talents during their musical show.  The children were fabulous and Miss Snioch was very proud of them.

Science Week has been a blast in Year 6 and the children have proven themselves to be quite the budding scientists as they’ve worked their way through a range of enquiries, investigations and research tasks. The week started with a wacky workshop experimenting with different senses – the children combined a range of elements to make snow, sherbet and even a tornado in a bottle.

In class, they’ve been exploring technology through time and the children discovered the chronology of some major scientific innovations, such as the telegraph and the mobile phone. They also created a communication device using an electric circuit and then used this to decipher morse code – Year 6 had great fun sending messages to one another even though it was slightly more complicated than WhatsApp!

Later in the week, the children were tasked with creating a working vacuum cleaner. They experimented with different motors and fans and learnt all about vacuum flasks in order to build their own machine. There was a lot of trial and error involved but before too long, the children were busily cleaning the classroom with their innovative vacuums!

It has been a very exciting week in school as the children have experienced their transition morning in their new classes. They have all enjoyed being in their new classrooms, meeting staff and getting to know all about their next year group. We also welcomed our new Nursery children and some new children who will be starting Reception in September.

Some of our Year 3 and 4 children represented school in the Tameside Quad Kids event at East Cheshire Harriers on Wednesday. The team took part in four events including the 400m, standing long jump, a vortex throw and a 60m sprint. The children performed brilliantly and some of them had real success in certain events. We now have to wait until the points from every school are collated and we get the final results!

Reception have been busy this week learning about under the sea creatures. The children made a fact file about a sea creature of their choice; they enjoyed drawing pictures of the creatures and writing facts about them. The children were amazed to learn that jelly fish do not have a brain!

The children have worked hard in phonics and have learnt the new digraphs ‘ur’ and ‘er’. The children have been busy writing sentences to describe different under the sea creatures and included their new digraphs in their writing.

Their Maths focus has been models and maps this week. The children explored replicating small world models and construction scenes and made a giant map of their classroom layout.

This week in Year 1 as part of their English work, the children have been very excited to be part of their Talk for Writing process where they have been creating a story map based on their text Nat Fantastic. The children demonstrated how well they knew the story and added actions and punctuation to their story map. They will use this to support them when they come to writing their own Nat Fantastic stories next week.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been developing their Computing skills using Chrome Music lab. They have used shapes and pictures to respond to Gustav Holst’s work – they all had their own very different interpretations. They then used the music lab to draw and create sound pictures which sounded amazing!

Year 3 have loved starting their new maths unit, which focuses on shape. It began with them learning what an angle is and then what a right angle is. The enthusiasm they showed when finding right angles in the playground was a joy to see. Exploring 2D shapes to identify the angles within them was also particularly enjoyable for Year 3. They used their right angle checkers very efficiently to describe the angles within the shapes. They are now angle experts, who can identify acute angles, right angles and obtuse angles. Well done Year 3!

Innovating the character in The Man on the Moon was another highlight for Year 3 this week. They enjoyed generating new twists on the main character of Bob. Ideas ranged from a teenager on Saturn to a grannie on Neptune. Their creativity did not stop there because the story plans they produced were full of imaginative ideas. They can’t wait to write their stories next week.

This week has been another busy one for Year 4!  The children have begun writing their Railway Children recounts in English, learnt more about angles in Maths and carried out research into Thomas Edison in Science.  They went on an electrical appliances hunt around school and had a think about what life would be like without some of these things.

In History, they have learnt more about the growth of the railways in the 19^th century in Britain and in RE they have learnt about the Hindu sacred thread ceremony.

The children are keen environmentalists in Year 4, so in Guided Reading they have learnt about why plastic is a problem for the environment as well as reading about the life and campaigning of Greta Thunberg. 

On Thursday, the Year 4 children spent the morning in Year 5, meeting their new teachers and familiarising themselves with the Year 5 classroom and routines. The children came back really excited about their next chapter in Year 5.

This week has been an exciting one for our Year 5s! They had transition day on Thursday which they loved! They took part in some lovely activities and came back to Year 5 excited to start in Year 6 in September.

Earlier in the week in RE, the children looked at the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony that young Jewish people take part in. They created some wonderful fact files! In English they have read some more of their class text and even more of the story is unfolding and making sense! In Science they looked at the life of Sir David Attenborough and created some brilliant pieces of work about his life and work.

There’s been an air of both anticipation and excitement this week in Year 6 as our soon-to-be Year 7s had their first real taste of high school life. The children have been really looking forward to their transition days – they’ve been keen to discover who their form tutor will be, what new lessons they will encounter next year and perhaps most importantly, how much homework they’re going to get!

As well as taking on the challenge of transition, our Year 6’s took on another kind of trial this week – a mock trial. Sean, from Greater Manchester Magistrates, visited school to lead the children through a mock trial complete with magistrates, an usher, a defendant and both prosecuting and defending solicitors. The children worked their way through the case of R v Jo Stockwell, which focused on the theme of knife crime - they had to listen to witnesses, hear the arguments from both sets of solicitors and then reach a final verdict: guilty or not guilty?

It has been another busy week in school! The children have all been enjoying getting their teeth into their new topics.

What a busy week for Reception! The children have enjoyed their ‘Under the Sea’ topic. Inspired by their class text, ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson, the children used collage technique to design their own shell. They then thought of their own adjective sentences to describe their shell and wrote them independently. The children also discussed the differences between the seaside in the past and in the present.

Miss Austin and Miss Burney have observed lots of language rich role play in the beach café role play area this week. The children have been making different flavour ice creams and pretending to build sand castles.

The children have enjoyed replicating and building constructions in Maths this week and have explored visualising a small world scene from different positions. They worked hard in pairs to build matching small world scenes.

This half term, Year 1 have been looking at the text Nat Fantastic as part of their English work. They have shared the story of Nat Fantastic and then used role play to create ideas for the next problem that Nat was going to solve.  The children had a great time performing their ideas to each other!

In Year 2 this week, the children have been combining nature and computing! In Science, they used the iPads to identify different types of trees – this involved taking pictures of the leaves and uploading them to a plant identification website. They used their observational skills to draw pictures of the trees and leaves and the also used tape measures to measure the circumference of the tree trunk. The children had lots of fun in the sunshine.

In Computing, they have been exploring and creating different rhythms using Chrome Music Lab – this was so much fun!

What a fantastic week it has been in Year 3! It began with a letter from John Fardell, the author of The Day Louis Got Eaten’, expressing his delight in the quality of the non-chronological reports that he had received from us. Their reports and the creatures they devised last half term were so good that the author decided it would just be too hard to pick out a winner. Instead, Year 3 all received a certificate from him and he included £10 in the envelope, which he said must be spent on something Year 3 all agree on. They cannot wait to vote on what to spend the money on.  

Starting work on the Victorians was another highlight for Year 3 this week. This unit began with them exploring a picture of a prominent figure during this time and recording any inferences they had made about them from looking at the image. It was of course Queen Victoria, which many pairs had correctly worked out. They loved playing detectives and exploring different sources to deduce what it was like to live in the Victorian period. The ideas they came up with were fantastic and they could explain their thinking too. There are definitely some budding historians in Year 3!

In English this week the children have been generating lots of ideas for a recount that they are going to write next week.  They have drawn story-boards and carried out role plays to help them with their writing. 

In Maths, they have been looking at time.  The children have looked at analogue and digital clocks and have converted between the two.  In Science, the learnt about the two scientists who discovered oxygen,; Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley.  They even carried out their own oxygen experiment, looking at how lit candles require oxygen to burn.  In History, the children have learnt about the growth of the railways and in RE, they learnt about the Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations. 

This week in Year 5 the children have been writing newspaper reports in English all about the treacherous boat rescue at Budmouth Point from their class novel, ‘Letters From the Lighthouse’. In Maths it has been all about decimals; they have added and subtracted decimals and the children are gaining confidence even when completing additions and subtractions with a different number of decimal places.

In RE, they researched a key Jewish event: Yom Kippur. The children created some beautiful and very informative pieces of work. In Science they looked at the life and work of Eva Crane and made some very amazing fact-files.

Year 6 have been busy writing some incredibly compelling setting descriptions this week. Inspired by their new text, The Matchbox Diary, they used their senses to bring to life a perilous journey across the ocean. The children combined a wide range of strategies, including personification and metaphor, to add detail to their writing and paint a very vivid picture of the tumultuous sea during a storm. They’ve also been thinking about what will happen to the main character in the story once he arrives at his destination: New York City.

On Thursday, the children took part in a workshop delivered by mental health charity, Kooth. The theme of the workshop was transition and there were lots of brilliant tips that the children can try over the summer to help them prepare for their first week of high school in September.

What a fantastic week we have had in school! The children have loved Sports Week and have thrown themselves into every activity on offer. Monday started with a visit from Freddy Fit and the children enjoyed a range of energetic exercises and activities. On Tuesday it was lovely to welcome parents, carers and family members to Sports Day and the children loved showcasing their skills in a number of races. On Wednesday and Thursday the children enjoyed Dance and Football sessions and on Friday each class experienced a yoga session.

On Monday, Year 6 attended the Leavers Celebration Service at Manchester Cathedral. It was alovely service and the children enjoyed singing and dancing with the entire congregation as well as saying The Lord’s Prayer in British Sign Language.

On Tuesday, Year 4 went to The Bridgewater Hall to the Come and Play with the Halle event. The children were in awe when they entered the hall and heard the orchestra playing. It was a wonderful experience for them to play and sing alongside the Halle orchestra and the children were fantastic ambassadors for our school.

In Nursery, Sports Week has been an amazing success. The children have enjoyed it from start to finish, they have shown amazing resilience and perseverance in learning new skills.  They have had Freddy Fit in showing them how to exercise their body, sports day with lots of fun games and races, cone it and dance.

The children have also been learning about England as one of the teams playing in The Euros. They have located it on a map, learnt about the capital and the flag.  They particularly enjoyed finding out that the lion was England’s national animal.

Reception have enjoyed all aspects of Sports Week. They had fun with Freddy Fit where they learnt to hula hoop and limbo and enjoyed their Sports Day races. They have also taken part in yoga and football sessions and they played team games in the hall.

Reception’s focus country has been Italy. First the children spotted Italy on a map and made Italian flags. They have been learning some Italian words such as ‘ciao’ and ‘grazie’ and found it funny to watch the Italian version of ‘let it go’ from Frozen. Reception have also learnt about Di Vinci’s Mona Lisa and designed their own vibrant and colourful version of the Mona Lisa using collage technique. The children very much enjoyed eating Italian pizza too! Other Italian activities this week included comparing different types of pasta, selling pizzas at their beach café and learning Italian numbers.

