Y3/4: Kew Gardens Visit

Mr Flint 4 Comments

To tie in with our topic, years three and four visited Kew Gardens this week to get as close to a rainforest as we’re likely to get without leaving the country! we felt how the air changed as we moved from the outdoors into the humid environment of the Palm House. We compared air and soil temperature, and measured the humidity and light. Some of us even met a Water Dragon!

We also had time to do a tree-top walk (where we got an excellent view of some parakeets that have made Kew their home) and some of us experienced the hypnotic thrum of ‘The Hive’.

What a fantastic day of learning.

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Pause, wonder, reflect, question…

Mr Flint Leave a comment

I stumbled upon these amazing photos on the BBC website, and had to share with you; they stopped me in my tracks and lots of questions popped into my head. What questions pop into your head when you look at these images?

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Amazing competition photos – CBBC Newsround

This year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition attracted over 45,000 entries from professionals and amateurs across 95 countries. The exhibition goes on display on 19 October at the Natural History Museum in London.

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Year 3 Word Challenge

Mrs Bailey Leave a comment

Year 3 are already taking on learning challenges in Literacy.

Today, we ordered sentences linked to our new topic, Rainforests. As a team, we had to work out the different word types, match appropriate vocabulary, create our own word actions and add our own sentence ideas.

Come and ask us about our favourite sentence ideas!

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R e f l e c t – the riddled is solved!

Mrs Trickett Leave a comment

Today in assembly we arranged letters to discover the attribute word is reflect.

Everyone in school has been challenged to think how we can describe and explain reflect. Using pictures the children are starting to PAUSE and think of other words and phrases associated. How would you describe reflection? Have a discussion at home and add your ideas to the blog.

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Learning in Year 1 has begun

Mrs Scourfield Leave a comment

Learners in Year 1 have been exploring the wonderful new resources that have been delivered over the holidays.Yesterday we unpacked the suitcases of items we had brought with us from Reception class.  Since then we have been writing, counting, taking part in performances, going on picnics, building towers, measuring, playing musical instruments and much more as well. It is wonderful to see the learning getting off to a flying start!

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Learning . . . off and running . . .

Mrs Trickett 2 Comments

Today it was a privilege to spend time in classes and join in the learning. The highlights included :

  • new learning resources in year 1
  • Power of 5 maths
  • describing aspirations and dreams for the future
  • exploring new topics through investigations and team work
  • unwrapping books to celebrate new topics

If you have any personal or professional skills that are linked to our topics please come and speak to us. We always welcome talks, workshops and sharing of artefacts. This term we are learning about World Wars, The Rainforest and Plants.

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2018.19 – Are you ready?

Mrs Trickett Leave a comment

Welcome back to school. Today in assembly, I shared a beautiful book with the children of a collection of untranslatable words from around the world. What a wonderful word by Nicola Edwards and Luisa Uribe

Gokotta – Swedish – to wake up early in the morning so you can go outside to hear the first birds singing

Poronkusema – Finnish – the distance a reindeer can walk before needing the toilet

Nakama – Japanese – friends who are like family

I then explained to the children that there is a special word for us here at school this term. The problem was they were only given one of the letters in assembly. Over the course of the day different classes have been given a different extra letter. Can you work out the word?

_ e _ _ _ _ _

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INSET Monday 3rd September 2018

Mrs Trickett Leave a comment

Today the team gathered together for a day of learning and planning. Everyone, from the office to those who work in classes, had a focussed day looking at our school priorities and how we each play a part in the success.

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  1. Guess who – we all introduced ourselves and shared our roles
  2. S.T.E.M challenge – who can build the highest balloon tower?
  3. SIP priorities – group the definitions, annotate and discuss
  4. Identify the priorities that we each lead, are involved in and those that don’t directly apply
  5. Reflect on the school attributes and introduce new focus REFLECT, LEAD, ASPIRE
  6. Explored what reflect, lead and aspire mean to us at Maple Cross
  7. Shared reflection projects from last year
  8. Begin to think about the class projects for the forthcoming year

We look forward to another successful day tomorrow.

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