Darlinghurst Primary and Nursery School BLOG

Week 38 Summer Term

2011-07-22T11:59:00.001+01:00

Well that’s all folks!!

Another school year has come to an end……………and what a school year it has been!

We have had Morris Dancing, Karate, cake sales, fetes, i-pads, apps, lots of new awards, tears of joy, tears of sadness………..all in all, a pretty normal year at Darlinghurst!

A big thank you must be said to all the hard work this year put in by children, staff and parents. This is a wonderful, happy school and that is down to all of us who are part of Darlinghurst life.

On a personal note, I and other staff will be leaving (though I will be coming back!) so I would like to thank everyone who has made this year so special for all of us (yes that includes you 4L!). I cant wait to get back and share all my stories from around the world with you all.

Goodbye and stay safe.

Mr Lloyd

Year 6 Prom

Our proms are always emotional events, and this year’s was no different. A great night was had by all with dancing, drinking (coca cola!) and some general frivolity! Some of the teachers managed to shift some heavy shapes in the house of dance….apparently!!!

A big thank you to all those involved with organising the event, it would not be possible without your help.

On a serious note it was very sad to say goodbye to our year 6’s, they have had a fantastic year and will all be sorely missed. We wish you all the best in whatever path you take.

So for the last time this year…………..let’s see what every has been up to……

Reception
For our last week we have been asking the children what activities they wished to join in with again. We have had great fun going under the sea, whizzing off into space, thought about the seaside and thought about endangered animals around the world. The staff in the Reception classes wish to say thank you for your messages and gifts and we wish each family a very happy Summer break and look forward to seeing all the children in their Year 1 classes in September.

1C - Mrs Collison
What a fabulous year….we can not believe that it is all over. It has been so lovely to see the children grow into sensible, caring and loving children who have a positive attitude to school life. We wish them all the best for their future school life and look forward to seeing them all safe and sound (and even more grown up!!) in September.

Wishing you all a safe and fun filled summer.

Mrs Collison & Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler
So the holidays have arrived! I would like to say a big thank you to all of the parents who have shown their support and who have helped out throughout the year. I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching the class and I can definitely say that we have had lots of fun along the way. You are all stars…… good luck in year 3. x Miss Butler

3B - Miss Bernard
It’s been a really fun and rewarding year in 3B. Here are the thoughts of some of our children.

Vinson – I have had a great time in 3B this year. I am going to miss all of the teachers especially Mr. Patterson because he is leaving. I have really enjoyed the Dinosaur topic this year especially when we got to make our own Dinosaur. I am looking forward to year 4 because we have Mr. Martin and he seems really nice and funny.

Cael – Even though I am looking forward to the holidays, I know I won’t feel the summer feeling without my favourite class. I am really going to miss P4C as I really enjoyed it in year 3. Hopefully we get to do it again in year 4.

Cam – I have really enjoyed all of our exciting topics this year. My favourite topic was definitely the Romans because we got to have a full battle with 3C and we won. The teachers have all helped me a lot this year especially with my maths. I now feel that I am ready for year 4 and cannot wait.

Megan – This year I found the maths very challenging but I have learned a lot and I can see that my maths has improved. I have enjoyed the topics this year especially the Romans. I will miss everyone over the summer but I am going on holiday which will keep my mind off it until I get to see everyone again in year 4.

George – I have loved doing science in year 3. My favourite experiment was when we put some celery into a jar of food dye and when we came back the next day, the celery had sucked up all of the food dye and turned pink.

Alfie – I have learned a lot in year 3. I really enjoyed it when we backed cakes and then used them to learn about fractions. I think it will be really exciting to learn even more in year 4.

3C - Miss Crumbie
Well we have nearly completed our year and what a fantastic year it has been! Thank you to all of the children that have made it so enjoyable.

I would also like to thank ALL of the parents that have helped us this year, especially Mrs Lewis for helping the children to learn to read, Mr Lewis for making our beach trip extra fun! Mrs Shah for helping out on all of our school trips, Mrs Wilson and Doreen for everything you have done and for your amazing cakes :o) and Regina for supporting the children in their learning each week. It really has made an amazing difference to the children to have so many extra people to help.

I do hope that you all have an amazing holiday and I am already looking forward to hearing about all of the children in 3C’s future successes!!

Miss Crumbie & Mrs Johnson
xx

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone,

Well it has been an emotional week in 4L! Mr Lloyd is leaving us for a year to get married to Mrs Lloyd and travel round the world. We will miss him very much and wish him a great time! In class we filmed our movies ready for editing them on the i-pads in September! We had a sneak peek at the footage and it looks good. The class also looked at movie posters and how they are marketed. We used this information to design our own ones for our movies!

We hope everyone as a great summer break, especially Mr Lloyd. Best of luck!

Have a great time!

5B - Mrs Blatcher
Thank you so much Year 5 for a wonderful year. We have had a busy week practising our grammar and division to ensure we don’t forget it all in the summer holidays!

Our picture has appeared in the Leigh Times this week and the money we collected is in the bank ready to buy a tree and plant in the Autumn along with our time capsule . New reading records have been given out and we hope that regular reading is a part of your holiday fun!

Mrs B

5J - Mrs Johnston
The last day of term and the last blog from 5J. We have had a super year of opportunities – biscuit making at Chase, science at WHSB, leadership courses with the University of the First Age and WHSG, Qwestion Time, Walk to School Challenge, the Isle of Wight residential, art with Stuart, visits from the Police about Internet Safety, training on Apple Macs, the French theatre experience and learning DT through French. My personal highlights of the year were the Victorian mine recreation, seeing the class read and write in French for our DT project and reading the wonderful Dr Who stories. The class have worked hard up to the last minute and are looking forward to the summer. I can’t believe they will be in Year 6 soon! Have a super summer 5J and remember to keep reading over the holidays.

Mrs Johnston

6M - Mr Martin

With tear-stained cheeks and misty eyes we write. Mr Clement and myself would like to say a big thank you to all the children in 6M – in short they have been simply wonderful. With very little time they pulled together a leavers’ assembly, which you will agree was quite entertaining and polished. The prom was a great success and everyone enjoyed themselves. Once again a big thank you to the prom committee, with a special thank you to Abbey, Eloise and Connor Elliott-Down’s mums, who went the extra mile with prom preparations. If the children work with the same commitment and creativity as they have here at Darlinghurst, they will do very well indeed in their High Schools. We shall miss you all. Best wishes from Mrs Dorrell, Mrs Burns, Mr Clement and Mr Martin.

Week 37 Summer Term

2011-07-15T14:34:00.000+01:00

Wow, we are nearly at the end of the year! Only one week to go!

It has been another super busy week at Darlinghurst, so much has been going on!

Goldilocks
This week we finally got to see the extravaganza that was 'Goldilocks'.........

The children and staff involved have been working very hard for a long time to produce this amazing production, and we were not disappointed.

The singing was great, the acting was brilliant and the costumes were amazing. All of us who have been lucky enough to see it have been bowled over by how good it was.

A huge well done must go to all the children who took part, they were a credit to the school.

Several members of staff gave up their time to organise rehearsals. Their help and support was essential to the incredible performances we saw, so we must also give them a big thank you.

So thank you Miss Bernard, Mrs Chatterton, both Mrs Clarkes, Mrs Collison and of the course Miss Butler who was so instrumental in putting it together. Well done!

Sports Day
Our annual Sports Day was its usual success. The children all participated admirably and lots of fun was had. Congratulations to the winning house, victory was yours!!

A big thank you to Miss Weddell who worked so hard getting everything sorted for the big day! Well done!

Right let's see what else has been going on around school this week....

Nursery
This week in Nursery we have continued to get ready for September. The children that are moving to Reception have been fantastic and have been very excited and keen to visit their new teachers and classrooms.

Within activity time we have been exploring magnets. The children looked for things around the Nursery that were magnetic. On the creative table we have been using different mark making equipment, including chalk and pastels.

Don’t forget, Nursery finishes on Thursday 21st July and we return on Tuesday 6th September.

Have a lovely holiday
The Nursery Team

Reception
We have spent each morning in our Year 1 classrooms with our new teachers and we have told our Reception teachers about all the fun activities we have enjoyed doing. In the afternoons we have been watching our caterpillars turning into cocoons and we are thinking about what the butterflies will look like when they emerge. We have looked for eggs, caterpillars and butterflies in our outside play area too. On Monday we all watched the show of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and thought the singing and acting was great and Toby said it was “the best show ever.” On Friday we loved sports day and Bethan said “I liked running fast”.

1B - Mrs Barrington

1C - Mrs Collison

2B - Miss Butler

2C - Mrs Clarke
This week we have done some work on the theme of ‘summer’. And then there was the end of year jobs to do! Finishing off and self-assessment and the dreaded clearing out of the trays! For the first time ever, we didn’t find any Christmas cards lurking in them!

Then there was Sports Day and we were lucky with the weather. I’m pleased to say that Tia, Kadie, Amelie and Jessica came 3rd in their races. Jayde, Jacob and Jake got 2nd places and Ethan, Sam, Jay and Roman got the shiny 1st stickers for their events. Well done everyone!

3B - Miss Bernard
We have had a great penultimate week in 3B; I have also enjoyed teaching my new class 2B.

In 3B we are continuing with our Dinosaur theme. The children have been combining strange ideas to design their “make up a sauruses”; which they are hoping to use to make a model. They have had so much fun doing this activity. I also need to congratulate them on the work they put into our “Dinosaur Facts” display, well done children. They were also very well behaved on our Shoebury East Beach trip, which they thoroughly enjoyed.

With class 2B we are doing a “Horrid Henry” topic, he is helping us to make up our rules. I also read a story to the children which had an international theme called “The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin”. One pupil was able to work out that the story was from India by looking at the cover. The children were then able to identify some traditional stories that they knew. I then read the story, which they loved. They then made comparisons between the story and some of the traditional stories that they had identified.

Here are some of the other activities that the children have enjoyed:

Piper- In Mr Martin’s class we have been doing portraits of our best friends. My one of Edward was weird because his hair ended up being spiky.

Alex- Yesterday went to Shoebury East Beach; we had a fun time trying to find fossils. We ended up finding lots of china and pottery instead.

Edward- At the beach we also found a huge, brick, structure that looked a bit like the top of a house.

Rhianne- I enjoyed looking at different types of crab at the beach.

Mel- Yesterday, when we went to the beach we were collecting some smooth rocks and I went in the water; I got wet.

Cael- I made a trench, on the beach. I ended burying myself right up to my neck. Cosmo, Alex, Cameron and Taylor helped me.

Megan- We played in the water and we all got soaked. We tried to stop the water from knocking down a castle by putting bricks down. But in the end the water won.]

Jessica- In Mr Martin’s class we have been making book marks that identify our golden rules and decorating them. It was enjoyable.

Cosmo- At Shoebury East Beach, I tried to dig my way to Australia, but I only managed to dig half a metre deep.

Cameron- At the beach, Harry and me kept on finding big rocks and throwing them in the sea. We found it to be exciting and fun.

Ry- When we went to the beach, me, Alex and Yann were looking for fossils, but we ended up finding volcanic rock. When we threw them in the sea they made a big splash and got us all wet.

Thank you very much for your contributions children.

Have a great weekend.

Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie
We have had another manic week of swapping and changing about!! But it has been really nice to see how much all of the children are enjoying meeting their new teachers.

This week with my new class we were looking at international stories and comparing them to traditional English stories. We read a story about why dogs chase cars and the children were excellent at identify differences between the characters, actions and content of the story. We discussed the currency that the animals paid the taxi fare in and realised that not all countries used the same money. We also discussed how animals lived in African countries, and what animals are used for and how we treat animals in England. The children were fantastic and it really made us all realise that there are lots of different ways of living.4AD - Mr Duff

With 3C we had an amazing day out at the beach. We build forts, dug holes, buried people and some got a little wetter than they may have planned for!! Even the adults!!

We were also looking out for all different types of rocks that were scattered on the beach and found an array of varieties. Some may have even travelled back to school with us!!

Our next adventure is the schools sports day, who will be the victorious team??? ………………Enjoy the weekend.

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all in 3C :o)

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week we have had more time with our new teacher Miss Weddell! We have been working on our 'aspirations' for our futures! Miss Weddell also asked us to make some business cards to go with that work explaining our jobs. Stuart came in and spent lots of time with us working on our Art, he is brilliant and we are all getting really good now! Mr Lloyd only has one more week with us :(...............

Have a great weekend!

5B - Mrs Blatcher
Fame at last for 5b! We have had some lovely stories written in the local press about our fund raising efforts and we are all very proud of ourselves.This week has not been a quiet one for us; we have practised our times tables, speech punctuation and sent our story entries off to The Wicked Story Competition.Sports Day is upon us today and we are fit and ready after our successful Team Challenge event that Mrs Baines from WHSG judged.

We are getting excited about year 6 too…. Have a good weekend.

5J - Mrs Johnston
We might be near the end of term but 5J are still working hard; we want our Australian projects to look beautiful before they are taken home.

We have also been assessed for our leadership skills in teaching playground games to others. On Wednesday we had a fantastic time at WHSB – we visited their science labs and observed lots of science investigations. We learned about wind turbines (we liked making our own windmills) and how many Wotsits you need to burn to boil water! We are glad the sun is shining today – we are dressed in our colours and can’t wait to take part in our races for sports day.

6B - Miss Bates

6M - Mr Martin

Week 36 Summer Term

2011-07-08T15:45:00.000+01:00

Transition Week
Wow what another amazing week at Darlinghurst!