Year 1 have been very excited as they enjoyed all the activities they have had a go at during Sports Week.

Year 3 have absolutely loved the challenges and fun of Sports Week. There have been some memorable highlights from the week, from working with Freddy Fit and learning how to play cone it, to Sports Day and a dance session with Becki. During each activity, Year 3 gave it their all and regardless of whether they won or lost, they displayed a positive attitude. Well done Year 3!

Year 3 also really enjoyed learning all about Germany! Year 3 loved playing ‘Each One Teach One’ to find out facts about Germany and then they created some fantastic posters displaying all the facts they had learnt during the game. To find out the names of other European countries, Year 3 played a game of ‘Maps from Memory’ and worked collaboratively in groups to fill a blank map of Europe with all the names of European countries. Towards the end of the week, they researched about a German football player using their iPads and produced some fantastic player profiles.

The children have been really active in Year 4 this week as it has been Sport’s Week.  They have done daily Wake-up Shake-up, Freddy Fit, cone it, dance, football and yoga.  As part of Sports Week, they have also enjoyed learning about The European Cup and have carried out research into Portugal, one of the participating countries. 

Tuesday was a particularly busy day as Year 4 performed at the Halle in Manchester which was an amazing experience.   On Tuesday afternoon, they also had our Sports Day, which was great fun!

This week in English, the children have written a persuasive letter in the role of Bobbie from The Railway Children.  In History, they have really enjoyed researching and learning about some of the earliest locomotives and in Science they learnt about and carried out some research into Alexander Bell’s life and inventions.

What a week for Year 5! The children have been so busy with Sports Week, I’m sure they will all sleep this weekend! They had a brilliant session with Freddy Fit on Monday, all the children loved it. Tuesday was Sports Day and Swimming, Wednesday they had a dance session where children worked in groups to create dances to show both Year 5 & 6. On Thursday the children had a fun football session where they brushed up on their football skills and Friday they had a lovely, calm yoga session followed by Mini Stations where children had to use different skills to complete a circuit.

In class, they have written non chronological reports and created some amazing informative videos using Adope Spark on the iPads.

They’ve had an incredibly active week in Year 6 – the children have taken part in a wide range of sporting activities throughout the week and really enjoyed each and every one, we’ve certainly got some athletes in our midst! On Monday, they took on the challenge of a session with Freddy Fit and pushed themselves to complete the exercises in time with some brilliant tunes! On Tuesday, the children competed in their final Sports Day at primary school – they showcased some pretty impressive skills as they battled it out to be sprint champion, hurdles hero and of course, to keep the egg on the spoon. They’ve also taken part in a dance-off with Year 5 during their lesson with Miss Becki, a football session and a yoga workshop.

On Monday, Year 6 also attended the Leavers Celebration Service at Manchester Cathedral. The cathedral provided a beautiful setting for the service and the children really enjoyed singing and dancing with the entire congregation as well as saying The Lord’s Prayer in British Sign Language.

Welcome back! We hope you have had a good holiday and a lovely break. It has been a busy first week back and the children have enjoyed learning about their new topics.

In Nursery the children have had an amazing first week back starting their new topic ‘Under the Sea’.  The children have loved their new story finding out about Little Fish.  There are lots of colours in the story and they have been learning them in Spanish.  Their favourite Spanish colour is Amarillo because they like the way it sounds.

In Maths the children have been sorting and categorising different mammals, sea creature and birds.  There are lots of mammals that also like to be in the water so they were a little unsure sometimes what category they were in.

Nursery have also been busy designing their display for the classroom.  During their squiggle and write session they made the sea using different arm movements.  They can’t wait to share it with you when it has all their work on it.

Reception have had a great first week back at school and have enjoyed sharing their half term experiences during a circle time and through drawing pictures and writing sentences. The children have been busy exploring role play opportunities relating to their new topic ‘Travel here, travel there…’ and enjoyed reading their new topic book ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson.

Their Maths focus has been sharing into equal groups and odd and even numbers. The children have been sharing objects equally between their three class teddies and investigating how to find out if a number is even or odd.

The children have also been working super hard during their phonics sessions and learnt their first trigraph this week: igh. They have worked really hard writing sentences on their handwriting boards.

Year 1 have had an exciting first week back and have been looking at their local area in Geography. They have used google maps and their walk through Mossley to make a map of Manchester Road and the surrounding area. They have really enjoyed trying to locate and position each place on their map.

In Year 2 this week the children have started their new, exciting topic all about Explorers of the past. They became historical detectives this week when they had to closely examine a variety of clues to find out about the life of Christopher Columbus. The children had some very interesting ideas about why Columbus was such a significant individual.

In Computing, the children have started their digital music unit – this has involved learning about Gustav Holst and some of his very dramatic pieces of music. The children used a variety of adjectives to describe his work and talked about how his music made them feel.

This week, Year 3 have thrown themselves into their brand new English unit. Having been given a picture from the text that they are going to read next week, they were tasked with completing three sentence stems based on what they saw in the image, what they wondered about the image and what they inferred. They made some excellent inferences and they were able to back up their ideas with evidence from the image itself. Having accurately inferred that the man in the image has an interest in space and the moon, the following lesson centred on researching about space and the moon. They thoroughly enjoyed working in pairs to do this and chose how they wanted to record the information they had found out from creating a poster to making informative pages on Seesaw.

That’s not the only subject that they have immersed themselves in this week. They have also really enjoyed their new art unit, which is based on animated drawings. The week started with them sketching two still images of a snail. They used their medium, a pencil, really well to create the outline, to shade and to add detail both to the snail itself and to the background. There are some definite budding artists in Year 3!

Year 4 have had a busy week back at school.  They have started their new History topic on the history of railways and their new Science topic on famous inventors and scientists.  Linked in with these topics, they are using E. Nesbit’s famous novel ‘The Railway Children’ to inspire their writing in English.  This week, the children have had fun reading and performing a variety of railway themed poems, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘From a Railway carriage’.  They used thesauruses to find synonyms for train related words and then used some of these words to write their own train themed poetry.

In Year 5 this week, the children have continued with their text ‘Letters from the Lighthouse’ in English and the children have written diary entries about the refugees that made it to Devon. In maths, they have being learning how to translate shapes on a grid, as well as reading and plotting co-ordinates.

There is only one word to describe the first week back in Year 6: fantastic! It has been a busy week filled with lots of amazing activities and we are really proud of the effort that every single child has put into their first week back of the final half-term. They have continued to practice their songs ready for their visit to Manchester Cathedral on Monday, and we are certain that their singing voices and dance moves will blow everyone away!

In science, the children have been introduced to their new topic: ‘light.’ For part of their first lesson, they were tasked with creating a list about all of the things that they already knew about light, alongside questions regarding what they would like to find out about light. As part of the weekly science experiment, the children were tasked with entering a darkened part of the classroom. They were then quizzed about this experience, and they had a whole-class discussion about how and why it can take a while for our eyes to adjust to darkened settings.

In P.E this week, the children have been learning all about the Olympics. As part of this, they have completed a range of athletic-style challenges, including: javelin, relay races and long jump. Alongside this, twelve of the year 6 children were selected to take part in a triathlon event, consisting of swimming, cycling and running. All of the children did a fantastic job and each received a medal for their outstanding efforts - we could not be more proud of them! 

What an exciting week! The children have enjoyed finishing off their units of work this week. Year 1 have been making tasty fruit salads and Nursery had a lovely time at their Bug Ball.

Some of our Year 1 and Year 2 children took part in the MCSP athletics festival at Mossley Hollins and enjoyed competing in a range of events including javelin, long jump, sprints and relay races.

The children from Year 1 up to Year 6 represented school in the Whit Walks today. It was lovely to be part of the procession as we walked with the other Mossley Churches and Primary Schools, accompanied by all the local brass bands. It was great to see so many parents and carers supporting the event.

Reception have had a busy week learning about flowers and gardens. After their nature walk, the children painted a picture of a flower, labelling the stem, roots, leaf and petals. Reception then wrote two sentences to describe their flower.

In RE, their focus has been observing the beauty of the natural world. The children drew pictures of some natural objects and thought of some adjectives to describe them.

In Maths, the children have enjoyed learning about sharing and have been finding ways to share equally between 2 and 3 groups.

The children have also enjoyed their learning about Alan Titchmarsh and have been designing their own gardens.

This week in Year 1, the children have been designing, making and evaluating a fruit salad as part of their Design and Technology unit of work. The children enjoyed tasting a range of fruits and deciding which ones they were going to have in their fruit salad. They’ve had a great time!

In Year 2 this week, the children have been looking closely at their plant experiment and have been using their maths skills to measure and compare results. They then wrote brief observations and each group fed back their findings. Year 2 have really enjoyed being scientists this week!

If you are wondering what the best conditions are to grow plants, Year 3 are definitely the people to ask. A couple of weeks ago, they set up an experiment to see what happens to plants if they are exposed to different conditions. Since then, they have been monitoring the plants closely and have taken photos of them on different days of the investigation. This week, they were very excited to make their final observations and conclusions.

Year 3 have worked incredibly hard this week on their handwriting and what has been most pleasing is that they have transferred their skills into their written work in English and history too.

Having finished their non-chronological reports, a group of children were given a challenge to include a diary entry within the report too to show a contrasting genre style. Together they discussed whether a newspaper report or a diary entry would be most contrasting. They came up with some great reasons as to why a diary entry would best. They produced some fantastic diary entries too!

The final week at school has been jam-packed full of hard-work and fun in Year 4.  In Science, they discussed and wrote up the results of their sock experiment from last week and the children now understand that the sock hanging from the window in the direct sunlight dried the quickest because the warmth allowed the liquid in the sock to evaporate (turn from liquid to gas).  The sock in the fridge is still wet because it is too cold in there for evaporation to take place.

In RE, the children learnt about Desmond Tutu and how his Christian beliefs affected his actions.  In Geography, they learnt about energy in the UK, looking at renewable and non-renewable energy sources and their impact on the environment.

In English, the children finished off their magical setting descriptions and in Maths they finally completed their work on fractions and decimals, completing end of term assessments which focused on this area of Maths.  The children did really well with their assessments. 

To finish off their learning this term, the children also enjoyed doing lots of still-life art work.  They learnt about Paul Cezanne and a number of other still-life artists; both traditional and contemporary and used their artwork to inspire their own, creating some Cezanne inspired still-life collages.  And finally, they had a great time taking part in the Whit Walks.  It was so nice to come together with all the other schools and churches to celebrate this local tradition.

It’s been another busy week in Year 6; the children have been using the green screen to transport themselves to the raucous jungles of the Australian wilderness in order to perform their I’m A Celebrity themed narratives. They’d worked incredibly hard to use a wide range of techniques to build tension in their writing and the finished pieces were incredibly impressive. Our Digital Leaders helped to support the other children in recording, editing and publishing their final videos and we think even Ant and Dec would be blown away by their dramatic tales of Bushtucker Trials.

The children have also been continuing in their preparations for the Leavers Celebration Service at Manchester Cathedral; they’ve been practicing the songs and have worked together to create a flag on the theme of ‘hope’. Inspired by two of our favourite class texts this year - Skellig and The Final Year - the children chose to combine painted feathers detailing their wishes for the future in order to create our flag of hope.

It has been another busy week in school. Our Year 6 children have been completing their end of Key Stage 2 assessments and we are very proud of how hard they have worked. They were focussed to the very last minute of the tests. Well done Year 6!

Some of our Year 3 and Year 4 children took part in the Tameside Glow Dodgeball competition on Tuesday at Astley Sports Village and the team enjoyed playing five games of dodgeball against five other Tameside primary schools. The team played really well and showed great sportsmanship.

In Nursery this week, the children have read ‘The Very Quiet Cricket’ by Eric Carle.  They have talked about how he kept trying and trying to make his wings chirp even though he was struggling.  The children discussed things that they have found difficult and things they need to keep trying with.  Perseverance is the new word the children have learnt this week. 

What a treat Nursery had on Tuesday when Sammy the Spanish teacher from Mossley Hollins came to read us ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ in Spanish.  It was fun learning new words for the different fruits and minibeasts, our favourites were Mariposa – butterfly and Oruga – caterpillar.

Nursery have also recorded their class ‘The Busy Spider’ story from last week.  Parents and carers loved listening to it.

Reception have been learning about seasonal change this week and exploring the joys of spring. The children enjoyed a sunny spring walk around the school grounds; they found ladybirds, bird’s nests, buds, flowers, leaves, birds and sunshine! They ticked them off on their spring hunt tick lists and then came back to class to write some ‘I can see’ sentences and drawings about what they spotted on their walk.

The children have enjoyed their continued learning on shape this week and have been manipulating and rotating shapes to create new bigger shapes. They also used various 2D shapes to create three different shape houses for the three little pigs.

This week, Year 1 were lucky enough to have our Year 6 children come to share stories with them at the end of their SATs. Both Year 1 and Year 6 children thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Thanks Year 6!

In Year 2 this week, the children have had lots of fun being creative architects! They have studied a variety of interesting buildings and created their own observational drawings. They have also looked at the work of Hundertwasser and created visual notes in response to his building designs. Then the fun began, and the children used various card boxes to create their own buildings – the can’t wait to show off their final outcomes next week.

With the deadline of the completion of their non-chronological reports looming, Year 3 have been busy editing and publishing their reports. They have worked incredibly hard: thinking of interesting ways to organise their reports whilst remembering the features that they identified at the start of the unit. John Fardell, the author of The Day Louis Got Eaten, is going to have a very tricky decision deciding which creature to choose. Their creature reports are all so informative and after reading their introductions, who would not want to read on to find out more.

In geography, Year 3 loved applying all their map skills and knowledge of ordnance survey maps to draw a map of the route they took on their local area walk last week. Not only did they draw fantastic maps, they also included a key to identify the features they had marked on their maps. Their finished products are fantastic!

Year 4 have been super busy again!  The children have had a vocabulary focused week as they have been gathering ideas for writing a magical setting description.  In addition to this, they also started gathering ideas for the ‘Once upon a dream’ poetry competition that the children are entering.  The children are writing poems on bad dreams/nightmares and so they have spent a lot of time discussing collecting spooky and terrifying vocabulary in preparation for writing them. 

In Maths, they have finished off their work on decimals and fractions and in Science they have carried out an experiment to find out where washing will dry the best.  The children now understand that the water in washed clothes does not simply disappear, but actually evaporates into gas!  They have also spent some time this week looking at the different industries in the UK as well as completing some further work on temptation in RE. 

This week in Year 5, the children have been making a new home in the Computer Suite due to SATS. The children loved their new learning environment and were enthusiastic about their working.

In Maths they have been identifying and calculating angles around a point and on a straight line. The children loved this type of investigative maths and did really well.

This week Year 5 bid farewell to Forest School in their last session where they made a fire to cook, created art pieces with clay and of course set up the hammocks and swings. The children loved Forest School and are already eager to start again.

Year 6 have proven this week that anything is possible if you put your mind to it; they have absolutely worked their socks off during SATs week and have done us all very proud. The children started each day with a special SATs breakfast of toast and cereals before showcasing their knowledge on each of the six papers. We can without doubt say that each and every Year 6 gave their all to the tests and we couldn’t have asked for any more!

On Thursday and Friday, there was a definite sense of celebration in the air as the children enjoyed some well-earned post-SATs treats! They loved being outside for extra football, competing in a round of Kahoot quizzes, reading stories to Year 1, pitting their wits against each other in The Pirate Game and relaxing in the hall for a movie afternoon complete with popcorn! 

The class have also been busy beginning preparations for the Year 6 Leavers Service at Manchester Cathedral: they have been rehearsing the songs and using their artistic skills to plan and create a class flag on the theme of hope that we can fly high on the day.  

It has been a fun filled week in school and it has been lovely to enjoy some warmer weather and some sunshine.

In Nursery this week, their Eric Carle story has been ‘The Very Busy Spider’.  The children have loved finding out about how spiders spin their webs and investigating why spiders don’t stick to their own webs.

The children have written their own ‘The Very Busy Spider’ stories changing the animals, the noises they make and the question that they ask the spider.  They can’t wait to share them with you.

This week, Reception have been busy making cards and pictures for the Nurses at MRI to celebrate International Nurses Day. The children also worked together to create some flower bouquets for the Nurses too.

The children have enjoyed learning about shapes this week and have been creating tangrams. They have been using their Maths word of the week ‘rotate’ to talk about their tangrams.

In RE, the children have been learning about how babies are welcomed into the Muslim faith. They talked about kind things they could whisper to the baby such as ‘we love you’ and ‘you are so special.’

This week, Year 1 have been working hard during their English lessons. The children have been using their story map to write their own version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Mrs Moorcroft is very impressed with the writing that the children have produced.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been making the most of the glorious sunshine. On Thursday afternoon, they decided to take their science investigation outside and planted their seeds in the school garden. The children are going to use their observational skills to investigate ‘Which materials seeds can grow in?’ Watch this space for their end results!

Although this has been a shorter week, it has still been jam-packed with excellent learning and lots of fun too! Year 3 absolutely loved their local area walk and being true geographers with their very own clipboards too. This field work enabled them to see first-hand the different human and physical features that are within their local area. At one of the points of interests along the walk, they recorded the different things they could see in the north, south, east and west. At another point of interest, Year 3 enjoyed using their senses to explore what they could see, hear, smell, feel and taste. They became very excited when they heard a train and a plane and some heard the leaves rustling too.

Year 3 were disappointed last week when they finished their guided reading text: The Sheep-Pig. However, their disappointment did not last long because they are already fully engrossed in their new book: The Butterfly Lion.  The first lesson centred on exploring the front cover of the text and then they completed different sentence stems that encouraged them to wonder, observe, predict and infer. The ideas they generated were fantastic!

In computing, Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed developing their publishing skills. After exploring different invitations and looking at the different fonts, text size, text style and colours that had been used, Year 3 then used Seesaw to create their own. Over the course of the lesson, they changed the size and style of the font, the colours and some children even added images to their invites too.

Despite it being a shorter week, Year 4 have managed to fit an awful lot in. In English, the children have been writing a non-chronological report on broomsticks which included rhetorical questions and subordinate clauses.  In Maths, they have continued with their work on decimals and fractions, making a whole with tenths and making a whole with hundredths.

In Geography, the children have been further exploring the physical and human features of the UK and how human activities can alter the environment. In RE they have been learning about Humanist beliefs and what ideas and rules this group are guided by.  They’ve done lots more too, including Music, PE, Guided Reading and Spanish! 

This week in Year 5, the children were busy practising for the Big Sing at Mossley Hollins. On Thursday they performed with other Mossley schools, our class were absolutely amazing and definitely did Micklehurst proud!

The children have opened their Wondrous Book Club books this week and the children are already loving the books, this term’s topic is ‘humour’.

In Maths they have been identifying and classifying angles and in English they have been writing diary entries in role as characters from our current class novel, ‘Letters From the Lighthouse’.

In the final week before Year 6 take on the challenge of those pesky SATs papers, the children have shown a real determination to be as prepared as can be. On Wednesday, they worked together to complete our mighty SPAG quiz! Hidden around the playground were 12 grammar questions and once they had been located, each team had to crack the code and collect the correct letters…the letters then spelt a mystery phrase and it was a battle to see which team would find the winning combination first! As well as practicing tackling a range of SATs style questions, the children have also been busy making their very own revision flip books – they’re very creative and packed full of helpful nuggets of information.

They’ve also been enjoying competing in a week-long tournament of Mathematical Pointless. Inspired by the BBC’s very own game show, the children have worked hard to find as many pointless answers as they could whilst revising key mathematical terms and concepts at the same time!

It has been an exciting week for some of our Year 5 children! They went to Mossley Hollins to take part in the Mossley and Carrbrook Schools Partnership Maths Challenge on Thursday and they worked really hard as a team to answer some quite tricky problems. It was a close competition right up to the final round, but I am thrilled to inform you that having used their logic and a systematic approach to the final problem they achieved full marks putting them in first place! Well done to our Year 5 team!

This week, Reception have been learning about growth. The children enjoyed observing their grass seeds as they grew throughout the week and have been drawing pictures of them.

Reception also used their phase 3 phonic knowledge to write simple instructions of how to plant grass seeds and have been writing spring ‘I can see’ sentences.

The children have also been developing their understanding of numbers to 20 this week. They have been busy writing number sentences to 20, using manipulatives and visuals to support them.

Their RE focus has been Baptism. The children enjoyed a circle time sharing ideas about how we might welcome a new baby into their religion and they had fun role playing a Baptism with dolls.