So much has been going on it is just crazy! The school production looks like it is going to be the best we have ever seen! The children (and staff!) have been working flat out to get everything up and running, and from the glimpses I have caught, it looks amazing!

Mrs Blatcher would like me to thank all the children who participated in the cake sale this week. The money raised will go towards planting a new tree for the school, what a lovely idea that is!

The children worked hard baking and making cakes and they were very tasty indeed.

I did a little research on the history of cakes and this is what I found…………………

Although clear examples of the difference between cake and bread are easy to find, the precise classification has always been elusive. For example, banana bread may be properly considered either a quick bread or a cake.

The Greeks invented beer as a leavener, frying fritters in olive oil, and cheesecakes using goat's milk. In ancient Rome, basic bread dough was sometimes enriched with butter, eggs, and honey, which produced a sweet and cake-like baked good. Latin poet Ovid refers to the birthday of him and his brother with party and cake in his first book of exile, Tristia.

Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious differences between a "cake" and "bread" were the round, flat shape of the cakes, and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process.

Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain.

Right lets see what’s been going on around school this week………………………

Nursery
It has been a busy week in Nursery. We have started to get ready for September. The children who are moving to Reception have been to visit their new classrooms and teachers. They then drew a picture of their new teacher to put in the Learning Journey books. The children who are staying with us in Nursery have been making their new self-registration cards. We each looked at and talked about our reports and wrote our names on them.

We have been thinking about shapes and the children have sponge-printed different shapes to go on display around the Nursery.

Have a good weekend.

Reception
This week we have been very busy learning about being Year 1 children. In the mornings we have spent time learning and playing in our new classrooms with our new teachers, getting to know different friends and having a taste of what we will be doing in September. We have come back to our Reception classes in the afternoons and told our Reception teachers about all the activities we have enjoyed during the morning. Finlay said he liked the number activities and Bethan liked the tables and chairs In the afternoons we have been watching caterpillars eating and growing fatter and longer and thinking about the changes they will have to go through before they emerge as butterflies. We have also spent time looking for more caterpillars and eggs in the garden and playground. Guess what!! We found lots eggs that we are going to watch every day to see what creatures emerge! Bo said she likes little caterpillars wiggling around.

2B - Miss Butler
Class 2B have had a great time this week getting to know their new teachers. They have been very sensible coping with the class swaps and I am pleased with their behaviour. Rehearsals for the Goldilocks performance have finished this week and the show is looking great. I am really pleased with all of the effort and hard work that the cast (and crew) have put in so far and I am sure that the performances will be a great success next week.

2C - Mrs Clarke
This week 2C have become 3C! They have been spending the mornings with Miss Crumbie and I’m pleased to report everyone has behaved well and worked hard for their new teacher. The time in here though has been spent completing work under the topic theme of ‘summer’. Some lovely sunshine artwork was done and we looked at what summer was like in other countries. I think the class liked the idea of being in some European hot countries where school finished at midday! Although they weren’t too happy about the idea of being in school at 7am!!

Class swaps are still happening next week too. Please also make sure all the children have their PE kits in for next Friday’s sports day.

3B - Miss Bernard
It’s been a very interesting week in Darlinghurst with all of the classes getting to meet their new teachers.

Megan – I have really enjoyed meeting Mr. Martin this week and I cant wait to go into year 4 now. This week we have been drawing portraits of our partners and writing all about ourselves so that our new teachers can get to know us. We also came up with our own set of rules for next year and then created book marks with the 3 golden rules on them.

George – Yesterday with Mr. Patterson we were creating our own dinosaur. Mine is called a Rhinodon and it is lots of different colours. It has spikes on its head and face and it can even fly. It walks on 4 leags and eats meat and leaves.

Hannah – I have really enjoyed creating our dinosaur display for the classroom. We have been drawing different dinosaurs and writing facts about them. I cant wait for all of the other children to see it and learn about dinosaurs.

Yann – Did you know that the performances of Goldilocks start next week? I play one of the press officers so why don’t you come down and check it out? I think it is going to be amazing!

3C - Miss Crumbie
Hello everybody,

What a fantastic week we have had. All of the new children in 3C have been working extremely hard, looking good and ready for their challenges next year!

And my current children have also been working very hard, glowing reports returning from Mr Clement.

Lots of learning, lots of fun!! Looking forward to next weeks events already!!

Have a fantastic weekend!!

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson & 3C (old and new!!)

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran
This week we have been going to our new teacher’s class and it was a nice experience.

4AD have been going to 5J. It has been a pleasure going to Mrs Johnston’s class.

In Mrs Johnston’s class we have been doing our times table. We have drawn our faces and a picture to go with it.

By Oliver and Nathan

4L - Mr Lloyd
What an amazing week in 4L. This week was our trip!!! We went to the London Film Museum in London! It started in the morning when e had to be in class at 8am, 4L then walked down to the Chalkwell Train station and got on the train to West Ham. From West Ham it was on to the London Underground to take a tube on the Jubilee line to Waterloo. When we arrived we walked around the corner and saw the London Eye! It was amazing and so huge! The museum was right on the riverbank so we got to saw Big Ben also! Inside we learnt all about the films and saw real costumes used in Batman and Superman. The best bit was having our photo taken on a real Harry Potter broomstick with a green screen! They looked brilliant. We had such a great day and would recommend anyone who wishes to go there.

Have a great weekend

4L

5J - Mrs Johnston
What a busy week! It has been lovely meeting my new 5J class – I can tell we will have lots of fun together. Today we have been discussing which books we would like to buy for the school library using some of the money donated by the PTA.

With my ‘old’ 5J class, we demonstrated our French skills to a native speaking visitor who was very impressed with the confidence and understanding of the class. The theme of the lesson was parts of the body – the class enjoyed designing their own aliens and describing them – there was certainly an abundance of eyes, arms and legs! We have also been working on our Australian projects which should be finished by next week.

Yesterday, we watched proudly as Scarlett, Charlotte, Natasha and Amy played the guitar in the Celebration Assembly. Well done to everyone who received certificates.

Have a great weekend everyone, remember to keep reading.

Mrs Johnston

Week 35 Summer Term

2011-07-01T13:56:00.002+01:00

Bouncy castles to return!

Due to the adverse weather conditions on our PTA summer fair day, the bouncy castles will soon be making a welcome reappearance!

On Friday 8th of July from 2.30-4.30pm the bouncy fun will be held on the school field. Any children who purchased a ticket will be contacted and receive the same privileges as before.

Hopefully the weather will stay nice and sunny for us this time!

Prince Avenue cricket tournament

After our fantastic day out at the Prince Avenue sports tournament, we welcomed our friends to Darlinghurst this week in order to return the favour. Unfortunately the weather once again ruined one of our events! The torrential downpour that occurred just before the intended start time caused a washout.

Mr Clement and Miss Wise would like to thank Mr Hill, the staff and of course the children for making the journey to us. We will be rearranging this for a later date.

Right let find out what has been happening around school this week……

Nursery
On Wednesday we had our open day. The parents got to experience what we do in Nursery. Lots of fun was had by all. Thank you to those parents that came to visit.

We have also been practising writing our names, using our name cards to help us. In Numeracy we have practised counting objects out to match the number cards. The children have been using different objects to develop their sensory skills and vocabulary. The children thought of words to describe what they could see, smell or feel.

Please could you remember to put on sun cream and wear at hat to Nursery. Thank you
Have a good weekend

Rainbow Room
We have had a very busy week this week trying to write our own quest based on the work we have been doing on Sir Kit. We have thoroughly enjoyed going on his quest with him and look forward to continuing it next term. This is our last week in the Rainbow Room this term as we will be going to see our new teachers next week. So have a good summer everyone and we will see you next year.

From everyone in the Rainbow Room

Reception
In Reception Classes this week we have been having fun being pirates. We have made co ordinate maps, written messages to other pirates about where the treasure is buried. We have made hats , rats and parrots and thought about whether it is right to steal. On Friday we had great fun dressing up as pirates and anyone who did not behave had to walk the plank!!

1C - Mrs Collison

On Wednesday we had our open day. The parents got to experience what we do in Nursery. Lots of fun was had by all. Thank you to those parents that came to visit.

We have also been practising writing our names, using our name cards to help us. In Numeracy we have practised counting objects out to match the number cards. The children have been using different objects to develop their sensory skills and vocabulary. The children thought of words to describe what they could see, smell or feel.

Please could you remember to put on sun cream and wear at hat to Nursery. Thank you

Have a good weekend

2C - Mrs Clarke

Class 2C’s highlight of the week has been our trip to Tropical Wings. The class behaved impeccably and we all had a great deal of fun learning about the bugs we saw there – and the other animals.

Maddy: I loved the butterfly house. My favourite butterfly was a black and white one.

Tia: I enjoyed EVERYTHING!!!

Jay: I enjoyed the bug session we had because we got to touch a snail and a hissing cockroach.

3B - Miss Bernard

This has been a really fun week in 3B. We have been planning our Dinosaur Adventure stories, learning about angles in maths and even creating a dinosaur display in art.

Harry – Today we started our dinosaur display. We mixed blue and white paint and used sponges to create the sky. Then we got to use the topic books and laptops to research and choose a dinosaur to draw. Some of us are drawing on A3 paper and others are using A4 and A5 sized paper. All of our pictures will include facts about the dinosaurs.

George – PE was really exciting this week as we got to practice our shooting skills in football. We have our own team called 3B F.C. and this week I scored 2 goals and was chosen top be the MVP.

Yann – In maths this week we have been learning about angles. We had lots of fun activities and I learned that a right angle has 90 degrees. Did you know that an acute angle is smaller than a right angle and that obtuse angles are bigger than a right angle?

Jessica – Today we had a really tough spelling and maths test. I am glad that I have been practicing all week. On Monday we will get to meet our new Year 4 teacher. I am really excited to meet them.

3C - Miss Crumbie

Hello everybody!!
Wow, this week has flown past!! We have been having lots of learning new information about dinosaurs, focusing on the different periods. Natasha discovered that the T-rex is one of the newer dinosaurs because it was alive during the cretaceous period, only 144 million years old!! Taylor found out some information about a long neck dinosaur called the Brachiosaurus which was alive during the Jurassic period. Aimee drew a wonderful picture and found out some information about a Triceratops. She discovered that they were alive during the Triassic eras and that they were mean and fierce looking dinosaurs, but they were actually herbivores!!

We have also been learning about different types of angles in maths. Mr Bird got 3C travelling on an angle adventure where they discovered all about right angles, acute, obtuse and reflex angles. I am sure they will never get lost again!!

Finally, our most exciting task this week has been to start to write our stories. Cole has been so excited because he has really let his imagination go wild! I am looking forward to reading them all, I know they will be packed full of adventure and excitement.

We hope you all have an amazing weekend!

From all in 3C :o)

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran

4AD have been learning about the rainforest and have been scripting and videoing adverts for the rainforest. We have made rainforest topic files and filled them up with facts.

MathsIn maths we have been solving word problems and making our own ones up.

English

In English we have been working on our descriptive writing and looking at wow words.

By Bethany and Emma

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week in 4L we have been doing some tests in Maths and English. The questions are like the ones we have been doing in class with Mr Lloyd and Mr Bird. They were a lot tougher though as it was like an exam and this makes it harder. In P.E we played a Dodgeball tournament and the best team won! We are all really excited about our trip to London next week! We are going to the Film Museum and on ‘Star Wars’ set!

Have a great weekend

5B - Mrs Blatcher
A incredible week for Year 5.We finished typing up our Wicked Story Competition entries ready

for them to be sent off and we have achived some amazing results! Fingers crossd for a winner. We have also been getting read for our cake sale on Thursday 7th July. The money raised will buy a tree for the school to be planted in school grounds along with a time capsule containg some of our work and our school uniform!

It has been so hot this week we have been drinking lots and must rememebr to bring in water bottles.

Week 34 Summer Term

2011-06-24T15:44:00.000+01:00

PTA summer Fair

This year our annual PTA summer fair came under some disruption from the typical British weather.

Although we all kept our fingers crossed, the downpours that hit us during then afternoon rendered the field unusable. The decision was a tough one, but the children’s safety always comes first. With that in mind, the bouncy castles had to come down and some of the stalls taken in to the hall.

I must say that everybody involved worked hard to relocate the fair and it was still enjoyed by all and a HUGE thank you must go to the PTA who once again worked their socks off the give us another wonderful day……well done!

Next year the sun will shine!!!

First annual Darlinghurst vs Prince Avenue sports tournament

On Monday the school took part in a sports tournament at Prince Avenue. Head-teacher Mr Hill had been in contact with Mr Martin, Mr Clement, Miss Weddell and myself in order to arrange something, and this is what we came up with.

On this occasion, which we hope will be the first of many, concentrated on Football and Rugby. All of the children who go to both clubs were invited and a series of matches took place. Unfortunately, Prince Avenue proved too strong for us and beat us confidently in all matches. However, the boys and girls of Darlinghurst gave an excellent account of themselves, which was commented on by both parents and staff.

A big well done to all the children who took part and Mr Hill and all the staff at Prince Avenue for putting on such a wonderful event. A special mention to all the parents who so kindly offered lifts, without your help we could not have competed. Thank you.

Next week we will return the favour to Prince Avenue who are coming to us for a cricket tournament. I am confident our teams with prove victorious!!

BOUNCY CASTLE UPDATE - NEW DATE 8th JULY - WRISTBANDS TO BE REISSUED

Dear Parents, Carers, Friends and Children

We are very sorry that because of the weather on Friday that we had to cancel the Bouncy Castles. We had hoped that the weather would relent enough for us to inflate them but the heavy rain which fell from 1.30 until after 2.30pm meant that the inflatables had become so wet that even when the rain lessened they had become too wet to be used safely.