This week, Year 1 have been working with Emily, Dan and Kate from the Vale. They have

been helping to create a living dress. The children started their learning by picking dandelions to then boil to create a natural dye. After that they painted a piece of material with soya milk to make patterns and pictures. Once this was dry the children placed their material into the dye and left it for a couple of hours. Following this, they planted indigo plants and some seeds to create other colours of plants to make different colours of dye to be used to create other dresses. It was vey exciting and the children had a great afternoon.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been learning about different seeds in Science. They been using their classifying and sorting skills to sort a variety of seeds using their own criteria. The children loved looking at a variety of seeds and they are very eager to plant them in the coming weeks.

What a fantastic week it has been in year 3! Year 3 loved being scientists this week when they dissected a lily plant. Using scissors and their hands, they split the lily into its different parts and, after removing each one, they placed it on a piece of paper and labelled it. They now know so many other parts of a plant and through discussion, they know some of the functions they perform too. There were many surprised faces when they felt how sticky the stigma was and how yellow the pollen was too.

Year 3 were very excited to be returning to fractions this week. To check what Year 3 had remembered from the previous fraction unit, they played a game of ‘Spend a £1’. During this activity, they loved showing off their fantastic knowledge and they had remembered so much of the fraction vocabulary too! 

This week in English, Year 4 have been continuing with their magic theme and have begun learning about and planning a non-chronological report about broomsticks!  In Maths, they have continued to learn about decimal numbers, comparing, ordering and rounding them. 

In Science, the children had great fun carrying out experiments on melting solids.  They used a thermometer to measure the temperature of water and the melting points of different solids.  They learnt about how particles are arranged in solids, liquids and gases and what actually happens to these particles when they are heated and cooled.  They had lots of fun pretending that they were particles!

In Geography, Year 4 researched the physical features of the United Kingdom and in RE they looked at the similarities and differences between The Ten Commandments and The Beatitudes. 

This week in Year 5 the children have been eagerly reading more of their class novel; Letters From the Lighthouse and they have produced some amazing pieces of work including a diary entry in character and character profiles of their choice.

In Maths they have been looking at statistics. The children have drawn line graphs and interpreted two-way tables.

In Geography this week, the children have been discussing what a town needs for families to be fit for purpose. They worked really well together to discuss this in small groups, then had a whole class discussion where everyone put their ideas forward in a polite and meaningful way.

Year 5 have also been discussing the dangers and risks of using social media when underage. Children were thoughtful and came up with plans together to make their online experiences as safe and enjoyable as possible. 

It’s been another busy week in Year 6 – the children are working incredibly hard to prepare for their upcoming SATs and we’re really proud of their determination to succeed. They’ve been revising key concepts and applying their skills to a range of tricky SATs style questions – the children have taken so much ownership of their learning and love it when they’re able to beat their own high scores!

Alongside their SATs preparation, they’ve also found time to complete their Design & Technology projects this week. The children were tasked with designing and building a set of playground structures – they combined a range of different media and techniques to construct their projects and have even evaluated their final products. 

They’ve been getting creative in our English lessons this week too! Inspired by a tense extract from Ian Fleming’s James Bond, the children have been planning and writing their own short pieces of narrative. They’ve used some of Fleming’s techniques to build tension in their writing but have innovated both the setting and the plot choosing to base their pieces around the terror-inducing Bushtucker Trials of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

It has been another busy week in school. On Monday we celebrated Earth Day and our Eco Councillors challenged each class to consider the damage single use plastic is having on our environment. Each class had to count how many items of single use plastic they disposed of in school on Monday so that our councillors could collate and analyse these figures.

Year 6 welcomed our resident author, David Mason, into school on Thursday. The children have written some excellent pieces of creative writing following this visit where they immersed themselves in a range of drama activities to really think about the emotions they would have been feeling in order to inspire their writing.

Nursery have been learning all about symmetrical patterns this week.  The children have made symmetrical butterflies and used mirrors to find out which objects in their classroom are symmetrical and which are not.

Nursery’s caterpillars have grown so much this week, they are already the size of their little fingers and the children can’t wait to see them transform into a cocoon.

This week, Reception have innovated their ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ text map. They enjoyed thinking of lots of different weird and wonderful foods the hungry caterpillar may have eaten and worked super hard to write sentences to innovate the story.

Teen numbers have been their Maths focus this week and the children have been using counters, numicon and ten frames to build the teen numbers. Reception have also been counting by rote up to 50 and they have played lots of games to develop their understanding of the number system. 

In RE this week, Reception have been thinking about different groups they may belong to. The children shared different groups they are a part of, such as Micklehurst All Saints school, football teams, dance classes and swimming clubs. They then talked about different religious groups people belong to, such as being a Christian or Muslim. The children were proud to be part of Reception and designed a badge for their class.

In Year 1 this week, the children have enjoyed Arts and Crafts Club where they completed observational paintings of Spring flowers. Don’t they look amazing!

In Year 2 this week, the children have been exploring the life cycle of a sunflower. They enjoyed working in groups to act out each key stage in the cycle. They then drew their own life cycle in their science books and used scientific vocabulary to carefully describe each stage.

This week has been another busy and exciting week in Year 3! There were lots of gasps when they received a letter from John Fardell, author of ‘The Day Louis Got Eaten’, asking if they could create a new creature to eat Louis. There were some fantastic creatures created and some super expanded noun phrases used to describe them. Not only did John Fardell want them to create a new creature, he also wanted them to write a non-chronological report about their creature.  In preparation for writing the report, they worked in pairs and compared different non-chronological reports to find out the features.  

Year 3 also loved getting stuck into their science unit ‘Plants’. This week’s lesson centred on the different parts of a plant and the function that they perform. Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed exploring different flowers to see if they could identify the parts. They wowed us with their fantastic knowledge; some children even drew a labelled diagram of a plant. 

In Geography this week, Year 3 continued to develop their knowledge of the local area. Their learning focussed on human and physical features of Mossley. Year 3 loved working in groups to sort the features. Once they had sorted them in groups, they then worked with a partner to produce an advert persuading people to live in Mossley based on the human and physical features it has to offer. Some pairs recorded videos and others produced posters. There are definitely some budding estate agents in Year 3!

Year 4 have been busy again this week.  In Science, the children carried out some experiments, making predictions beforehand as to what they thought would happen.  They didn’t realise that if you mix white wine vinegar with Bicarbonate of Soda, it produces a gas.  The children carried out this experiment and the gas produced actually inflated a Latex glove! 

In English, the children began writing instructions for ‘How to brew an invisibility potion’. In Maths, they have been dividing 1 and 2 digit numbers by 10 as well as writing hundredths as both fractions and decimals.  In Geography, they enjoyed using atlases to locate the UK’s major cities and in RE they learnt about The Ten Commandments and discussed which of these rules they considered to be the most important.

This week in Year 5 the children have started their new English unit in historical texts which the children have really enjoyed. They are currently reading Letters From the Lighthouse and the children have been enthralled from the very first page. They have produced some amazing ‘missing’ posters for one of the characters and used their inference detective skills to help them.

In Maths we have been learning how to find area and perimeter looking at regular polygons and rectilinear shapes.

In Science this week, their focus has been on gravity and the difference between mass and weight. The children conducted an investigation where they used the same weight for a pendulum but different length strings to see if it had an affect on how long it swung for. They found out that the longer the pendulum the longer it swings for.

This week in Year 6 has been an absolute blast! The children have shown determination and perseverance during their final practice SATs - no matter how challenging they have been! They also played a super competitive game of Rounders in P.E with Jack - the results between the two teams were certainly close!

In Science, they have been looking at buzzers and testing decibels. They were tasked with finding out how the number of batteries used would impact the volume of the buzzer. As a whole class, they came to the conclusion that increasing the voltage across a circuit meant that there was an increase in the volume of the buzzers. Following this, they had the task of plotting their data on to a line graph which they successfully completed.

On Thursday, the children were privileged to be in the presence of David Mason (a renowned author) who helped them to create an astonishing piece of writing using their creative flair. Throughout the day, they used elements of drama - like freeze frames and slow motion - to come up with ideas for their piece of writing. They were also tasked with writing a piece of poetry entitled ‘Freedom’ - the results were both creative and from the heart and they certainly enjoyed writing with so much independence and experimenting with different styles and genres. 

Welcome back to school. We hope you have had a lovely Easter and a relaxing break. It has been lovely to see all the children return to school excited about their new learning.

This week in Nursery the children have started their new topic ‘In the Garden.’ The children were very excited by the arrival of caterpillars in class.  They were all very keen to have a look at them and see how tiny they were and the children can’t wait to see how big they get before they turn into butterflies.

The focus of this topic will be minibeasts with a particular emphasis on Eric Carle stories.  This week’s story is ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, they have been on a bug hunt to see what they could find in the nursery garden, made a minibeast tuff tray together, cut out pictures from the story and linked their maths work to the fruits that the caterpillar eats.  The children worked hard building towers using the numbers 1-5 helping their friends and working together.  They can’t wait to show you their symmetrical butterflies.

Reception have had a fantastic first week back. During circle time, the children shared their favourite part of the Easter holidays. They then drew pictures and wrote sentences about the fun things they got up to.

The children have begun their new topic- In the Garden- and have been busy learning their text map for their new story, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’.

The children have enjoyed a challenge in Maths this week as they have been learning the teen numbers. Reception have played lots of number games, practiced their number formation and have composed teen numbers using numicon and ten frames.

In RE, they have been thinking about the things that make us special. The children drew lots of pictures to represent all the things they are good at such as riding a bike or giving cuddles.

On Wednesday, Year 1 enjoyed their first dance session with Miss Becky. The children had a great time making poses and starting a dance routine. Watch this space for their completed dance routine at the end of this half term!

In Year 2 this week the children have been using lots of technology to enhance their learning! In Geography, they have started their new topic based on Zambia – they throughly enjoyed using the IPads to discover and research all about Zambia and they found some very interesting facts to share. In Computing, the children have started their new unit based on pictograms. They learnt how to create tally charts and they then displayed their data on Seesaw.

This has been a fun-filled first week back for Year 3 and has been filled with many firsts. Year 3 absolutely loved their first swimming session at Copley and the excitement was tangible even on the coach journey there. When in the pool, the teachers were wowed by their level of swimming ability. They did us proud!

In music this week, Year 3 had their very first lesson learning how to play the ukulele. Miss Hind was incredibly pleased with their ability to pluck the strings to make some notes. There are definitely some budding musicians in Year 3!

Not only do we have some budding musicians, but we also have some excellent geographers too! Year 3 loved getting stuck into their brand new geography unit, which focuses on the local area of Mossley. The unit began with a game called ‘Memory Mapping’, which involved the children working in groups to populate a blank map of the UK with the different countries and cities that it is made up of. They worked brilliantly in their teams and communicated their ideas clearly to their team members. Year 3 showed off their knowledge of continents of the world and they loved sharing a song that they had learnt to help remember them.

As usual, Year 4 have come back from their holidays and got stuck into their learning straight away!  In English, the have begun their wizard inspired unit on instructions.  The children have had fun designing and describing their own wizard characters as well as following instructions to make Harry Potter wands.

In Maths, they have been looking at tenths, both written as fractions and decimals.  In Science, the children have begun their new topic on states of matter.  They looked at a variety of materials and began sorting them into groups of solids, liquids and gases using a Venn diagram to do this.

In RE, Year 4 have also been thinking about rules and how they apply to religion and life in general. In Geography, they have begun their new topic on the UK and they have been using maps and atlases to help them learn about the different countries which make up the UK and the varying landscapes across these places. 

It has been a busy and exciting first week back in Year 5. In English they have started to edit their Brazil videos. The children have been able to set the Brazilian background themselves, add effects, edit video lengths and add background music all while thinking about the audience.

In Maths they have been looking at fractions, decimals and percentages and how they all go hand in hand. In Science, they investigated forces. They created their own data tables and estimated before recording how many newtons each activity took.

It’s been a busy start to the term for Year 6 as they’ve launched straight in to a Design and Technology challenge that is both complex and engaging at the same time. The children have been tasked with designing and making structures for a playground. They’ve carried out research in to playgrounds by both drawing on their own experiences and looking at online sources before experimenting with the strength and durability of different structures. It was then time to start making models of their playground structures – the children combined different materials and techniques to build slides, swings, climbing frames and other playground components.

In maths this week, they’ve been busy calculating the area of different 2D shapes from rectangles to parallelograms. They’ve even recapped their knowledge of the different types of triangles and the children have discovered the formula to find their areas. There have definitely been some tricky problems for our Y6 mathematicians to solve and they’ve relished rising to the challenge!

It has been a lovely end to the term this week. The children have thoroughly enjoyed our Easter Bingo event with parents, carers and family members joining them to win some Easter goodies. We also had our Easter service on Wednesday and our Ethos group did a great job of leading our service and sharing the story of Easter and the meaning behind the cross as a Christian symbol.

In Nursery the children have been really engaged in their learning about the Easter Story and have enjoyed role playing the story. They have also been busy making Easter gifts.

Reception have had a fantastic week learning about the Easter story. On Monday, the children learnt about Palm Sunday. They made palm leaves and sang ‘Sing Hosannah’. On Tuesday, they read ‘The Easter Story’ and learnt that Jesus was crucified and then he came back to life. The children worked hard to sequence the Easter story pictures.

Reception have also been learning about how we celebrate Easter and we talked about the Easter bunny, chocolate and Easter egg hunts. The children worked hard to make baby lamb Easter cards for their grownups at home.

The children have excelled during our Maths sessions this week as they have been learning about repeating patterns. They made musical repeating patterns with their bodies such as ‘tap-tap-clap!’ and created Frozen patterns using Elsa gems and beads.

In Year 1, the children have been looking at making sculptures during their Art lessons. They have completed observational drawings of birds and feathers using different mediums. They then used their drawing of feathers to collage onto their bird shape. Finally, they made legs from wire and created 3D bird sculptures. They look fantastic!

Year 4 have had a busy final week before Easter.  This week has been Design Technology week, where the children have designed and made free standing structures.  The children learned about pavilions and designed their own, thinking about the aesthetics of their structure as well as how to make it stable by reinforcing it with card and tape.  The children then weaved card and created cladding roofs.  The project was quite a challenge, with some of the children’s completed pavilions being quite unstable.  They have therefore spent lots of time evaluating the finished structures, thinking about some of their problems and how they would overcome them if they were to make their pavilions again. 

The children have also had fun completing a Times Table Rock Stars inter school challenge this week as well as making Easter cards.  They finished off the week with some Easter bingo, with lots of prizes for all to enjoy.  The children have worked incredibly hard this term and we hope they all have a very well deserved Easter break.

This week has been a busy week in Year 5! They have been recording their tourism programmes about Brazil with the green screen and they have all been very enthusiastic! We have definitely seen some budding presenters in our midst!

The children have also worked very hard with their mid year assessments and Mrs Fernandez is so proud of everyone! Well done!

On their last day the children took part in Easter bingo which was lovely! We hope you all have a lovely two weeks off!

The children have had a very exciting week in Year 6! In Computing, they have been using an I.C.T program called Scratch. Through Scratch, they used elements of coding to design and create their own games. The aim of each game was to catch as many items as they could (using a basket as a prop), and they were tasked with collecting the highest amount possible. The children found this challenging at first, but they showed perseverance and determination as a whole class. By the end of the lesson, everyone had designed their own game - each one was absolutely brilliant!

They’ve had an eggcellent time celebrating Easter this week – the children put their art and design skills to the test in order to make some impressive Easter cards and they thoroughly enjoyed Easter bingo on the last day of term - the chocolate prizes proved particularly popular and we definitely ended the term on a high!

It’s been a busy week in school. We have welcomed some of our Governors into school to experience a science learning walk. The Governors really enjoyed their visit and were amazed by the scientific knowledge and use of technical vocabulary that they saw in lessons and that the children used when talking to them about their learning.

Year 5 have enjoyed their Experience easter event at Mossley Methodist Church this week where they visit a number of stations to find out about the Easter story.

This week, Reception have been learning about the story ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. The children were very excited to have a visit from Goldilocks on Monday. They put her in the hot seat and asked her lots of questions and Goldilocks then took them on an adventure outside to hunt for the three bears. The children have enjoyed retelling the story using props and masks and used their cutting skills to sequence pictures of the traditional tale.

The children also had a teddy bears picnic this week where they brought in their favourite teddy from home. The children learnt how to make porridge and enjoyed sharing it with their teddy bears.

3D shapes have been their maths focus this week and the children have been using lots of fantastic mathematical language to describe the shapes. They enjoyed creating shape pictures using paint and 3D shapes and they have been building towers too.

Year 1 have been busy listening to and then re-enacting the Easter Story through role-play this week. The children have considered how each person in the story would feel and how they acted and they have all got a very clear understanding of the main events of the story.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been completing their ‘eggciting’ Design Technology unit which has been exploring making leavers, pivots and linkages. They really enjoyed looking at a variety of designs and they used this inspiration to design, create and evaluate their own moving Easter mechanisms. All the children showed perseverance and determination when creating their linkages as it was quite tricky. Well done!

This week has been another brilliant week in Year 3! In R.E, the children wowed us with their knowledge of our Easter unit so far. They shared this knowledge during a great game of ‘Quiz, Quiz, Trade’. Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed learning about Maundy Thursday and they loved re-enacting the last supper.

In English, Year 3 have worked so hard on completing their innovated Manfred the Baddie stories. They really enjoyed sharing them with others. There are definitely some budding authors in Year 3!

Year 3 wowed us in science this week with their fantastic understanding of magnetic and non-magnetic materials. They remembered so much about friction and how it effects the movement of an object. Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed exploring to see if an object could be moved on top of a whiteboard when a magnet was placed underneath. They used this knowledge brilliantly to plan an investigation which we will complete next week.

The children have had another great week in Year 4.  In English, they have enjoyed writing poems on the different stages of a river.  They have used their geographical knowledge of the upper, middle and lower course of a river and combined this with their creative use of figurative language to create some wonderful poems.  The poems are especially fitting, because it was World Poetry on Thursday 21^st, so they enjoyed sharing their poems on this day as well as reading and performing pieces written by some well-known poets. 

In Maths, the children have continued to learn about fractions, adding and subtracting fractions and converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and vice versa.  In Science, they learnt about how wind-turbines can create electricity and they even had a go at making their own.

In RE, they learnt about the traditions of Lent and on Friday, they all enjoyed a fantastic trip to Park Gate, where the children were able to consolidate what they have learnt about rivers this term and to see first-hand, some of the features that they have been discussing in class. 

Year 5 have had a lovely week, especially their visit to Mossley Methodist Church for Experience Easter. The children took part in different activities to reflect on how Christians celebrate Easter. The children discussed how they can pray for others in need, they wrote about hopes and dreams on stones, learned about Holy Communion and Baptism.

They have been eagerly writing persuasive non-chronological reports on visiting Rio in Brazil. Once completed their aim is to create a tourism programme using the green screen which the children are very excited for.

Year 6 have been brushing up on their archaeology skills this week by delving further in to the lives of the Mayans. They’ve been thinking about how historians and archaeologists work together to infer what life would have been like in Central America more than 1000 years ago. The children were given images of a key piece of evidence from the discovery of King Pacal: a grand mask. They then worked together to establish key lines of enquiry and determine what this particular piece of archaeological evidence could tell us about Mayan culture.

In science this week, the children have been working hard to understand how simple circuits work. They were challenged with recognising a range of symbols, and they even had a go at building their own circuits!  Some of the children expanded on their simple circuit designs, adding extra batteries, bulbs and switches.

It’s been another busy week in school. Some of our Year 3 and Year 4 children participated in the MCSP Dodgeball competition at Mossley Hollins on Tuesday evening and both teams played brilliantly, earning them second place. Well done to both teams.

This week Nursery have been reading the Mick Inkpen book ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’.  The children have enjoyed being Jasper and each day they have looked at what Jasper did with his bean, and then they did the same with theirs.  They are hoping their beans grow into tall beanstalks!

They have also been focussing on mathematical language of short, shorter, shortest, tall, taller and tallest.  The children worked out who was the shortest and tallest in the class.

Reception have been busy learning their number bonds to 10 this week. They enjoyed learning and singing a new number bonds song and have been exploring different ways to make 10 using dinosaurs, conkers, cars and numicon; they have been writing number sentences too.

The children have enjoyed retelling the story of The Little Red Hen using their text map. They then had a go at writing the story using their phonics knowledge.

There has been some wonderful language rich role play from the children in the bakery this week. The children have been wearing baker’s hats and using flour and playdough to bake bread rolls and cakes for their friends.