We were able to move some of the stalls into the School Hall and while this was somewhat chaotic it did seem to be enjoyable for many people.

We have been able to reschedule and have a Bouncy Fun afternoon and mini Fair on Friday 8th July. Please look out for more information on the blog, the school website, in News & Views and on the notice boards and via posters put up around school.

As we now have a new confirmed date we will reissue wristbands for all those who purchased for the 17th – we did take names and classes for all sales – but obviously some of you may not be able to make the new date and we will of course issue refunds in those cases.

The Raffle was drawn on Friday –please see Louise Toland for details of winners.

The Sweets in the Jar competition has not finished and will continue to be run outside school later in the week.

We would like to particularly thank Lubbly the Cake Sellers, the Candy Floss people and the Ice Cream man who have all made generous donations and helped make Fridays event as good as it was.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

THE PTA

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been helping Sir Kit to decide whether he should go into the shark infested lagoon to get the magic water. Having read a book about sharks and looked up information on them in ICT we think he should be okay as we are pretty sure that they are Basking sharks in there, and while they look quite fierce they are in fact gentle giants, especially as they only eat plankton. We have also helped Sir Kit out with some word problems in maths, using addition and subtraction and are pretty good at being able to identify what information is needed. Next week we are going to write our own story based on a quest so we have been trying to think up lots of ideas that we can use. Next week will also be our last week in the Rainbow Room before the end of term as we will be going to meet our new teachers after that, although we are all looking forward to coming back in September.

May the sun shine at the weekend!Reception

Everyone in the Rainbow Room

This has been yet another busy week in the Reception Classes. We have continued to think about the oceans, we have watched interesting creatures on our interactive whiteboards as they move around on the sea bed and we have found out more interesting facts about ocean creatures. On Friday we all came to school with our teddy bears so that we could have a picnic with them, playing games and eating sandwiches and rolls that we had made ourselves. We had great fun and the sun shone especially for us.

1B - Mrs Barrington
Class 2B have really enjoyed starting their bug project this week. They have been outside studying the type and frequency of bugs in different habitats. We then transferred this data into graphs both by hand and electronically. The children decided that the computer was much quicker! Using these graphs we then answered questions regarding the difference in the number and type of bug seen in each habitat. The children have also been researching a bug of their choice so that they can create a non-fiction page for our class book. They wrote questions and researched the answers using books and the internet. We also looked at a selection of non-fiction books about bugs to give us inspiration for the layout of our book. In art the children created some fabulous painting using watercolours for the Southend in Bloom competition with the theme this year being ‘Bees and Blooms’. The class are also really enjoying watching our caterpillars develop and change ready for our butterfly farm. This morning they began to go into the pupa stage which is very exciting. All in all a brilliant week!

1C - Mrs Collison
Well what a wonderful week we have had in 1C. This week we have been so lucky with visitors coming in to help us with our learning. Some children got to learn new skills through a session of street dancing, we are hoping we the lovely lady will be coming in again. Also as part of Seaside topic we had people from Southend museum in to show us artefacts from seasides of the past that included a penny licker, Punch and Judy puppets, a parasol and Miss Plummer dressed up in an old swimming suit, she looked very funny.

Thomas said ‘I have really enjoyed his PE this week I learnt the skills to flick a ball and in Maths I got to measure lots of objects in the classroom’2B - Miss Butler

Tom said ‘I enjoyed looking at the past and learning facts about the seaside. They used bathing machines to get changed into their swimming costumes so they didn’t show their skin because they thought it was rude’

We hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Miss Plummer and Mrs Collison

Class 2B have really enjoyed starting their bug project this week. They have been outside studying the type and frequency of bugs in different habitats. We then transferred this data into graphs both by hand and electronically. The children decided that the computer was much quicker! Using these graphs we then answered questions regarding the difference in the number and type of bug seen in each habitat. The children have also been researching a bug of their choice so that they can create a non-fiction page for our class book. They wrote questions and researched the answers using books and the internet. We also looked at a selection of non-fiction books about bugs to give us inspiration for the layout of our book. In art the children created some fabulous painting using watercolours for the Southend in Bloom competition with the theme this year being ‘Bees and Blooms’. The class are also really enjoying watching our caterpillars develop and change ready for our butterfly farm. This morning they began to go into the pupa stage which is very exciting. All in all a brilliant week!

3B - Miss Bernard
We have had a great time in 3B this week.

Jessica – We have been finishing our Viking Long Boats in D&T. It’s been a lot of fun adding the oars and sails. We used wooden sticks and coloured paper for these.4AD - Mr Duff

Yann – This week we have been learning about Rocks and Soils in science. We went on a walk around the school and identified a variety of different uses for rocks. We identified uses such as pavement, bricks, tiles, work tops and did you know that glass is made from sand which is also a rock?

Daisy – In English this week, we have been creating characters for our dinosaur adventure story. My main character is a herbivore named Rose. She is a kind and colourful character with lots of friends.

Piper – I really enjoyed free writing today. I love having the time to write about anything I like. At the moment I am writing a story with lots of humour. I can’t wait for the rest of the class to hear all about it.

This week 4AD have been scripting and acting in adverts for the Amazon Rainforest for our persuasive writing work. We have also been tackling some tricky maths word problems and setting problems for each other.

We have written to our new teacher to tell them a little bit about ourselves. Apparently Gram’s eyes are as blue as hope (very poetic!) and Lewis thought it an ‘honour’ to be in Mr Duff’s class.

Today, we have all been making suggestions and voting on what we would like to learn between now and the end of term. The most popular suggestions include spending the day as Amazon tribes out in the school grounds and making things (such as Amazonian food) to sell to the rest of the school to raise money for Amazon rainforest charities).

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone,

This week in 4L we have been recapping on our maths work by looking at fractions and time. We have also been using worded problems to solve these questions. Our film reviews are ready for top copying and some of them will go up our Movie wall!! The film projects are coming along nicely, we have written our scripts and got a chance to rehearse them. Some of them are very interesting!5J - Mrs Johnston

We hope you have a great weekend!

This week in 5J we have been up to lots of things. On Tuesday we went to WHSG to experience science in one of their labs. We saw things change state after heading, adding water or mixing different chemicals. We used Bunsen burners to heat sugar to turn it into burnt caramel. Mr Bird kept a close eye on us! On Thursday, we had to do two assessments ; maths and English. It was pretty scary! In the afternoon, we did some art it was for the Southend-in-Bloom competition. The theme is ‘Bees and Blooms’. It was great fun and we are finishing them today. Mrs Johnston has been letting us know how we did in the reading assessments (apparently the results are really good!). Also, we have been playing on this great website using the Ambleside division machine. If you would like to play this great mathematics game as well, just go on Google Search and type in ‘ambleside division’. We love it and it improves our division skills.

Charlotte, Amy and Saffron.

5B - Mrs Blatcher
What a week! Some of Year 5 attended The Deanes School for the final of the Inspirational evening and we won! Our whole presentation was fantastic and our behaviour was impeccable. The children wrote some beautiful poetry and displayed their artwork to a very appreciative audience.Well done. On Tuesday we attended Westcliff High School For Girls for a chemistry lesson. The children had to wear protective goggles and a lab coat to conduct their experiments and were delighted at the results of their work. The teacher at WHSG was fantastic and loved our children too. Tuesday morning found us street dancing with The Chase and what a brilliant bunch of dancers we are. Well done everybody.

6B - Miss Bates
Hi Everyone,

We have had an exciting week this week as we have begun discussing our mini enterprise project that will take place in a couple of weeks time.6M - Mr Martin
We have had another exciting week in 6M. In Science we have been looking at creatures that have adapted to their environment and looking at the work of Charles Darwin, who sailed around the World on a ship called the Beagle. On his travels, he came across the Galapagos Islands, where he found wonderful animals such as the Giant Tortoise and Darwin’s Finches. By studying these finches he discovered that the same species of finch adapted to live in different environments. Did you know that it took Darwin 5 years to travel around the World? And he suffered with sea-sickness!

In English, our writing has developed with the introduction of two techniques to add tension and suspense – we are now using short sharp sentences and inferential writing to keep the readers on the edge of their seats. Look out for next week’s blog, we’re all designing educational Maths games to show off all the hard work we have been doing through the year. Have a nice weekend – only 4 weeks to go!

Our final swim session took place last Monday and we have really enjoyed the past five weeks. The outdoor pool is lovely in the sunshine and we played really good games. Some of us had not been swimming before and we feel much more confident in the water and hope to go swimming regularlay outside of school now.

We are looking forward to visting our new schools next week.

Have a great weekend

Week 33 Summer Term

2011-06-17T15:19:00.000+01:00

Borough Sports 2011

On Wednesday a selection of the school’s finest athletes headed to Garons Park to attend the annual Borough Sports competition.

The children were in buoyant mood as they set of the reclaim the crown made so famous by our fabulous school. I must say, EVERY child turned up with a desire to win and represented Darlinghurst to level of which we can all be proud. I had several adults comment on how well behaved and polite the children were.

This year it was tough; very tough. The competition has improved over the last couple of years and the schools in attendance provided us with a difficult task. We gave our best in both track and field, supplying the crowd with some standout performances worthy of the Olympics themselves!! I have made a note below of those who made a podium finish in their event.

Field events

Long jump - Iona Doyle year 6, 1st , Amy Fix year 5, 2nd, Oliver Reeve year 5, 3rd , Olivia Kops year 4, 3rd, Lachlan Doyle year 4, 1st and record breaker!! Lachlan jumped 1.92m which is a new Borough Sports record!!!! Well done!!

Rounders – Katie Madden year 5, 3rd

Javelin – Sonny Constantinou-Norris year 6, 2nd

Shot put – Niall O’Boyle year 5, 1st

Track events

Year 6 girls - Eloise Lewis 600m 2nd , Charlie Bruce 80m sprint 2nd and 2nd in sprint final. Charlie Bruce, Karolina Mosakowski, Iona Doyle and Abbey Meech 2nd in relay

Year 6 boys – David Szczepaniak, Steven Goose, Connor Mcmahon and Jayden Callaghan 2nd in relay

Year 5 girls – Molly Bessell 600m 3rd, Ellie Giles 1st 80m sprint, 2nd sprint final, Rhianna Conlon 1st 80m sprint, 1st sprint final, Scarlett Reeve 1st in reserve race, Rhianna Conlon, Ellie Giles, Erin Swinford-Howe and Amy Fix 1st in relay.

Year 5 boys – Naytan Pizzulo 80m sprint 2nd, sprint final 3rd,

Year 4 girls – Lily Thornton 400m 2nd , Wictoria Lebiola 70m sprint 1st, sprint final 3rd , Kinga Drozd 70m sprint 1st, sprint final 1st

Year 4 boys – Tom Hill 2nd reserve race

In the overall standings I believe we finished 4th, and apparently there were only a couple of points in it. So a big well done to ALL the children who took part, you did yourselves and the school proud.

A big thank you to all the staff and parents as without your help, support and advice the day would not have gone so well. Many of you had given up your time before and after school and it is greatly appreciated by the staff and the children.

Special praise goes to the following Mr Clements, Mr Lloyd, Miss Ingram, Mrs Burns, Mrs Blatcher, Mrs Lewis, Mrs Meech, Mrs Catton, Mrs Conlon; and in addition a thank you to the ladies in the office, Mrs Chatterton and Mrs Collison for all your support and advice.

Miss Weddell has worked tirelessly to ensure everything went well, so remember to say a big well done when you see her!!
Well done everyone.

Mr Lloyd

Right let’s see what else has been going on this week………………………………..

Nursery
This week in Nursery we have been really busy! Our main focus was to learn about what an Optician does. We talked about how and why we test our eyes. We learnt that green vegetables are a good way to keep our eyes healthy. We have also made invites for our Teddy Bears’ Picnic. (Friday 24th June 9am-11am) The children enjoyed making their Father’s Day cards, which involved hand-printing and carefully writing our names.
In circle time on Monday, we talked about our weekend news. The children were very confident to share their ideas.
We started Show and Tell on Wednesday. A very good session, well done!!!

Reception
The Reception Classes have had a fantastic week learning about things that are under the sea. We have looked at pictures and videos, we have discovered things from books and we had a deep sea diver who visited us to tell us about and show us the special clothes and equipment she needs when she goes diving in the oceans. We have learnt facts about some of the creatures who live deep in the ocean and created pictures of them.

2B - Miss Butler
We have been learning about pirates all week in class 2B and the children have really enjoyed taking part in the topic. The children have written some fantastic pirate poems and have used some ‘wow’ words to improve them. Today we went on a treasure hunt and the children to solve sums in order to work out the clues. It was amazing to see how quickly their brains solved the problems when there was treasure at stake! Well done to Laura who is our student of the week.

2C - Mrs Clarke
Arrrrrr, me hearty’s!! A pirate’s life for class 2C this week. The children have loved learning about pirates this week and everything we’ve done has centred around that topic. What has been particularly impressive is that the children have planned, researched and produced the work themselves! For year 2, that’s pretty amazing. We’ve had work about pirate ships, real pirates, Blackbeard and treasure maps. There has also been some super homework come in also, and that can’t be done without the support you give at home, thank you.

Next week is Bugs! We will be learning about all sorts of creepy crawlies ready for our trip to Tropical Wings the following week.