The children in Year 1’s Arts and Crafts Club had a great week using their imagination to create junk models. They have created a spider that is also a man, a tree monster and an Easter Garden.

In Year 2 this week the children have been learning about volume and capacity. They have enjoyed looking at a variety of measuring jugs and cylinders and they have learnt to measure in millilitres and litres. In Computing, they have been learning how to use Scratch Jnr to programme characters and move them around the screen. Some of the children progressed further and also added voices and different backgrounds – the possibilities were endless.

This week has been a fantastic week in Year 3! In history, the children thoroughly enjoyed investigating the lives of rich and poor people in Tudor times.  They used a video clip, non-fiction books and information researched on their iPads. They enjoyed working in pairs to produce a creative poster showcasing what they had found out.

In science, the children have been continuing to develop their understanding of ‘Forces and Magnets’. They enjoyed investigating to see which everyday materials are magnetic and which ones are non-magnetic. They used some super scientific language too when sharing what they had found out.

Year 4 have had another jam-packed week, full of exploration, discussion and problem solving.  In Maths, they have learnt more about fractions and now understand what proper, improper and mixed fractions are.  They even learnt how to convert improper fractions into mixed fractions and to add and subtract fractions. 

In Science, the children learnt about the functions of switches.  They had fun making their own switches using card, split pins and paperclips. In English, they have spent the week writing diary entries, writing in character as the Tear Thief.  In Geography, the children learnt about the different stages of a river.  Next week, they plan on using their geographical knowledge to help them complete some cross-curricula writing in English. 

In RE they have enjoyed learning more about Jesus’ time in the wilderness and what he did prior to and after his time in the desert.  They have also enjoyed observing and holding the baby chicks.  The children will be very sad to see them go, but have loved having them in the class.

This week in Year 5, the children have been busy writing their own versions of Leon and the Place Between. The children have used some brilliantly adventurous vocabulary and amazing figurative language.

In RE they learnt all about Mother Teresa and discussed how Christians today follow Jesus’ teaching about justice and forgiveness.

In Science, the children looked at reversible and irreversible changes and heated different items to see if they changed. They even tried to make butter but this was a long process that they didn’t quite reach!

This week, our Year 6s were further immersed in to the world of William Shakespeare when we were treated to a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Young Shakespeare Company. The children were immediately enthralled by the show’s humour and mystical setting as the actors brought to life the characters and the plot in their unique twist of this treasured classic. Before long, the children themselves were playing a vital role in the play, adding sound effects, actions and even taking on some of the different characters too - who’d have thought we had such Shakespearean talent in our midst? As a class, we’ve decided that Puck was our favourite character although the ass was a close second! By immersing themselves in the production, the children gained an incredible understanding of what is an extremely complex tale!

They’ve also been experimenting with electricity in their science lesson this week; the children worked in teams to carry out a number of investigations involving wires, batteries, bulbs, switches and motors. They refreshed their understanding of simple circuits and then applied their knowledge to a series of problem-solving tasks!

It has been a fantastic week in school! On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day. Everyone dressed up as their favourite book character and the children and staff all looked amazing! Parents and carers were invited into school to take part in our Book Swap event and the children were able to swap a book of their choice from home for a new book to read. Throughout the day, the children enjoyed a costume parade, performed poems in our poetry slam and enjoyed lots of other activities in their classroom including Book Bingo.

On Monday, some eggs arrived in school and Year 4 volunteered to look after these until they hatched into chicks. We were thrilled to come into school on Thursday to find that we had six new chicks. We are hoping that the rest of the chicks hatch before the weekend. The children have loved visiting our new chicks and watching them play together.

In Nursery this week, the children have opened a garden centre in their role play area to develop their spring theme. They have been busy making special surprises for a special person on Sunday and have learnt a song about their Mummy to share. During World Book Day the children enjoyed dressing as their favourite book character and reading lots of stories. They also took part in the book swap event and enjoyed decorating their wooden spoons.  

Reception have had a visit from The Little Red Hen this week. The Hen left a huge mess of red feathers, flour and dough. On Monday morning, the children were excited to find a letter from the Hen asking them to make some bread. Reception had a fantastic day making bread rolls. They enjoyed mixing the ingredients, kneading the dough, adding jam and butter and most of all eating them!

The children saved a bread roll for The Little Red Hen and used their beautiful handwriting to write letters to her to say thank you.

Their Maths focus this week has been finding 1 more and 1 less. The children enjoyed singing lots of number songs such as ‘5 little men in a flying saucer’ and using manipulatives to act them out and write number sentences too.

In RE, the children have been focusing on Diwali. Reception enjoyed drawing mehndi patterns, watching videos of fireworks and decorating Diwa lamps.

This week Year 1 have been looking at the Easter Story and Easter symbols. The children have used what they have learned to design an Easter garden.

Year 2 have had a fantastic week in school. The children have enjoyed celebrating World Book Day and learning their poem, 'When Daddy Fell in the Pond,' for the Poetry Slam. They have also made some brilliant book characters using their wooden spoon.

This week has been another busy and exciting week in Year 3! The children were all really looking forward to World Book Day and it did not disappoint! They thoroughly enjoyed learning their poem ‘I’m Walking with my Iguana’ and some of them even did extra practice at home! In the afternoon, they performed the poem for the rest of the school as part of our ‘Poetry Slam’. They were all amazing!

In science, the children have been learning about ‘Forces and Magnets’. They know that to make things move they need to apply a force to them. The class thoroughly enjoyed investigating to see if the distance a car travels is affected by the surface it travels on.

The children have made so much progress with their knowledge of fractions this week. They now know the difference between unit and non-unit fractions. As well as this, they know, and can explain, the difference between the numerator and denominator. Well done Year 3!

This week Year 4 have been really busy with all sorts of activities.  In English, the children have been doing some drama and using this to help them plan a diary.  They are writing diaries as if they are the Tear Thief from Carol Anne Duffy’s book. In Maths, they have been learning more about fractions; looking at mixed numbers and improper fractions and how they can convert between the two.

In Science, the children have been looking at insulators and conductors.  They tested lots of materials to see whether they were insulators or conductors.  In Geography, they looked at how people use rivers across the world and in RE they have been thinking about what the word ‘temptation’ means and why this word is significant during Lent.  The children considered how they are sometimes tempted and whether they are tempted by the same things as Jesus was. 

They have also had lots of fun this week making Mother’s Day cards and celebrating World Book Day.  On World Book Day, the children enjoyed all sorts of activities including ‘Book Bingo’ and our whole school poetry slam.  They also enjoyed sharing some of their favourite books and had a go at some creative writing games. 

It has been a great week in Year 5. The children have been working hard in Maths finding fractions of amounts to finish off their fractions unit. 

In Geography they have been comparing climates with the UK and Brazil, naming countries in South America and their capitals. Children were very surprised to learn about time zones and loved finding out what children would be doing in Brazil at different times of our day.

I must admit, Year 5 smashed it at the Poetry Slam with their performance of World Book Day by MC Grammar. They were amazing, check out the video! We are so proud!

In Year 6 this week, they’ve thoroughly immersed themselves in to the world of literature in order to celebrate World Book Day. They’ve been mastering a classic Shakespeare verse for our whole school Poetry Slam and loved taking on the role of haggard witches conjuring a spell as they brought to life a famous scene from Macbeth – we can’t wait to go and see the Young Shakespeare Company perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream next week!

On World Book Day itself, the children enjoyed helping to run our whole school Book Swap event and loved helping some of our younger children choose a new book to take home. They’ve also been discovering which Hogwarts House they belong to by sporting the Sorting Hat and once they discovered where they belonged, they’ve found everything there is to know out about their houses in order to write a magically persuasive text.

It has been an exciting week in school. We were all very pleased to find out that Mr and Mrs Bradley’s little girl had arrived, weighing 7lb 5oz and is called Nancy Jayne. Mum and baby are doing well. Congratulations to them both!

The children have enjoyed their Top of the Tree reward activities at Tumbles, Summit Up and Doodle Pots this week. It was lovely to welcome so many visitors into school today for our achievement assembly. Lots of children enjoyed sharing their certificates with parents, carers and family members.

In Nursery this week, the children have started their new topic of spring. They have read a new text -‘The Trouble with Tadpoles’ and have found out all about the life cycle of a frog. They have made frog headbands and painted tadpoles and frog spawn.

In their maths work they have been jumping on lily pads and adding one more. They have used flip frogs to have a frog race and have placed the frogs in order. The children enjoyed messy play with jelly frog spawn and raisins!

Reception have enjoyed beginning their new topic this week- Traditional Tales. Their focus text is ‘The Little Red Hen’ and the children have enjoyed learning the text map to retell the story with actions. There has been lots of fantastic role play from the children as they have been retelling the story using puppets and small world with their friends.

Their number of the week has been the number 9 and the children have enjoyed exploring different ways to make 9 using numicon and building blocks. The children have all been practicing their number formation too.

In RE, the children have enjoyed their learning on the Jewish religious celebration- Sukkot. Reception have worked hard to design their own Sukkah.

This week, Year 1 have been looking at the story ‘Space Ant’. In the story there is a character called a ‘Tigeroo’ that is half tiger and half kangaroo. The children have been busy creating their own animals and will soon be writing non-chronological reports to describe their animals.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been learning about measuring in centimetres and metres. They have enjoyed comparing lengths and heights and have used a variety of apparatus to measure different items around school.

This week has been busy and fun packed week in Year 3. It started with the exciting news that Mrs Bradley had welcomed her gorgeous new baby girl, Nancy Jayne. Year 3 wishes Mrs and Mr Bradley huge congratulations.

The children have been excited about their learning too! They were very proud of their finished letters to Manfred the Baddie and they could not believe it when they received a special delivery from him: a book entitled Manfred the Baddie.  The children could not wait to read it!

In history, they thoroughly enjoyed moving around the room and exploring different historical sources from the time of King Henry VIII. They then made conclusions about what his appearance and character was like.

They loved reading chapter four of their guided reading text, ‘The Sheep-Pig.’ They enjoyed using their super scanning skills to find different words in the text and then matched them to their meanings.

Year 4 have had another jam-packed week, full of exploration, discussion and problem solving.  In maths, they have learnt more about fractions and now understand what proper, improper and mixed fractions are.  They even learnt how to convert improper fractions into mixed fractions.

In science, the children learnt more about electricity; the components required within a circuit and how a circuit must be complete in order for electricity to light a bulb or make a buzzer work.  In English, they have written character descriptions and have just begun writing a persuasive letter.