3B - Miss Bernard
We have had a really busy week in 3B. We have been doing assessments in maths and English as well as learning a lot of new and exciting things.

Hannah – In art this week we have been creating our very own Father’s Day cards. They were really exciting and colourful.

measure the ingredients for our cakes. When we had baked our cakes we used them to practice our fractions. I cut my cakes into halves, quarters and eights. Did you know that ½ = 2/4 = 4/8? They are equivalent fractions.

Daisy - We had a really exciting discussions about gods in P4C (Philosophy for Children) yesterday. It was very interesting to hear about everyone’s beliefs. Today the fire alarm went off but we stayed calm and made our way to the assembly point in the playground as quickly as we could.

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone,

This week in 4L we have been brushing upon our worded problems by using them with the four main operations and with angles also. Last week we watched a Wallace and Gromit film and took notes, this week we began turning those notes into paragraphs for our film reviews, they will go on our OSCAR wall when finished. The films we have been working on are nearly ready to begin rehearsals. Mr Lloyd showed us how to make a storyboard and which camera angles to think about for the films. We had a couple of very successful Borough Sports winners in our class that we are very proud of. Olivia came 3rd inn long jump, Tom came 2nd in his reserve race, Wiki came 1st in the semi final then 3rd in the final of 70m, Kinga came 1st in her semi final then 1st in the final 70m and Lachlan Doyle came 1st in the long jump……..and broke the Borough Sports record!!! We have a real life record breaker in our class!!! Well done everyone we are really proud of you.

Have a great weekend
4L

5J - Mrs Johnston

Australia

This week 5J have been learning about Australia. We learned about animals, Aboriginal culture and we are now moving onto famous Australians. All of us had to find out a couple of facts about animals and write a non-chronological report.

Road Safety
On Tuesday, two ladies from Southend Borough Council came to teach us about road safety. We were split into groups and given a reflective safety bag. Both groups were taken onto the streets and learnt how to cross the roads.

Maths
In maths we have been learning how to find a fraction of a number.
Ellie and Reyne

6B - Miss Bates

6M - Mr Martin
This week has hurtled by, the pace has been more than frenetic as we crammed so many activities and events in the last few weeks of term.

We’ve been finding out about bees and how important they are, not only do they pollinate 80% of all the worlds plants but did you know if they die out the whole of mankind would die out too? Scary thought, so look after our bees.

We have been looking at profit and loss in mathematics and percentage margins. This has come very handy as out ice cream business is now up and running and making a killing.

Thank you for all those who have supported us and we look forward to seeing you next Friday when we open up again for business!

week 32 summer term

2011-06-10T07:33:00.015+01:00

Summer Fair 17th June

COME ALONG TO OUR SCHOOL SUMMER FETE & INFLATABLES AFTERNOON - LOTS OF EXCITING STALLS - RAFFLE - TOMBOLA - FATHERS DAY CREATIVITY STALL - LITTLE TYKES RACE TRACK - CAKE STALL - BARBEQUE - REFRESHMENTS - NAIL PAINTING - SPLAT THE RAT - BEAT THE GOALIE - PLUS MUCH MUCH MORE!!!! IT WILL BE FUN!!!!

£4.00 buys a wristband that will allow unlimited goes on the inflatable equipment... (or £3.50 each if you buy more than one) or alternatively there will be a charge of £1 for a 5-minute go on each individual inflatable.

Wristbands will be on sale before and after school by members of the PTA from Tuesday 7th June until 16th June , so let family and friends know to buy them in advance………

There will be a small bouncy castle at a cost of 50p for those nursery children without a wristband

Borough sports

Well it’s that time of year again when the local schools go head to head, battling it out to be crowned borough sports champions. Next week it is the annual Borough Sports.

Miss Weddell, Mrs Caton, Mr Clement and myself (Mr Lloyd!) have been working hard training this years crop of potential tournament winners……and they look good!!

Once famed for our success in this competition, the time may have come to reclaim the glory that has eluded us for the last couple of years.

Best of luck to all those who will be competing and commiserations to all those who didn’t quite make it.

One last thank you to Miss Weddell for all her work.

Mr Lloyd.

Right……..let’s see what’s been going on at school this week…………….

Nursery

In Nursery this week we have been reading International stories. We have enjoyed talking about the different stories and looking at the pictures. The children shared their ideas about what they liked best about them. Within our activity sessions we have been very busy. One of our main activities was cutting and sticking in order to help us practise how to use scissors carefully. During circle time on Monday we talked about our holiday and everyone shared something fun that they had done during the week off.

Have a good weekend!

Rainbow Room

This week in the Rainbow Room we have been learning about Sir Kit and his quest to Dragon Island. The King has sent him on a quest as he often gets muddled up with his reading and spelling. We have been really enjoying it and have made a magic bottle for Sir Kit to send our written messages back in. We can’t wait for next week when we learn how he can overcome the volcanoes to get the dragon food from the goblin that guards it. In maths we have also been learning to tell the time. If you can please ask us some questions about time over the next few weeks as we really have been practicing hard.

Hope you all have a good weekend from everyone in the Rainbow Room

Reception

For International Story Week we have been thinking of the story Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm brothers. We have thought about some of the similarities and differences between our country and

Germany

and we have learnt how to greet our friends in German. The picture in our story book had a gingerbread man sitting on the roof of a gingerbread house so we decided it would be fun to make gingerbread men and decorate them with different colour icing sugar. We had to plan carefully where to put the icing to make our gingerbread men look great!

Year 1 - Mrs Collison

Another fabulous week of learning in 1C, the children are really showing they are getting ready for year 2. This week we have started our exciting new topic about the seaside and all the children are looking forward to our visit to the beach later this term. We have got some expert mathematicians in the class who have started to look at division and recognised that division is the inverse operation of multiplication.

Here is what the children have enjoyed this week.

Ronnie has enjoyed practicing his cursive writing, ‘I have my name on display in the corridor’
Jennifer said she had lots of fun making her collage for Southend in Bloom, she used different materials to create a flower.
William enjoyed practicing his ICT skills, ‘I learnt how to use Microsoft Excel’

We are looking forward to another exciting week of learning.

Year 1 - Mrs Barrington

It’s all been about the seaside this week in class 1B. The children had tremendous fun watching the video clip featuring the famous puppets Punch and Judy. They also listened to a story about a little girl called Emily who went to the seaside for the first time a hundred years ago. I have really enjoyed hearing about the children’s half term holiday adventures. Once again we have excelled ourselves in maths with lots of us knowing our five times tables.

Luke Likes learning his tables.
Dorothy Enjoyed making her tissue bumble bee for the Southend in Bloom competition.
Beau Has learnt lots about the seaside past and present.

2B - Miss Butler

This week in 2B we have made some colourful 'wish fish' and written some fabulous character profiles based on the Grimm faiytale 'The Fisherman and his Wife. In our Maths the children have been learning all about multiplication and how that can be applied with money. We may have some budding 'apprentices' for the future!

Enjoy your weekend.

Miss Weddell

2C - Mrs Clarke

3B - Miss Bernard

Vinson – We have had a superb week this week. I’m not sure about everyone else, but I am really going to miss Miss Bernard when I go to Year 4.

Harry – In Philosophy for Children this week we listened to a story “The Tunnel” and had an enquiry about being alone.

Jessica – Yesterday we made Viking Longboats in DT. It was really fun because we got to paint them as well.

Taylor – Today we had a maths test on doubling and halving. It was quite hard but I tried my best.

Cael – On Monday we had a literacy lesson on homophones. At first I didn’t really understand but when I did, I really enjoyed it.

Piper – We have been finishing our letters to our pen pals this week. I am really excited to get a reply.

3C - Miss Crumbie
Hello everyone,

3C have had a whirlwind of a week, can’t quite believe it is over already!!
We are coming to the end of our Vikings topic now, so the children have been devising their own quizzes to test the teacher and test each other. We shall discover next week who the Viking experts really are!!
We have also come to the end of our science topic now and have made some fantastic discoveries. We planted seeds in various places to test what environments they would really strive in. We were all surprised to see that the bean shoot that had no sunlight grew at an amazing rate!! After discussions, we decided that the seeds in sunlight suffered from water evaporation which affected their growth. It was extremely interesting and the children are becoming exceptionally scientific within their thinking and discussions.

Let’s hope next week is just as exciting!!

We all hope that you have a fantastic weekend!!

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all in 3C :o)

4AD - Mr Duff, Mrs Amran and Miss Ingram

4L - Mr Lloyd

Hey everyone,

Only 6 weeks to go then it is the end of term! We cant believe how quick it has gone! This week in 4L we have been looking at angles in Maths, do you know the difference between an acute angle and an obtuse angle? We do!! In English we have been looking at how to write a film review by focusing on fact and opinion. We watched a film and next week we will be writing our own reviews. Production teams also had their 4th production meeting, we worked on scripts and will be drawing up our storyboards next week, they are looking great!

Have a great weekend!

4L

5B - Mrs Blatcher

What a fantastic week and a big welcome to our five new additions…..our new Skillywidden puppets! We have been building our stories based upon the original story of Skillywidden and during half term, some pupils made the most fantastic puppets for us to use.The story writing and telling we have done as a class has been fantastic and we have all enjoyed the whole experience. Some of our children have finished their stories ready for the Wicked Story Writing Competition too. In maths we have had fun learning how to use coordinates and design and invent our own adventure parks, plotting and finding exciting rides.Practise for the Borough Sports is also under way ;what a talented group we have.

5B

5J - Mrs Johnston

This week Mrs Johnston went to France and Mr Bird has been taking over. We have been designing Australia leaflets and posters using persuasive language. We have also been researching Australia's animal facts, today we were working on christian symbols and what they mean.

6M - Mr Martin

It’s been another frenetic week in the lives of Year 6M. This week we have been revising our boat designs based on our knowledge of the science of buoyancy and have made some startling surprises, such as, why can a 20000 tonnes metal boat float? And why does a paper clip sink? Additionally, we have become authors and publishers at the same time, as a long term project is making and marketing our own book. Mathematics have seen practical investigations in the field of volume and capacity, are you able to tell the difference? We are! Please don’t forget we are selling ice creams in order to raise money for our prom, so we will hopefully see you every Friday from 2:30pm outside 3C.

Thanks

Mr Clement

6B - Miss Bates

Week 31 Summer Term

2011-05-25T14:44:00.011+01:00

The APP has landed!!!
Well the waiting is over, the Darlinghurst APP is finally here!! Mr Duff has been working very hard over the last half term to get our very own APP up and running.

After much tweaking and playing we are ready to go live, and you can now download this exciting piece of software to your iPhone or Android phone. You will be able to view the latest news, dates, children’s work, the blog and much more!!!

Mr Duff has become a minor celebrity this week, appearing on the Heart and Southend radio stations telling the county all about the latest addition to the Darlinghurst world……click below to visit the Heart webpage containing the story!!!!…

http://www.heart.co.uk/essex/news/local/school-theres-app

Mr Duff also asked me to thank ‘The Sign Factory’ ( http://www.thesignfactory.co.uk/default.asp?mainpage=home ) for producing our APP sign at a discounted cost, thank you very much!!!

New look website!

Also this week to coincide with the launch of the APP, we are proud to unveil our new look website!! Ben and I have been working away slowly to give a bit of a facelift and we hope you like it!

The front page is now divided into 6 sections, so have a browse around and familiarise yourself. Some of the pages still need some brightening up, which I will be doing that over the remainder of the summer term. I hope you like what I have done so far!!!

Right…….let’s see what has been going on this week at School..

Nursery
In Science week we have been exploring bubbles and liquids. We have enjoyed playing with bubbles in the water tray and chasing bubbles on the playground. The children in Nursery explored what happened to a raisin when it was put into lemonade and what happened to oil when it was poured into water.

We each did a bubble painting, using paint, fairy liquid, water and a straw.
It has been a fun week in Nursery.

Happy Holidays!!!

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been looking at different liquids as it is Science week. We have made the most of the outside space over in the new room and have been measuring water outside, we were much more accurate with the real thing than we were drawing a line on a laminated jug, much more practical. We have also done some different experiments, including one to see which was the best washing up liquid; which repelled the fat (from milk) away the quickest and furthest. The fairy liquid was the best followed by the economy brand and then the lemon one. Mrs Grant was quite pleased as she uses Fairy at home, although she has a lot of other ones now!! We have also written our own stories set in a flood, too much liquid, and drawn our own boat that would help us float in such an event. We have had an exciting week and are looking forward to the week off when, hopefully, there won’t be any floods. Enjoy!!

Everyone in the Rainbow Room

Reception

Science week has been great fun in the Reception classes. We have been finding out how scientists think and work by mixing potions. We have floated oil on top of water, we have touched cornflour gloop, melted solids to make liquids (chocolate, jelly, ice) and found out how well washing up liquid pushes fat and oil away to clean plates. We have also investigated if we could make different shaped bubbles other than spheres. A lovely week to end this half term.

Year 1 - Mrs Collison

A fabulous week of practical experiences for all at Chalkwell Park has enabled some great learning to finish our topic of ‘Growing’. Although all extremely exhausted we have thoroughly enjoyed the week and have produced some fantastic work. A great big thank you to all the parents and grown ups who were able to help….we couldn’t have done it without you!