 In Geography, they have enjoyed learning more about the features of rivers and in RE they have used the gospels to carry out research into what happened to Jesus in the wilderness.  The children have also enjoyed their second Forest School session and have begun rehearsing their class poem in preparation for the World Book Day poetry slam!

This week in Science, Year 5 have been investigating the difference between melting and dissolving and seeing which materials are soluble and insoluble. They predicted what their materials would be then used hot water to see if their materials were soluble.

In English the children wrote some super-impressive descriptions that Mrs Fernandez was so proud of! They described the infamous ‘Abdul Kazam’ from their new book Leon and the Place Between.

In Maths they have been multiplying fractions, the children were very confident with this and enjoyed the lessons! Check out their Homework Help video on Seesaw to see the methods they used!

Year 6 been thinking all about the future this week and thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the MCSP Careers Fair at Mossley Hollins. At the event, the children were given the opportunity to visit stalls in small groups and ask questions to a wide variety of people about their careers – there was a police office, a paramedic, a nurse, an estate agent, a forensic scientist and even an ecclesiastical lawyer! The children asked some brilliant questions and there was lots of interaction on each stall, they even had a go at valuing a house with the Estate Agent and interpreting a historical document from 1888 with the lawyer.

The event also involved taking part in a workshop delivered by Scott from Live ‘N’ Learn. Through a range of problem-solving and interactive activities, Scott explored with the children the role that mindset plays in success.  They discussed effective communication, first impressions, teamwork and the fact that success usually only comes to those willing to work for it.

Welcome back to school! We hope you have had a good half term and are ready and raring to go for the next half term ahead. It has been an exciting week in school as the children have embraced their new topics and units of work.

In Nursery, the children have been celebrating Chinese New Year. They have used their passports to travel on an aeroplane to China and have been busy finding out how families celebrate Chinese New Year. On Tuesday the children had a special visitor, Mrs Lyness, who came to talk to the children about Chinese New Year and she showed them lots of artefacts from China.

In class the children have enjoyed role play in their Chinese Takeaway and have been busy mark making by copying Chinese symbols using chopsticks. The children have also listened to the story of Chinese New Year and have been role playing it using animal masks.

Reception have also been celebrating Chinese New Year this week. They have enjoyed listening to Chinese music, using chopsticks, exploring Chinese New Year decorations, making lanterns and writing Chinese numbers. The children also tried Chinese food this week; their favourite was the chicken noodles!

In Maths, the children have been learning about time. They have been singing their days of the week song and talking about the months of the year. They also looked at sand timers and challenged themselves to balance on one leg for 30 seconds.

This week in Year 1’s Arts and Crafts Club the children have been exploring printing with a variety of tools and materials. They had lots of fun experimenting with the different tools and materials.

In Year 2 this week, the children were thrilled to see their finished Van Gogh artwork being displayed outside their classroom – they really enjoyed creating different textures with the oil pastels. In Music, the children have been learning how to play the notes G and A on the recorder and in computing they began their new programming unit using Espresso Coding.

Mrs Flint has had a lovely week getting to know Year 3! The children have thrown themselves into all aspects of their learning from their new Life in Tudor Times topic to their English work based on the book Manfred the Baddie.

On Monday, the class received an email to inform them that there was a possible stolen bag on the school premises. When they investigated, they found a bag hidden outside Year 3 and when they inspected inside the bag, they made conclusions about who the owner of the bag could be and why the bag was on the playground. Later in the week, the children discovered Manfred the Baddie had stolen the bag and they have begun to write a letter to him urging him to stop this villainous behaviour. They just hope he listens to their pleas.

The children have loved the start of their history work all about life in Tudor times. They were given the challenge of seeing if they could identify Henry VIII’s portrait amongst six other portraits. They made predictions about what he might look like and then once they had looked at all of them, they decided which one was of Henry VIII. Year 3 were very shocked to find out that they were all portraits of him from different times during his life.  After this, they played a game called ‘Each One Teach One’ to find out more about Henry VIII.  

The children have got straight back to work in Year 4, starting all of their new topics and beginning to read new texts.  In English, they have started to read ‘The Tear thief’ by Carol Ann Duffy and they will be using this text to inspire their writing over the next few weeks.  In English, the children have looked at figurative language and used some of these literary techniques to write a class poem.  They have also begun to plan a persuasive letter which they will begin writing next week. 

In Maths, they have begun their new unit on fractions.  The children have been looking at how fractions are equal parts of a whole and have begun understanding unit fractions. In Science, they have started their new topic on electricity, and they began this unit by thinking about electrical appliances and sorting these into groups, depending on whether they are mains or battery powered.  They realised that some appliances are both mains and battery powered, such as mobile phones and laptops. 

In Geography, Year 4 began their new Geography topic on rivers.  They looked at the geographical definition of rivers and began thinking about and learning some of the correct terminology for their features.  In RE, they commenced their new topic on Lent.  The children started this topic by looking at the significance of Ash Wednesday and discussed the meaning of the word ‘sin’ and why admitting to sins can be hard. 

They also started their new Guided Reading text this week which is ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ by Michael Morpurgo.  It looks like it’s going to an action-packed and mysterious book and the children are all looking forward to reading more of it next week!  As well as all of these new topics, they have also managed to fit in their weekly PE/Swimming, Spanish, Music and Forest School lessons.  What a busy, fun-packed week it’s been!

In Year 5, the children have had a fun first week back! They kicked off their new English topic with a bang! The children entered the classroom that had been turned in to a circus! They enjoyed candyfloss and popcorn, watched the acrobats and even tried juggling. The children had a great morning immersing themselves in the new book: Leon & The Place Between.

In Maths they have started using the bus stop method for division which the children are becoming very confident at. In Geography they identified famous human and physical features of South America.

In Science they conducted an investigation to separate materials and the children had to think about which strategy would be the best to separate one material from another.

Year 6 have made a particularly fantastic start to the new term; they’re already hooked on their new class text: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. After exploring some of the beasts within the beautifully illustrated book and even joining Newt Scamander on a tour of his suitcase with a clip from the film, the children were gifted their own unique beast. They’re now tasked with helping Newt write a second edition of Fantastic Beasts and the children are each going to write a non-chronological report detailing the peculiarities and wonders of their very own wondrous critter. We can’t wait to see what they’ll produce next week!

The children were also keen to get started with their new science unit this week: electricity! They’ve shared what they already know and have been researching the lives and inventions of two key scientists: Alessandro Volta and Thomas Edison. They’re looking forward to carrying out some experiments with electricity in the coming weeks.

It has been a fun week leading up to half term. The children have celebrated Children’s Mental Health Week and Safer Internet Day and have been involved in a range of activities to celebrate these events.

Year 6 enjoyed their visit from Safe Squad where they discussed how to keep themselves safe in lots of different scenarios, from being safe online to safety near water, fire safety and lots of things in-between.

It was lovely to see so many parents, carers and family members join us in school on Tuesday morning for our Year 3 and Year 4 musical performance. Each class shared some of the songs they have been learning and played a number of tunes on their instruments under the guidance of Miss Hinds from Tameside Music Service. We were all very impressed with how much the children have learned and how confidently they performed. Well done!

Some of our Year 5 and Year 6 children took part in the Tameside Multi Sports Panathlon event at Ashton Sixth Form College on Thursday and enjoyed participating in a range of sports.

In Nursery this week the children have been learning all about Valentine’s Day. They have made Valentine’s cards and hats. The children also enjoyed a session with our Digital Leaders finding out all about Safer Internet Day.

Reception have enjoyed a week full of love as they too have been learning about Valentine’s Day. The children enjoyed making and giving gifts to one another in the tuff tray and using their cutting skills to make a bouquet. They made Valentines crowns and enjoyed a love themed number hunt. Reception are learning to be kind and thoughtful and have enjoyed complimenting each other and drawing pictures for their friends. They have also worked hard to make Valentines cards for a loved one.

The children have been busy with their Maths learning this week. They have been using lots of maths vocabulary such as longer, shorter and taller. They enjoyed building tall towers and finding long and short objects around the classroom.

This week in Science, Year 1 have been completing experiments using their senses. They have had a great time tasting crisps, completing a feely bag task and using their noses to guess smells.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been enjoying their art week. They have been looking at expressive artwork and using acrylics to create different techniques. They are building up to their final piece which will be inspired by Vincent Van Gogh.

Year 3 have had another extremely busy week this week in school. They have been making their own volcanoes. They started by making the volcanoes using lots of newspaper, they then painted the volcanoes and exploded them.

Year 3 have had their music performance this week, where they did a fantastic performance for their parents, carers and family members.

In RE, the children have been designing their own multifaith prayer room. They have used the knowledge that they have learned looking at what different religions do during prayer. In Science, they have been looking at what their bodies need to stay healthy and have looked at the different nutrients they need and what they do for their bodies. They have also designed their own healthy meal.  

In Geography, the children have been looking at earthquakes. They have located on a world map four famous earthquakes and have looked at the impact of the earthquakes on people and the measurement on the Richter scale. They have also looked at the long term and short-term impacts of earthquakes on the people and on the land.

Year 4s final week in school before the holidays has been a super busy and fun one as it has been Art week.  The children really enjoyed learning about plinths and how they are used to display sculptures and other pieces of art.  The children learned about ‘The Fourth Plinth’ in London and also studied the sculptors of Thomas J Price.  The children began to appreciate that anything can be art and enjoyed considering how plinths help to display creations, giving artist’s creations status and grabbing people’s attention.  Creating their own plinths and selecting their own objects to be displayed, the children curated their own pocket-sized art gallery. 

Linking in with their History topic on Romans, the children also created mosaic tiles.  The children created a piece of art-work based on Jesus. They spent time looking at different of representations of Jesus on the internet.  Each child selected and printed one or two of these images. They then put them together to create a large, class collage, including some of their own representations of Jesus created using printing techniques. 

The children have been so excited setting up their own art-gallery, especially since local artist, Chris Cyprus, had agreed to come along to take a look at their creations.  In tribute to him, they also created their own Chris Cyprus inspired class collage.  As you can see from the photos, we think that Chris was quite impressed! 

This week in Year 5, the children have been creating maps using the bold drawings and typography techniques that they have learned over the half term. The children were so proud of their maps and they should be, they were amazing!

In Spanish the children were creating Valentine’s Day poems and were able to translate them and write them in both English and Spanish.