Here are the children’s comments on their learning experiences this week;
Henry said ‘I enjoyed smelling all of the different flowers in the formal garden. My favourite flower was the yellow rose.’
Luke said ‘I liked looking carefully at all the plants with my magnifying glass. I found out that vinegar makes plants leaves brown.’
John Paul said ‘I loved the parachute game because we had to search for lots of different plants before the parachute landed on us.’
Alana said ‘I found out lots of information about dandelions. When they die they have seeds so their life cycle can start again.’
Wishing you all a restful yet fun filled half term and look forward to seeing you all in June for learning new information on our topic ‘Seasides from the past and present’

The Year 1 Team

2B - Miss Butler

This week class 2B have had loads of fun learning about The Seaside. The best part of the project was our trip to the beach on Tuesday. The children went hunting fro crabs and had a sandcastle building competition of course there were no losers! When we got back from the beach the children were really inspired to write some fantastic seaside poems. As it was science week we carried out lots of experiments involving salt water and we learnt all about the Dead Sea in Israel. A really lovely week!

2C - Mrs Clarke

3B - Miss Bernard

We have been taking part in science week this week. We have been learning all about liquids and carrying out all sorts of investigations.

Alicia – My favourite experiment was when we mixed water and blue food colouring with cornflour. It was really exciting because the mixture was a solid but when you picked it up it changed back into a liquid.

George – We carried out an investigation to see how oil, water and golden syrup would react with each other. I thought they would make a strange mixture but instead they made 3 different layers with golden syrup on the bottom because it was the heaviest. Which one do you think made a layer at the top?

Megan – I really enjoyed our great plant hunt in Chalkwell Park this week. We identified loads of different plants and got to explore the rose garden.

3C - Miss Crumbie

4AD - Mr Duff, Mrs Amran and Miss Ingram

We have been learning about science this week and have been learning about how to make explosions!
We have also been learning about the Rainforest. We have had fun making topic files about our topic.
We are going to have a school disco!
The Echo is coming into are school because we are the first school in Essex to have an App.

By Lewis and Demi (4AD)

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone!

This week has been Science week in School! We have been learning all about 'liquids' and their properties. We conducted experiments on raisins and learnt about carbon dioxide (CO2) and how it makes raisins move up and down in lemonade! The class also looked at mixing water, oil and syrup together. Because of the density being different between the liquids some sat on top of others and the syrup sank to the bottom. In English 4L discussed poetry devices such as similies, we used movie stimuli to write some interesting similes. We are also excited about the new APP and website that Mr Duff and Mr Lloyd have been working on!!

Have a great half term everyone!!!

5B - Mrs Blatcher

5B have become brilliant artists! We have been painting with Stuart, a professional artist and this week have produced paintings in the style of Joan MIso and Picasso. Our work was described as amazing. In English we have learnt the story of Skillywidden and we will be making puppets to help us tell our story. In maths we have been practising our measuring and reminding ourselves of the four operations. A very busy week.

5J - Mrs Johnston

This week we have been looking at different sorts of liquids in science. We had fun playing with cornflour – Mrs Johnston got very messy trying to pick it up in her hands!

We have also looked at how different liquids react with each other. We poured oil and water into a jar. The oil went to the top and the water went to the bottom. Mrs Johnston then added some golden syrup – she got very messy again! The golden syrup went below the water so we had three layers in the jar. This morning the water and golden syrup look blurry. We are now working on investigations using bubbles. Our caterpillars have turned into chrysalides – we wonder if they might turn into butterflies over the holiday.

Remember to look up facts about Australian animals for after half term.

6M - Mr Martin

Wow! What a quick half term. The SATs have come and gone and we have packed so much into the last 5 weeks.

This week has seen liquids take over our timetable, with investigations into viscosity, hypothetical oil spills off the Southend coastline and buoyancy. Over the half term we will be eagerly collecting materials to build our boats that we designed this week.
Have a lovely half term everyone and see you for our final furlong as pupils of Darlinghurst Primary!

6M

Week 30 Summer Term

2011-05-20T15:15:00.005+01:00

KS1 SATS

This week the hardworking pupils in KS1 have been working away on their SATS. As with the year 6’s last week, a huge WELL DONE to the all pupils, everyone is very proud of the efforts you have put in.

Also, big thank you must go out to all the children (and staff!!) that have helped out………THANK YOU!!

Science Week
Next week is Science Week in school!! The focus is on ‘liquids’, so all the classes will be running weird and wonderful experiments to help explain how they work!!

Having chatted to various staff members, I know there will be lots of cool things happening!!

If you are keen to find more, please see this website ( http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/wet/liquid ) for an interesting range of experiments (some will need adult supervision!!)

Belfairs Riding School Summer Fete

On Saturday 4th June Belfairs Riding School will be running its annual Summer Fete.

The fete will run all day from 10am, costing just 20p for entry!! All proceeds go towards helping fund riding for the disabled, and making riding cost effective for everyone.

Fun events will include:

· BBQ

· Bouncy Castle

· Books and Bric-a-Brac

· Face Painting

· Cakes and Refreshments

· Tombola

· Side Shows

· And of course………….Pony Rides!!

Please see this website for further details about the riding school…

We hope to see you there!!!

Right let’s find out what has been going on this week…

Nursery
This week Nursery finally moved into the new build. We have had lots of fun exploring the new building and there has been a Nursery full of smiley faces! (Both adults and children!!!)

The Nursery staff would like to thank both the children and parents for their patience.

Thank you to all those people that came to our Open Day on Monday. It was lovely to see the children’s excited faces as they came in.

Have a good weekend

Miss Benson and the Nursery Team

Reception
The Reception classes have had a great week thinking about farms and where our food comes form and what is healthy food to eat. The children know a lot about this, but still say they like treats! On Thursday we had a fantastic visit to Hadleigh Rare Breeds Farm so that the children could see the animals, hear them make their sounds and touch and feed them. Going on the bus was also fun and our children were very well behaved all the time we were out.

Rainbow Room
Well, we and have finally made it to the new building, and for those of you who haven’t been in it is lovely. We have had a lot of visitors this week but it is only because they’re jealous. We have done some work though. In maths we have been learning about the time, days, weeks and months and continuing with our topic of the weather. We have done some lovely sewing too to go with the kites we made last week. Next week is science week so there will be lots of experiments going on. We are really looking forward to that.

Have a good weekend
From everyone in The Rainbow Room

1B - Mrs Barrington
We have been continuing with our ‘Growth’ topic. The children have been exploring plants in our school grounds and there was great excitement when they identified a dandelion! We have also been looking at a plant’s life cycle and I’m really impressed that the children have been using the words, nutrients and germination correctly. Yesterday each child planted a sunflower seed. We shall be observing our plants and making entries to our sunflower diaries. In our maths we played shops where the children could put their money skills to the test buying and giving change. Next week is Chalkwell Park and fingers crossed for good weather..

Isabella Liked doing her audition for the school play.

Beau and Harrison Had fun planting their sunflower seeds.

Thomas Enjoyed learning how to use money to buy things

2B - Miss Butler
Over the past week class 2B have been completing their project on plants and animals. We had a great time dissecting flowers and using the microscope to look at each part. It was amazing to see such tiny things in such detail. The children have also planted their own vegetables this week and we have found out from our cress experiment how to make them grow healthily, plenty of water and plenty of sun!

2C - Mrs Clarke
Class 2C have worked really hard on their SATs reading tasks this week and it looks like we’re done now. Just a couple more children to complete tasks that were away.

I’m really proud of all the children for how hard they have tried with the tasks and tests – its not easy when you’re just 7!

In between we have carried on with our plants and animals topic – we are growing cress and we can’t wait to eat it next week!

We have been making animal information book and learnt all about the different animal groups.

Jayde: I enjoyed making the animal books.

Jacob: I thought that growing the cress seeds was fantastic.

John: I thought the new laptop camera was amazing – we got to see our cress seed up really close.

Jay: I liked everything this week!

A little request for next week. 2C will be doing capacity in maths and we need containers that have ml or l shown on them. For example: water/juice bottles, shampoo bottles, milk cartons, washing up liquid. Please could you send them in on Monday or Tuesday please. Many thanks.

3B - Miss Bernard
Alfie – This week we have been writing about the Vikings. We have learned that they came from Scandanavia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Cosmo – I have really enjoyed PE this week and I am very excited about competing in Borough Sports for the first time.

George – In literacy this week we have been replying to the letters that our penpals in St. Martha’s Primary School in Norfolk wrote to us. I am really excited to hear what the think of our letters.

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week 4L have been working hard to get their ‘Film’ display up and running!! We have been successful and managed to create a little bit of Hollywood in the classroom!! In Maths we have been learning all about common denominators and how to add fractions together. For Borough Sports we have been practicing events like the javelin and 400m. The best part of the week was our visit to the Apple Store in Lakeside!! We got to find out how i-movie works so we can edit our movies on it!! We also got t-shirts and cd’s, the place was so cool!!

We hope you all have a great weekend!

5B - Mrs Blatcher
5B have shown their artistic talents this week and have been painting in the style of Joan Miro.The artwork is superb and we hope to display this for you all to see. In science we have begun our germination experiment and can’t wait to see what happens..Some super writing has appeared this week and the boys have shown just how fantastic they are at writing and have impressed the whole class…well done!

In maths we have looked at symmetry and been practising using the four opertiaons in different ways…well done ..you have all worked really hard.

5J - Mrs Johnston
The biggest Wow! of the week has been watching our caterpillars grow. Last week, they were so tiny we could only identify them as caterpillars with the aid of our Easy Scope (an electronic microscope). Now they are huge! I have just measured them at 4cm but they will be even bigger by the time you read this!

The Easy Scope also helped us identify the parts of flowers – I certainly have never seen the ovules so clearly before – do ask your child what they have been learning.

On Tuesday, Year 5 took part in the Walk to School Challenge. The idea was for the schools in Southend to walk around the borough by each school walking on to the next school. It didn’t quite work out like that but we walked to Chalkwell School, waved off by Ziggy the Cat. We handed over the banner to Chalkwell before enjoying the snack of oranges they had provided for us. The highlight of the trip was trying out Chalkwell’s new playground equipment. It certainly looked a lot of fun as we watched the children zoom in and out of the tunnels.

Have a great weekend, 5J.

Remember to keep finding out facts about Australia and if you haven’t been to Chase High School yet to make biscuits, your turn will be on Monday morning.

6B - Miss Bates
Another wonderful week in 6B!

We have been working hard in maths solving a murder mystery. This has been very difficult, but we have really enjoyed the investigative nature of it.

Our book projects are coming along nicely and we have found out some really interesting facts about our planet, animals, unusual plants and other cultures.

We went swimming to Blenheim's outdoor pool for a fun swim lesson and it was lovely. We can't wait to go again this week!

Have a great weekend everyone,

6B

Week 29 Summer Term

2011-05-16T12:24:00.003+01:00

SATS

I would like to give out not 1 ‘well done’………………but 3 this week!!

Firstly, to all those who have taken their SATS this week, this can be a very trying time for the children and all of them have worked very hard.
Secondly, to the teachers have also been working hard to help their classes do their best.
And lastly, to the rest of the school for their consideration and patience whilst the exams were taking place.
I’m sure all this hard work will pay off.

Well done!!!

Road safety with Ziggy the Cat!

The school was lucky enough to have had a visit from Ziggy this week!!

Ziggy the Cat works in primary schools across the Borough to help children understand how they and their families can do their bit to keep everyone safe while travelling to school.

Ziggy is a blue cat who is particularly keen that no one should park on yellow zig-zag lines, not only to keep school entrances clear but also because he has his own yellow zig-zags on his back.

His message is: DON'T PARK ON THE YELLOW ZIG-ZAG LINES!

To improve safety, he wants the zig-zags kept clear so that pedestrians can see and be seen near schools. In fact, Ziggy prefers cars to be kept well away from schools altogether, outside an agreed Ziggy Zone (a voluntary car-free area that parents are asked to observe if they need to drive).

Over 40 schools have benefited from a Ziggy visit and have taken onboard the serious road safety messages. This scheme has proved effective in reducing car journeys to school.

Right…see what’s been going on in school this week......

Rainbow Room

Well the day has finally arrived, the boxes are being packed for the final time, and we really are moving. The children have been very patient this week as there has been a lot going on, year 2 and year 6 SATS as well as the packing. The children have been working hard on their weather topic which will be continuing for the rest of this half term, and they have shown great enthusiasm, just the way to get student of the week.

Have a good weekend

Everyone in the Rainbow Room

Reception
We started this week with a visitor, Mrs Maureen Friday, from the Farmer’s Union who told the children all about the food that is produced on her farm. She had lots of information to tell the children and some funny stories about the animals. With our learning about farms we have painted and made farm animals, thought about the vegetables and fruit that grows on farms and how it gets to our shops and played at being vets, looking after the farm animals. In our number learning we have thought about sequencing numbers and one less than numbers. We are looking forward to next week when we will be linking food from farms to eating healthy meals.

1B - Mrs Barrington

The children are really looking forward to their visits to Chalkwell Park week commencing the 23 May. Thank you so much for all the offers of help. During class discussions a number of children have spoken about different family members having ponds in their gardens. I have asked the children to see if they can find out the names of various pond plants. Your help in this matter would be very much appreciated, along with any photos. If there are any keen, green fingered gardeners out there, we would really love for you to come and talk briefly to the children about caring for your garden. Please let me know. Next week we are reading ‘Jasper’s Diary’ by Nick Butterworth and hope to plant our own sunflower seeds. Don’t forget the school disco on Thu 26th May.

1C - Mrs Collison

This has been a lovely week of outdoor learning, through our topic of ‘Growth’ we have been making observations of plants in the school field and visited the pond to investigate plants in different habitats. Next week we are planting our own vegetables in the allotment and thinking about what we need to do to take care of them. Let’s hope the sun keeps shining for our planned learning at Chalkwell Park at the end of term.

Here is what the children said they have enjoyed this week.

Elliot ‘I enjoyed making famous sculptures, do you know The Statue of Liberty is made out of steel, copper and glass’

Eden ‘I liked going to visit the pond looking for plants, we saw how plants have different roots’

We are looking forward to another exciting week of learning. Enjoy the weekend.

Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler

What a week class 2B have had. The children have worked really hard on their SAT’s tests and Mrs Clarke and I are really pleased with the papers that we have marked so far. The children have had a really sensible attitude towards the tests and I am very proud of all of them. As well as doing our tests we have also been thinking lots about our science topic, Plants & Animals. We have set up a cress growing experiment to find out what the best conditions are for healthy growth. We will be looking at the results next week.

3B - Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie

Hi everyone! We have had a super duper week! We have been looking at Jeremy Strong books trying to identify the Authors style, characters feelings and discussing the plot of the book. We have also been thinking about whether we would recommend a Jeremy Strong book to someone else in the class. It was really great fun because it made us think about what we enjoyed.

In maths we have been focusing on doubling our times tables. We even managed to find out the answers to 16 and 32 times tables by using our 4’s and 8’s. It really helped us to link times tables together.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!!

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all of 3C

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week in 4L we have continued with our ‘Film’ topic. Mr Lloyd (the studio executive!!) is overseeing 5 new film projects that are in the pre-production stage ( planning ). Each crew is headed up by a producer whose job it is to make sure his production team work together to hit deadlines. So far we have pitched our initial ideas to the big boss and are waiting back on his decision. The projects he likes will get a ‘greenlight’ (meaning it will be made into a movie). In Maths the class have been working on simplifying fractions, we can do really big ones now!! The limericks in English have all been based around the film industry, here is an example:

There once was a special effect,
That was very hard to direct,
Tickets went fast,
Thanks to the cast,
And the film was sure to collect!

By Tom Hill.

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week in 5J we have been looking at a story by Pie Corbett and changing it into more exciting sentences! We also had a very exciting session when Mr Waarr came in to show us a very interesting poem about farmers and the rain using Language Garden materials. Another man, called Stuart, came in on Thursday and showed us how to draw like Jean Miro! We looked at contrasting colours and used some to colour 3D towers. Mrs Johnston has got a very cool gadget where you can see close ups. We looked at trousers and there were millions of tiny threads. Scarlett

6B - Miss Bates

We have had a very intense week as we have taken our SATS exams.

They were quite hard but we all put in a maximum amount of effort and hope we have done well.

In the afternoons we have enjoyed haveing fun playing rounders and started a new topic.

We are having a lovely bbq today to celebrate finishing our SATS and looking forward to getting back to normal next week.

Have a great weekend.

6B

Week 28 Summer Term

2011-05-06T14:56:00.000+01:00

Well nearly our first full week back, and what a right Royal week it has been!

In the wake of the wonderful Royal wedding, everyone has bounded back in to school with enthusiasm and energy. For those of you that watched I am sure you will agree that the ceremony was and general celebrations on the day were uplifting. For the children, (and some of the staff!) it was a new experience to see the people of Britain come together for a national celebration. The tradition of street parties returned to our streets, uniting neighbours in fun and frolics. It got me thinking about the origins of ‘the street party’…………………….

Street parties have a long history in UK, though mainly in England and Wales. Street parties as we know them as popular residents' events in their own streets seem to have started in 1919. They were held in July as 'Peace Teas' as a genuine celebration of the signing earlier in June of the Versailles peace treaty after the First World War. They were tea parties that were focussed on a special treat for children in those times of hardship and were quite formal sit down affairs.

The earliest living memory of a street party in this tradition is of a man in Cornwall who clearly remembers having a street party in 1935, held for the Silver Jubilee of King George V. There are also many people who remember holding them in 1937 for the Coronation of King George VI.

After then residents continued to organise them on all major national days of celebration
So there you have it, a brief history of street parties!

Have a great weekend.

Mr Lloyd

So the summer finally feels like it is on the way……..let’s see what the children have been up to

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have created our own television news report about the Royal wedding. We got to be a presenter on the special day and it was quite exciting to pretend that we were involved. In maths we have been measuring different things, including the length and how weight. Next week we are going to be starting a topic on weather, let’s hope the sunshine holds up for the weekend. Have a good one!

Reception
We have been thinking about the story ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. We have thought about the words and acted out the story, we have made bear masks and found out about different types of bears and we have planned what we would need to take if we go hunting for bears. We finished the week by going on a bear hunt around the school and counted how many bears we found.

1C - Mrs Collison
Hello again,

It has been so nice this week to see the children beginning to settle back into the routine of school life…it’s hard to believe that we are very nearly at the end of Year 1…how quickly time flies when you are having fun! This term we have a new topic all about ‘Growth’ and focusing on plants and how they can grow and adapt according to their environment. We look forward to lots of outdoor learning in the allotment, playground, field and Chalkwell Park!

Here is what the children have said they enjoyed this week

George said ‘I enjoyed thinking carefully about my handwriting this week. I think I am getting really good at it’

Jack said ‘I loved Maths because we were learning how to tell the time. We played ‘Whats the Time Mr Wolf using our special plastic clocks’

Looking forward to a full week of learning next week where the children can begin to show me how ready they are learning in Year 2.

Have a fun, and safe weekend. See you Monday
Mrs Collison & Miss Plummer

2C - Mrs Clarke
2C have been having a little practice ready for their SATs next week. It’s all been kept quite fun and relaxed and the children have really dedicated themselves to learning a few extra skills to help them along in the tests. Been really proud of them this week as its not always been easy.
We have been learning lots about nocturnal animals too this week and I’m amazed at how many facts all the children know already! This will carry on slightly next week as our topic will become ‘plants and animals’

3B - Miss Bernard
We have a really exciting week in 3B and we have even had a new pupil start this week

Alicia – “This week we have been reading books and writing our own book reports. It was reall
interesting."

Daisy – “In PE we were learning about sprinting. It was loads of fun and we got to race against each other. In mats we were using the inverse to help us with division."

Rhianne – “I have a really good first week. I have made lots of new friends and I really liked getting to design my own longboat.”

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone and welcome back……again!

This week in 4L we have begun work on our Film topic. Mr Lloyd has been telling us all about how films are made in three stages, pre-production (planning), production (filming) and post-production (editing). We watched a documentary on Indiana Jones and how they came up with the idea to help us plan our own short movies. In Maths we are looking at fractions, do you know what the numerator and denominators are? What is ¼ of 20? Mr Livingstone is an artist who came into to help us with our drawing, he taught us how to hold a pencil for shading, we really enjoyed it!

Have a great weekend!

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week we have been looking at a short story by Pie Corbett. In order to improve our writing skills we have followed the structure of his text but changed some of the vocabulary or added more detail. We are trying to be more adventurous with our word choices. In maths, we have been looking at angles – we are quite confident about acute, right, obtuse and reflex angles. We really enjoyed a visit from an artist who will be working with us during the next term to improve our art skills. We were surprised at how much we learned in one lesson – I am looking forward to the forthcoming masterpieces. In science, we have learned about the different methods of seed dispersal. Please quiz your children to find out how much they have remembered!

Mrs Johnston

Week 27 Summer Term

2011-04-28T16:15:00.002+01:00

Well we are back at school (well at least for a few days anyway!) and the summer term begins!

I hope everyone had a lovely break and all the young minds are fresh and raring to go! We were so lucky to have such glorious weather, long may it continue!

On the subject of weather, please remember to bring in hats and sun cream when the temperatures start to soar. These will help protect children during break times, and all the great outdoor lessons that teachers have planned for this term.

Royal Wedding

Well, the big day has finally arrived and everyone is very excited. The grand Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is upon us and there have been lots going on. What are you planning for the 29th of April?

To help us get in the mood here are 3 interesting facts about the wedding of the century:

1. When Prince William and Kate finally walk down the aisle next year, Kate will be 29, making her the oldest royal bride EVER

2. Kate wants to be called by her given name, Catherine, and not by her nickname, Kate. So, we’re all going to have to get used to it! Besides, Princess Catherine has a regal air to it, and, if she and William go the distance and become king and queen, she will be the 6th Queen Catherine of England.

3. Kate’s “career,” post-wedding will most likely take the form of that of other princesses and will reportedly revolve around Prince William’s schedule. Kate has already been assigned 4 bodyguards from Scotland Yard to protect her around the clock, as she adjusts to life in her new public role.

To learn more please visit the official website on the link below:

http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/

PTA News

The Circus is Coming back to Darlinghurst Next Year to celebrate the London Olympics and the Queens Diamond Jubilee.

However in the meantime we have...

INDOOR TABLE TOP SALE

** SATURDAY 14th MAY AN INDOOR TABLE SALE IN THE SCHOOL HALL**
** PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN TABLE/SHEET **
** REFRESHMENTS AND TOILETS WILL BE AVAILABLE **
** PLEASE CALL LISA 07747 808 262 OR SARAH 07930 987 312 **
** FOR FURTHER DETAILS **
** LIMITED SPACES AVAILABLE - FIRST COME FIRST SERVED **
** SELLERS: 9 AM / BUYERS: 10 AM **
** Price: SELLERS £4.50 / BUYERS: DISCRETIONARY DONATION

And

The PTA are holding Summer Discos for the children on

Thursday 26th May

**Once again we have DJ MickyB.
** 3.30pm – 4.30pm 1C, 1B, 2C, 2P, 3B, 3C £2.00 per ticket (includes hot dog and free drinks)
** 5.00pm – 6.30pm 4L, 4AD, 5B, 5J, 6B, 6M £2.50 per ticket (includes hot dog and one free drink)

** PLEASE - Money for tickets needs to be put in an envelope, marked with the child’s name and class, labelled ‘Disco’ and given to the class teacher.

Right lets see what has been going on this week in Darlinghurst...

Rainbow Room
In the Rainbow Room this week we have been looking at different ways of presenting data, including pictograms, Venn and Carrol diagrams and bar charts. We have also written different endings to traditional stories including Goldilocks and Little red Riding Hood. We read Roald Dahls version of the Little red Riding Hood which was very funny. We have also been learning about the Royal family and written invitations for the wedding and designed a wedding cake, not sure if they have time to make them though as it might be a little late. Have a good weekend

Reception
We have settled really quickly into our Reception routines, with the children happy to settle down to their learning. We have been finding out about St George’s Day and the Royal Wedding this week and we finished with a party to celebrate, inviting the Nursery children to join in with the fun.

1B - Mrs Barrington
Year 1 have had ‘A right royal knees up’ for the last few days. The children now have some knowledge about the forthcoming event and who the different people involved are. This is good because they originally thought it was prince charming who was getting married in France. Having completed a royal family tree and created various souvenir items, the children ended the week by making cakes and having a little street party. Enjoy the extra holiday and our topic for next term is ‘Growth.’

2B - Miss Butler
Welcome back after the Easter Break, I hope that you all had a nice time. Year 2 have SAT’s tests fast approaching so we have been spending this week revising. The children will be required to write a report about night time so we have begun a topic on nocturnal animals. The children really enjoyed investigating and writing about different animals. For our science topic we are looking at plants and animals in our local environment and the children spent Tuesday afternoon outside on a wildlife hunt. Enjoy the Royal Wedding tomorrow!

2C - Mrs Clarke
We still seemed to have packed so much into the 3 days this week. Year 2 will be completing SATs assessments shortly and we have been doing a little preparation for them.

But this week has mostly been about the Royal Wedding and we have spent time immersing ourselves into the celebrations. We’ve learnt about who’s who in the Royal family, the processions, all about William and Kate and designing cakes and dresses for the happy couple.

We will be continuing with the Royal wedding theme next week as we all share our experiences of the day, whether it be tea parties or street parties. I myself, will be braving London from the earliest of hours to catch a glimpse of the event and hopefully will have a first hand experience to share with the children next week.

Please remember Monday is a Bank Holiday and there is no school. So enjoy the wedding and the long weekend!

3B - Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie
Hello everyone :o)

We hope you had an amazing Easter break. We are all so glad to be back!!

This week 3C have been learning about the Royal Wedding. We have researched for information on the Royal family, created their family tree and then made our very own family tree. Josh even managed to get up to his great Nan and Granddad!!

We have also created some union jack themed bunting so that we could decorate the playground for our street party. Cole thinks it looks mega!!

For our party we designed and made our own sandwich art. Iqra’s sandwich had white bread, butter, egg, and some salad to make it look like a face. It looked wonderful. Callum created a delicious sandwich that had brown bread, butter, peanut butter and ham!! Mmmmm :o)

We all think that our party will be fantastic because of all the fun games that we are going to play and the scrummy food that we are going to eat.

Hope you all enjoy the Royal Wedding and the bank holiday weekend!!

From Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all in 3C

4L - Mr Lloyd

Hey everyone,
We hope you all had a great Spring break……..we did! This week we have been looking at the Royal Wedding! The big day for Wills and Kate is tomorrow and we can’t wait. Mr Lloyd told us all about the happy couple and other Royal people. We looked at Kate Middleton and made some commorative cups and plates to use on the wedding day! We did this by looking at other designs from Diana and Charles and came up with our own. We hope that everyone enjoys the Royal wedding and has a great bank holiday.

4L

5B - Mrs Blatcher
It is good to be back we all agreed in 5B and already we have begun learning about Australia which is our new topic for the whole term. Time and timetables have held us captive this week too in maths and everyone in 5B is going to try and wear a watch all the time!

Celebrations begin tomorrow for the Royal Wedding and we hope you all enjoy the day.