In English they wrote speeches to show how the Big Bad Pig had changed to a Big Good Pig. Once finished and edited they used an app to bring them to life!

On Monday, Year 6 were treated to an afternoon of workshops delivered by Tameside’s Safe Squad. Our visitors led the children through a series of hands-on activities and engaging talks surrounding issues of personal safety, online safety and community safety. The children particularly enjoyed learning about Basic First Aid, which included spotting signs and knowing what to do in an emergency as well as having the opportunity to practice CPR on specially designed manikins. Year 6 responded to each session brilliantly and asked some extremely pertinent questions!

Their geography lessons have transported them to the continent of North America this term and they’ve really enjoyed getting to know everything they can about its physical and human features. As their unit of work comes to a close, they’ve focused on one of the continent’s most vibrant and eclectic cities: New York. The children explored what it’s like to live in the Big Apple and how it differs from their own town of Mossley. They also used a little bit of green screen magic to recreate an iconic photograph from 1930s New York: Lunch atop a Skyscraper.

It has been a busy week in school. Some of our Year 5 and Year 6 children took part in the Tameside Athletics heats on Wednesday at Denton Community College. The children felt they performed really well, so they are hoping they have got through to the next stage in the competition. They also took part in the MCSP basketball competition at Mossley Hollins on Tuesday. Despite playing well, they didn’t make it into the top three on this occasion.

This week in Nursery the children have been continuing their work on healthy food and healthy bodies. They have looked at their healthy lunch boxes and sorted lots of different fruits and vegetables. The children have enjoyed selling healthy fruit and vegetables in their market shop.

The children have enjoyed exercising and playing games outside to keep their bodies healthy. They have talked about the importance of hygiene – washing their hands and wiping their noses. They have also talked about what happens if their bodies are hurt and need ‘fixing’ by putting plasters or bandages on and they practised doing this with the class dolls.

In Reception this week, the children have used all their knowledge of dinosaurs to create a dinosaur fact file. They enjoyed learning new facts from reading non-fiction books and used their phonic knowledge to write a sentence.

In Maths this week the children have been learning about doubles. They used a magic doubling cauldron to investigate doubles and made double butterflies with paint. The children also learnt the maths vocabulary ‘odd’ and ‘even’ and enjoyed exploring this with numicon and making odd monsters.

This week in Year 1, the children have been writing their own versions of Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates.  In Maths, they have focused on ordering and comparing numbers to 20.

In Year 2 this week, the children have continued learning about the importance of hygiene. This has involved learning about different microbes and they had the opportunity to create their own bacteria, fungi and viruses. The children really enjoyed doing this!

They were very crafty at Forest School last week and created their own bracelets and key rings and they also got to use a variety of tools to whittle the wood.

Year 3 have had another great and busy week in school. In Maths, they have been working hard when dividing 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers using a range of formal methods and their times tables knowledge. In English, they have continued to write their Greek Myths and have been including inverted commas for speech.

In RE, the children have been looking at prayers and blessings for the world. They have looked at what they are thankful for, what they would like help with, what they are sorry for and what they would like people around the world to be protected from.

In Geography, the children looked at the features of a volcano and were able to label a volcano and identify the features of a volcanic eruption. In Science, they have looked at muscles and were able to identify the different muscles in their body that they use when carrying out different activities. They were also able to name how many muscles there are in the body and identify how they can keep their muscles healthy.

The children have had a really fun and productive week in Year 4.  In Maths, they have just begun their new Maths unit on perimeter and length.  They have spent some time converting between km and m’s and have begun calculating the perimeter of rectangles.

In English, they have finished off their ‘Escape from Pompeii’ recounts, using Talk-for-writing to guide us.  The children did a fantastic job incorporating speech into their recounts and correctly punctuating this, as well as including fronted adverbials and powerful vocabulary. 

In History, the children learnt more about the Celtic warrior Boudicca and wrote inspirational battle cry speeches.  In Science, they carried out an experiment aimed at exploring how the distance from a sound source affects how loud it is heard.  They used a data logger to record the decibels detected of a sound source at varying distances.  After that, they had a go at recording their results in a line-graph.  It was the first time that the children had come across line-graphs and so the task was quite challenging, but they amazed Miss Snioch with their determination and resilience. 

The children have also been working really hard to perfect their recorder and singing skills in preparation for their music performance next week.  The children can’t wait to showcase their musical talents.

This week in Year 5, the children have been busy writing up their innovated Twisted Tales for the Three Little Wolves making sure they’ve been adding expanded noun phrases, dialogue and relative clauses. The children have been really excited to write their own versions and share their ideas with the class.

In Maths they have been securing their knowledge of multiplying two-digit numbers by two-digit numbers using the long multiplication column method. The children have been trying really hard to perfect the method and even answer tricky word problems.

In Art this week they have been looking at bold drawings on busy map backgrounds. The children drew things that were famous in Mossley or the surrounding Greater Manchester areas on their maps and made them bold by using shading and over-drawing techniques.

Year 6 have been well and truly globetrotting in geography this week as they’ve turned their attention to the 50 states of the USA. They’ve been learning all about the physical and human features of North America for a few weeks now and the children were keen to delve deeper and explore the diverse nature of America’s states. They worked in small groups and focused on one state each to discover everything they could about its population, history, physical features and what it’s like to actually live there. Our budding geographers then presented their findings in the form of a website, which links brilliantly with their ICT unit of work and was a great way to showcase their computing skills!

It’s been another busy week in school. The children enjoyed National Handwriting Day on Tuesday when they were given the opportunity to showcase their handwriting skills whilst writing poems for display in school. Some of our Year 4 and Year 5 children had an action packed Thursday with Freddy Fit as they trained to be play leaders for our Wake up, Shake up and lunchtime activities.

In Nursery, the children have been thinking about Healthy Schools this week and have linked this work with their text ‘Handa’s Surprise.’ The children have enjoyed acting out the story and recognising the different fruits and animals in the text.

In Reception this week, the children have been working super hard on their writing. Their dinosaur egg hatched and they found muddy dinosaur tracks in the corridor meaning the dinosaur had escaped. The children worked hard to make wanted posters to see if anybody had seen the dinosaur.

Their number of the week is number 6. Reception have been representing the numbers 6, 7 and 8 on a 10 frame and with numicon and have been practising forming the numbers with chalk. 

The children have enjoyed learning their new sound of the week- j. They have been feeding the j words to the jellyfish and went on a j hunt around school, spotting things that begin with the j phoneme.

In Year 1 this week, the children have been using talk for writing to start to plan their story writing based on their text Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates. They have also continued their RE unit of work all about sacred buildings and have been thinking about why a church is sacred to Christians. They have thought about some of the special artefacts they might see in a church and what they are used for.

In Year 2 this week, the children have been learning about the importance of hygiene. They completed two scientific investigations which involved using glitter and oil to see how germs can be spread from person to person and to different surfaces. They then explored the most effective method to remove germs and made predictions before trying out their different theories. During this week’s forest school session, the children made their own dens in some very windy conditions!  

In Maths, Year 3 have been working hard dividing 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers with remainders. The children have used a range of methods and used their times tables knowledge to help them. In English, they have been writing their Greek myths and have included some fantastic descriptions and details.

In RE, the children have been looking at where and how Hindus pray and they discovered that they can pray anywhere. They also looked at the Hindu shrine and decided which of their own special items they might put on their shines.

In our Spirituality session this week, the children looked at what they are thankful for. As a class they created a list of everything they are thankful for and why they are thankful for these things. The children worked hard and came up with some brilliant ideas. In Geography, they have looked at the Ring of Fire and locating some of the world’s volcanoes and earthquakes. In Science, they have looked at the three different skeleton types and they sorted animals which either have an exoskeleton, an endoskeleton, or a hydrostatic skeleton.

This week has been really fun in Year 4! In English, the children began writing their recounts of ‘Escape from Pompeii’ using their talk-for-writing to help them.  In Maths, they learned how to divide 2 and 3 digit numbers, using place value counters and part whole models to help them.

On Tuesday, it was ‘National Handwriting Day’ and so the children spent some of the morning copying out poems to show-case their fantastic handwriting.  Year 4 have made so much progress with their handwriting!  On Wednesday, Year 4 went on a school trip to Mossley Library.  Many of the children became members and lots of other children felt really inspired by the trip and plan to become members in the future. 

In History, they learned about Boudicca and how she led a rebellion against the Romans.  They acted out the rebellion and then wrote rebellious speeches in the role of Boudicca. In Science, they carried out some experiments to help them understand what pitch is and why some sounds are high pitch and some sounds are low pitch.  In RE the children learned all about Jesus’ eight Beatitudes and had a go at writing their own.

This week in Year 5, the children have been looking more closely at subtracting fractions in Maths. They have recapped converting mixed numbers to improper fractions and back again in order to subtract two mixed numbers. The children have been sharpening their Maths and English skills with Countdown this week! They have all enjoyed trying to get the number (or as close to it as possible) and sharing with the class how they got there. They have also been trying to make the longest words possible using their spelling knowledge. They even had their first Countdown champions!

Some Year 5s joined Y4s this week for Freddy Fit training where they updated their Wake up, Shake up moves and play leader activities.

In Computing they have been enjoying using the Spheros. The children used the Spero Edu app to make codes for the Spheros to follow, this week’s challenge was to see if children could make their Sphero follow the shape of a square.

Year 5 also celebrated National Handwriting Day on Tuesday by finding some of their favourite poems by David Mason (our resident author) and writing them up as neatly and as beautifully as possible. They did a fantastic job and everyone produced some amazing handwriting and creative thematic backgrounds for their work.

It has been another jam-packed week in Year 6! It started with the children throwing themselves in to their volleyball session! The warm-up of running three times around the pitch got their hearts racing and after a little time to regain their breath, and mine too, they got stuck into the volleyball session. 

Maths this week has been all about life-learning. If you ever need to know how to change the proportions of a recipe, then Year 6 are just the people you need! They loved solving a range of recipe ratio problems and then to put it into a real-life context, they took a flapjack recipe that serves 6 and made enough for 24 people. They applied all the skills they had acquired over the unit to make the flapjack with enough for one piece each. It was delicious too! 

Year 6 were also given the opportunity to interview a Humanist this week – they have been learning about codes for living and the difference between being ‘good with God’ and being ‘good without God’. It was fascinating to talk to Kevin about his life as a Humanist and it was really interesting to discover that actually there are a lot more similarities between Christianity and Humanism than they thought there would be.