Have a nice weekend.

5B

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week 5J drew the Windsor family tree. We learned about acute, reflex, obtuse and right angles – it was awesome. Then we made interesting sentences to go with some pictures of people. This is one of my sentences: The eight skydivers dived past the fluffy, soft, marshmallow clouds making a honeycomb pattern.

Alfie

6M - Mr Martin
It may have been a short week in 6M, but my word we’ve packed a lot in. Our heads are a buzz with revision from SATs, but we’ve also managed to do some really fun stuff too. Did you know, the water which we drink has been flushed down our loos at least 6 times! A scary thought you might think but, using our science investigation skills we were able to purify the most dirty of waters. In addition, we have taken a long walk down memory lane, looking at the ceremonies of previous Royal Weddings and what they mean to us today. We wish HRH Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton a very happy day tomorrow and a glorious life together. We celebrated in traditional fashion and had a street party (although it was indoors owing to the wind!).

Thanks

Week 26 Spring Term 10/11

2011-04-08T13:53:00.002+01:00

Well another term has flown past! It’s unbelievable that we are now at spring break and heading towards the summer term, where does the time go?

All of the children and staff have worked very hard (as usual), and deserve a well earned rest. Make sure you don’t eat too much chocolate over the holidays........and get outside in the sunshine while you can!

A few things to tell you about……………..

Cbeebies
The children were lucky enough to have Cbeebies presenters Andy and Mike come and visit on Tuesday!

The lads were here to promote their new show at the Palace Theatre called Andy & Mike’s … Big Box of Bananas! They bring their much loved humour to this high energy, fast-paced children's comedy. In a production aimed at 3-11 year olds (and their entire families!!).

If you are interested please click the link below for details.

http://www.andyandmike.com/big_box_of_bananas.html

Football
Last Friday saw the mighty red and yellows take on Heycroft, and what a game of football it was. Any child or parent lucky enough to be there saw an outstanding example of the beautiful game. The opposition had won their last two games 7-0 and 7-1, so we knew we had a tough two halves ahead.

We started aggressively, winning tackles and passing the ball around nicely. Unfortunately we gave a goal away after 10 minutes, even though Jay Callaghan made an outstanding save. However, we were not down for long! Right from the kickoff, captain Steve Goose hit a 40 yard screamer into the top left hand corner and it was game on. We continued to battle hard, Steve Goose scoring a second from Josh Howe’s excellent corner. A third soon followed from midfield dynamo David Szczepaniak making it two in two games for him. At 3-1 the boys looked comfortable and worked hard to keep possession. Unfortunately, late on in the match Heycroft found some of the drive that makes them such a formidable force. They attacked us over and over managing to score 3 goals in 5 minutes. The match ended 4-3 to the opposition and left the boys (and the management team) absolutely devastated.

The team gave us a performance that did themselves and the school proud, I cannot speak highly of the lads who put the shirts on that day. Everyone had a great game, but a special mention to Conner Elliot-Down, George Gough and Danny Noad who made their first appearances for the club. Well done, you were exceptional.

Bring on Bournes Green and Edwards Hall!

Mr Lloyd & Mr Martin

Right…let’s see what has been going on this week…………………..

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been doing lots of different word problems, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing and we are starting to get quite good at them. In English we have been writing a letter to Mr Cameron. Did you know he wants to stop children under the age of 12 from buying sweets? (or so Mrs Grant told us) We had to persuade him that this wasn’t fair. We also went on a walk to the local supermarkets and looked at lots of different food and had to say what food groups they were in and whether they were red, yellow or green using the traffic lights system. We have also written about the Easter story and had a visit from the Easter bunny.

Have a good holiday
Jordan M

Reception
In the Reception Classes we have been thinking about how and why we celebrate Easter. We have had fun making Easter nests and hats that we can eat, we have made chicks coming out of their eggs and we have learnt a French song. Happy Easter to everyone, enjoy the sunshine.

2C - Mrs Clarke
On Tuesday we had another trip, this time to the Finchley Road Synagogue. The first exciting bit was that we went on the bus. Everyone was really well behaved! Once inside the synagogue, we saw the Ark and where they kept the Torah scrolls. We were amazed to hear that the scroll was 200m long!! We only saw a small bit of it. The lady there showed us her special Bible. We found out that the Jewish Bibles are different because they are written from the back of the book, forwards, with half written in Hebrew.

The whole morning was very interesting and the class were very well behaved.

Remember we come back on Tuesday 26th and only in school for a few days and off again on the Friday.

Have a lovely Easter.

3B - Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran
4AD have had an excellent term. Lots of fun, lots of learning, lots of progress!!

Well done to every single child in the class J
Have a great Easter, eat loads of chocolate, oh no I meant to say don’t eat too much chocolate ;-)
Keep up your reading please.

See you on Tuesday 26th April.

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hi everyone,

It has been another fun week in 4L. We have been working hard on worded problems to make sure we can solve ‘real world’ scenarios, would you know what to do in a supermarket? We have also been brushing up on our sentence work and continuing to practice how to use subordinate clauses really well. The strange men from Cbeebies came in on Tuesday and made some of the children laugh, it was fun to see real people from the television in our school! Mr Lloyd has been helping us choose our topics for next term and we will look at the Royal Wedding when we come back!

Have a great spring break everyone!

5B - Mrs Blatcher
Well the Year 5 who have been at Darlinghurst have had a great week! We have continued with our learning in the morning and have played lots of maths and spelling games and Mrs Blatcher quickly learnt lots of new names !

Our art and craft lesson involved making Easter Cards which were fabulous and we hope to make more Easter suprises in the afternoon we have had our own lap tops and have been enjoying playing on Education City and BBC Skills wise.

Have a fantastic Easter everyone.

6M - Mr Martin
Is it the end of term already? Here in year 6 time has really flown, we have covered so much when you think we travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles in our topic of Land’s End to John O’Groats. Next term’s topic is just as energetic, as we’ll be swinging through the 60s and seeing how this vibrant decade affected Britain. We’ll be looking at the culture, famous people, historical events, food (yes food!) and of course fashion. We are looking forward to Easter so we can have a well-earned rest before the not so dreaded SATs as we have been working hard and are sure to do our best. Happy holidays!

Week 25 Spring Term 10/11

2011-04-01T15:33:00.001+01:00

Students of Today, Leaders of Tomorrow

This week, Year 5 have taken part in a student leadership programme led by the University of the First Age. During the course they have learned about the value of team work, developed collective responsibility and the ability to lead by example. They have also learned how to recognise and respond to different attitudes and skills as they discovered their own leadership skills.

Mikayla said, “I enjoyed the teamwork and feeling like a leader.”

The pupils were challenged each day to work with different people, to try new things and recognise the skills needed to go in their leadership toolbox. Kaya said, “I was worried about working with others but I thought it was fun and not scary at all.”

“I thought the toolbox activity was great because I got to dance,” reported Henry.

The groups also had to make a presentation to a Senior Leader to make a bid for funding for an event – just like ‘The Apprentice’. “It was fun presenting to Mr Knight,” said Libby. “People learn from their mistakes – now we know we have to learn more about budgeting to make a project a success.”

The group facilitators, Mrs Denis, Mrs Mitchell, Mrs Blatcher and Mrs Johnston have all enjoyed their challenges in delivering the course as well as being impressed by the pupils themselves. We have certainly seen good examples of teamwork, encouragement and leadership – the children have learned how to bring out the best in themselves and each other.

The Summer is coming!

Right lets see what's been going on this week....

Rainbow Room

This week in the Rainbow Room we have been finishing off our chocolate factories and the children will be bringing them home really soon so that you can see how well they have done. In maths we have been continuing with our work on division and now we are using remainders. The children have been working very hard on this and seemed to have grasped the concept well. We have finally finished our stories and are undertaking a science test using real science equipment including goggles and gloves.
We should all have a note regarding a trip which needs to be returned as soon as possible.
We are looking forward to moving into our new classroom, and of course the Easter holidays.
Have a good weekend

2B - Miss Butler
Over the past week class 2B have worked very hard to complete their project about special buildings. The children have created some lovely art work for display around the school. The snail babies are doing well. I have 20 so will be offering them to children in the class after the holidays. Please see me if you would like a new pet! They really are good pets as they are easy to look after and do not make much mess!

2C - Mrs Clarke
This week has flown past!

Most of this week has been taken up with developing a display around our trip to Our Lady of Lourdes last week. The children have really though about the feelings they had going into the building and how each of their senses were affected. They have come up with some marvellous words and the presentation of work for display has been fantastic.

On that note – I’m hoping Mr Bird, who is in 2C Friday will get the lovely cards the children are making for a special day coming up on Sunday finished – the children’s handwriting is amazing. I hope you are amazed too!

You should all have received an extra note about our trip to Finchley Road Synagogue next Tuesday. They have 2 further requests for us. A 50p donation and a request that all the boys cover their heads. It can be any sort of hat, even with a logo on.

Please could I request that all children are in on time on Tuesday as we will be leaving fairly promptly at 9am. Any children arriving late will be left behind at school for the morning. Thank you. Have a good weekend!

3B - Miss Bernard
Hello Everybody,

Hasn’t the week flown by? We have worked really hard at our Maths and Reading assessments, but we have also had fun at West Stow Anglo-Saxon village and with making our Mother’s Day cards. Here are some of the things that the children enjoyed in particular.

Alicia- On Wednesday we went to West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, it was fun.

Jessica- in Art we are making Mother’s Day cards and we are writing messages to our mum’s. Happy Mother’s Day to all you mums out there.

Vinson- I have had lots of fun this week, especially with my three lovely teachers. It’s been very good. I would not like to be in any other school.

Yann- Happy April Fools Day!

Daisy- I enjoyed English today, we wrote about our school trip and included our thoughts and feelings.

Holly- Today we have been writing about our school trip, it was fun.

Hannah- We did Art today, it was exciting.

Cael- We did our spellings and Maths tests today; I hope that everybody got a good mark.

What a lovely thing to say Cael and thanks for the compliment VinsonJ

Hope everybody has a great weekend

3C - Miss Crumbie
Hi everybody,

What an amazingly busy week we have had!! We started off with some assessments to see how much we have all learnt over the term and Miss Crumbie has been very impressed!

We also had our school trip to West Stow Anglo-Saxon village on Wednesday which was great fun. I think we all looked like tornados spinning around because we had so much to fit in but we managed it all in the end.

Now we are writing a recount of all of the events that happened on the trip. Most have been about the coach trip so far!!

Only one more week to go so we are going to make it a really exciting one!!

Hope you have an amazing weekend :o)

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone,

This week in 4L we have been creating our final poster for our persuasive writing chocolate bars……the most scrumptious choccy woccy bars in the universe! In our Maths we have been using compasses to help find our way around school, these are used in all sorts of things like sailing, trekking and hiking. The compass is used to ‘navigate’ the directions, remember, NEVER EAT SHREDDED WHEAT! The sunny weather meant Mr Lloyd could take us on the field for P.E we brushed up on our football skills and had a small match, Mr Lloyd’s team beat Mr Radford’s team! It is Mr Radford’s last week this week so we will miss him. Thank you for teaching us Mr Radford!!!

Have a great weekend!
4L

5B - Mrs Blatcher
What an incredible week! We have been working with the University of The First Age and year five have been discovering their leadership skills and the skills of others. It has been enormous fun but very hard work as the children have been put through their paces and have generally had to work outside of their comfort zone. Jan, the lead facilitator, has commended the children on their excellent communication and questioning skills and is thoroughly enjoying working with the childnren. 5B, as always, have been absolute stars and I shall miss those children who are going to the Isle Of Wight next week…….what a quiet week I shall have!

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week we have learned about mean, mode, median and range during our work on data in maths. We have also spent some time preparing something for a special day on Sunday – but we have to keep it a secret! We enjoyed reading letters from the French children we are linked with in Cannes.

During the rest of the week we have been learning all about what it takes to be a leader. We have had fun being in mixed groups with 5B. Some of the games have been very exciting, lots of fun with a bit of confusion thrown in. If your family is bored during the holidays, why not ask your child to show you some of the games we have learned e.g. the train game, the dot puzzle (that will make your brain hurt!), counting to 10 (not as easy as it seems) and 1,2, 3.

Have fun and stay safe during the holidays. I will be in the Isle of Wight next week which I always enjoy – I do hope the good weather continues!

6B - Miss Bates
Hi Everybody,
We have had a wonderful week and worked really hard.
Our philosophy lesson was really interesting and Miss Bates said we were so mature with our answers.
We have also done some artwork and put our feelings on paper too.
Our treasure hunt was also good fun and we learnt a lot.
Have a lovely weekend everyone.

6M - Mr Martin
My what a week! If you have a sweet tooth then 6M is the place to be. In addition to our project on ice cream we have been designing and making Bavarian ginger bread houses to celebrate Spring. We are now at the making stage and we have become experts at making industrial quantities of ginger bread dough! In P.E we have been perfecting our footballing skills and can now pass and shoot with power and accuracy. In Science we have been revising hard and have now mastered electrical circuits. Although it has been a very fun week it is also tinged with sadness as we say goodbye to Miss Richardson who has been with us for the last half term, we shall miss her very very much and we say enormous thank you for all her hard work. We wish her good luck in her future career and hope she comes back to see us.

Week 24 Spring Term 10/11

2011-03-25T15:39:00.000Z

Karate

This week the children had an opportunity to meet some world-class karate experts from the Westwood Karate Academy. Sensei Jason and Sensei Lee wowed the crowd with their amazing Karate demonstration.

As of Monday 9th May 2011 our school will be running the ‘Budo4schools’ club.

Budo is the Japanese term for all martial arts, of which karate is one. The art of karate is Characterised by a dedication to the personal development of it's participants. Due to it's concentration on personal development, karate not only contributes to physical health, but also makes a significant contribution to the emotional health of it's participants.

School classes are significantly cheaper than the standard Academy rates. Cost per class averages out to be £3.50 and includes a FREE KARATE SUIT when children sign up for the course. At the end of each school term a GRADING is held, which is also FREE.

To qualify for the free karate suit and grading, children sign up for 10 week blocks of training at £35.00 per term. After the first term, each 10 week block includes the cost of grading, plus new belt and certificate, but not the karate suit which is available only on initial sign up.

If you are interested in your child participating please fill in the form (which you hopefully received from your child!) by the Friday 9th of April. See the website below for details.

http://www.westwoodkarateacademy.co.uk/Budo.htm

Think you know.

The children have been asked to complete a questionnaire on internet safety. This is in partnership with Essex Police and aims to help us protect children when they are online.

Please remind them they should NEVER give out personal information when they use computers, and always tell and adult if something seems strange. The website below has lots of useful links and information.

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

Right let’s see what’s been going on this week…

Yee Haw! A Big Thank You From the PTA!

The Barn Dance was a great success. We tapped our feet, clapped our hands, swung our partners and dosey doed the night away. We may have known our left from our right when we started the evening but this knowledge was not necessarily secure by the time we’d finished! It was lovely to see so many families with young children taking part. The children all behaved beautifully, as well as impressing us with their energy, enthusiasm and ability to keep up with the steps. Everyone enjoyed themselves so much that we will be planning another Barn Dance in the future.

Thank you to the PTA for organising the Barn Dance. It was a lovely social event, giving people the chance to meet a different set of faces. We look forward to the next PTA event – the Summer Fair on 17th June – put the date in your diaries now!

Rainbow Room
In the Rainbow Room this week we have been writing our own stories based on Charlie and the chocolate factory. There have been some very unusual characters including Fish, Lucien and Fudge Marmalade. We have also been dividing different numbers, using raisins and counters!! It has been really nice weather and we are looking forward to being able to do more outside.

Have a nice weekend

Everyone in the Rainbow Room

Reception
We have had a lot of fun learning and thinking about creatures that emerge from eggs. We have visited the school chickens to find out how they are cared for, we have thought about their life cycle and we have watched chicks and ducks hatching from their eggs and turtles laying eggs on out interactive whiteboards. We have used eggs to do some super calculations and are getting very confident at adding groups of eggs together.

2B
Class 2B have had a brilliant but busy week. We began our week with a trip to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The children were all very well behaved and found the church very interesting. As part of our buildings project we then designed some art work using our visit as inspiration. The artwork will be displayed in the corridor of the main entrance to school so the children had to think about what they wanted our school building to say to its visitors. The children decided that our school should be a friendly, warm and welcoming place so they used bright and cheerful colours for their designs. Some good news this week…. Class 2B are now grandparents as our snails have had babies. We are really excited and are looking forward to watching them grow!

2C
What a fab week in 2C.

We started the week with a stroll in the sunshine down to Our Lady of Lourdes church. We were told all about the building and were very lucky enough to have time to look around. The children were very well behaved and I was proud of all of them. A big thank you to the 3 mums who helped out, I hope you had a good morning with us too!

Kadie and Jayde took part in a gifted and talented art day on Thursday and produced art work to go with Earth Day which is on this coming Saturday. The theme is to save energy and look after the environment – for one hour tomorrow, the idea is to switch off phones, tv’s, electronic games and to not drive. I wonder if the children of 2C could survive for that long with out electronic gadgets?!

Enjoy the Spring sunshine – remember the clocks go forward and have a good weekend.

3B

3C

4L
This week in 4L we have been looking at time. It is one of the most important things to learn about as we use it everyday and need to know how to read a clock. What would happen if you were never on time?? In English we have continued with our work on persuasive writing, we are planning to make a poster to advertise our own chocolate bar! Thursday was a busy day, we had a karate lesson in the morning which was amazing then we went to Great Wakering on a trip to see an art exhibition. It was pictures we had drawn all put together to make a big story, it was so good. Mr Lloyd is going to try and teach us origami which is the ancient art of paper folding!

Have a great weekend everyone!

5B
5B have had a very productive week as we have re visited some of our previous learning! After a rusty start we were up and running again. Our persuasive writing has resulted in some fantastic letters being written for Mr Cameron and a very interesting class debate! We will have to see what happens on 1 April 2012 !

As the weather has been so much better we have made the most of it and used the Adventure Playground. On Thursday we learnt how to do some karate and it was really good fun.

5J

6M
This week we have had a very busy time, in Maths, we have been investigating a range of subjects through data handling.

In English we were all theatrical as we we’ve been reading playscripts and writing our own and acting them out.

Although SATS is nearly upon us and we have been working hard with revision we’ve still had a lot of fun, we’ve been designing ginger bread houses and formulating brand new ice cream flavours that we hope to sale.

Please, please, please, if you have any old empty ice cream containers can you bring them in so we can use them!

Many thanks 6M

Week 23 Spring Term 10/11

2011-03-18T15:35:00.001Z

Class photos

This week the children at Darlinghurst had their annual class photos. As usual, everyone came to school looking absolutely wonderful!

Even some of the teachers made an effort to look a little smarter! Which was quite a surprise to some of the children (wasn’t it Miss Bernard?!)

Well done to parents and children, I’m sure this set of photos will be splendid.

Performance club assembly

I would like to say a big thank you to the lovely Miss Butler and the rather fabulous performance club for their assembly on Monday.

The children had worked very hard to present an entertaining version of ‘Thriller’. I’m sure the late Michael Jackson would be ‘thrilled’ to have seen this. All the performers executed the King of Pop’s moves with great aplomb.

Well done, we loved it!

Right lets see what has been going on this week at school……

Rainbow Room
In the Rainbow Room this week we have been halving and doubling numbers. All the children have worked really hard at this - well done everyone. We have also been planning our stories based on Charlie and the Chocolate Facory and next week we will start writing these. Believe it or not the children are quite looking forward to it: they have some really good ideas in their plans.

Have a good weekend

2B - Miss Butler
The children in class 2B have really enjoyed completing their project about health & growth this week. They have done a fantastic job creating flow-charts to explain how we grow from children to adults. In art they listened to a poem about growing up and then drew pictures relating to the subject. In P.E. the children learnt about measuring their pulse and how different types of exercise made their heart rate increase. As well as learning about growth the children have also learnt a lot about healthy eating. A good project well done!

4AD - Mr Duff
It has been a short but hectic week. Lots of things going on!
All our children should know their way around as we have learning about the compass points and direction. I have just watched Mrs Harris teach a super P.E. lesson about carnival dancing, the children loved this. Next week we have a great opportunity to visit an art exhibition in Great Wakering, you should all have received a note in regards to this.

Red Nose Day is tomorrow but due to this being an INSET day, we wore our noses today. We also watch a video about a girl called Sunday who lived in Uganda. Ask your children about it.

More information about RND can be found here - http://www.rednoseday.com/

The Spring term is flying by and Easter is getting closer every day.

Enjoy your long weekend children!

Mr Duff.

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone!

This week Mr Radford has been teaching us how to do some persuasive writing, that is when you want to convince someone to do something. This could be staying up a bit later at night, but you must have good reasons to put forward! In maths we have been looking at graphs and how to collect data and make bar graphs with it. We have made circuits in science and learnt all about the components that make a light bulb work and conduct electricity well. It is comic relief this week and we have been watching sad videos on people who have difficult lives, we are glad to help.

5B - Mrs Blatcher
5B have had an incredible week. Some of the class went to see a French theatre production and thoroughly enjoyed it whilst others went to The Deanes Inspirational Evening on Wednesday.The whole of the year group was complimented on their behaviour and excellent learning skills. In class, we have been practising our comprehension skills and have been looking at how writers can "infer" a meaning without telling us directly; showing us rather than telling us how a character feels for example.In art and design and technology we have been designing and building our own board games..........what a week!

3B - Miss Crumbie

Week 22 Spring Term 10/11

2011-03-11T12:25:00.002Z

Hey everyone, It’s great to be back!

I have been resting at home recovering from the dreaded chicken pox! So feeling a little spotty still!

Thank you to Ben for stepping in and writing the blog.

St Patrick’s Day

Next Thursday (17th March) it is St Patrick’s day!

St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by the Irish and Irish at Heart in big cities and small towns alike with parades, "wearing of the green," music and songs, Irish food and drink, and activities for kids such as crafts, coloring and games. Its a time for fun. Some communities even go so far as to dye rivers or streams green!

Many folk ask the question 'Why is the Shamrock the National Flower of Ireland ?' The reason is that St. Patrick used it to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagans. Saint Patrick is believed to have been born in the late fourth century, and is often confused with Palladius, a bishop who was sent by Pope Celestine in 431 to be the first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.

PTA Barn Dance

Saturday 19th March 6 pm - 10 pm
Adults £3.50 Children £1
Bring Your Own Refreshments

Please Submit Ticket Requests to the School Office in an Envelope
Please include:

Childs name ---- Class--

Number of Adult/Child Tickets

Payment Cash or Cheque (Payable to Darlinghurst PTA)

A NIGHT OF FAMILY FUN!

Rainbow Room
This week in the rainbow room we have been designing and describing our own sweet factories which we have also started to make. We have been halving numbers in maths and Mrs Grant even brought some sweets in so that we could use them to help us halve our numbers. We have also been looking at teeth in science and how eating sweets is not good for them, but neither is eating some fruit because of the acid in them. We still like sweets and fruit though.

Have a good week!

Reception
The Reception classes have had more jungle fun this week (with only a few monkeys). We have learnt which creatures live in the deepest, darkest part of the jungle and which animals live around the outside, we have made pictograms of our favourite jungle animals and investigated alliteration using jungle animals. We have thought about animal camophlage for hiding and showing bright colours when they wish to show they are poisonous. In PE we listened to Saint Saens composition 'Carnival of the Animals' and had fun making short dances.

1B - Mrs Barrington
Another busy week in the world of year one. We had a super visit to Chalkwell Methodist Church on Monday. The children were very well behaved and a credit to the school. The people at the church were very kind and have given each child a bible story book. Some children have decided to take theirs home whilst others are keeping them in class. To thank the church year one have put together a special thank you card. Our maths work has focused on place value and children are becoming very confident in understanding hundreds, tens and units. Our science learning is light and dark and l have agreed that the children can bring in torches for us to look at and discuss. Most of our written work will be non-fiction this term and we have already written some recounts about our church visit. Big thanks must go to our parent helpers without whom we would not be able to carry out such beneficial out of school learning.

Holly Believes she saw her nanny on our carnival video!

Anita Knows her two times tables.

Dorothy Knows her five times tables.

1C - Mrs Collison
How quickly time flies when your having fun! Alongside Church visits and exciting dance lessons we have become superstars at working with place value!

Here's what the children have said they enjoyed this week

Charlotte said 'I loved ICT. We had to search for pictures in clip Art of different Church features to stick in our information text work.'

Louise said 'I enjoyed my DT lesson. We had to make a Church using all sorts of boxes.'

Next week we will be looking more closely at information texts and trying to find out some more addition and subtraction facts for numbers from 10-20.

Have a safe and fun weekend. See you on Monday!

Mrs Collison

2B - Miss Butler
Class 2B have begun their project on Health and Growth this week. The children have learnt all about different foods and what jobs they do for our bodies. They also learnt how to take their pulse and how our heart rates increase when we exercise. Well done to all of the children for a fabulous performance in last weeks carnival assembly.

2C - Mrs Clarke

3B - Miss Bernard
We have had a busy week in 3B, as usual. In English we have been examining Calligrams and creating our own in ICT. Next we are going to have a go at creating our own calligram poems based on our Anglo-Saxon topic and the story of Beowulf. This week 3B decided on what they would like to investigate in Maths. Some children investigated their times tables using rectangles, others had to do a “Crack the Code” activity t explore their times tables. Another group was investigating money using cents and euros. Lastly, there was an investigation going on using percentages. In all we have had a fun week and the children have worked really hard.

Here are some of the activities that some children wanted to talk about:

George- We did Maths. We did our times tables and another group worked with euros.
Megan- In ICT we did calligrams and we made our own. It was very exciting. In Maths I did a domino puzzle with Bailey, I was really happy.
Piper- Yesterday, in Maths, we did all about percentages. I found it quite easy because we had to cover 30% of a 100 square board with Numicon.
Vinson- This week we have been having lots of fun. We have had two teachers, both are enjoyable and fun. In Philosophy for Children we discussed feelings. I said that if we did not have any feelings, nobody would be friends with anybody.
Jessica- In Philosophy for Children we talked about our feelings and lots of children were joining in.
Daisy- Today I enjoyed doing English. We looked at Anglo-Saxon books, wrote notes for poems and we all enjoyed it.

Thanks, children it seems as though you have really enjoyed your week.

Have a fun weekend!

Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie

4L - Mr Lloyd
Mr Lloyd returned this week after being sick with chicken pox! It was great to have him back! We have been learning about co-ordinates in maths and how to plot them. On Tuesday we made pancakes and used instructions in our English work to help us make them! They were delicious!

We also received our reply from the Queen this week about our creation of a new union flag! Her majesty was very pleased to here from us and expressed her thanks for sending her our work! Wow, we got a letter from the Queen!

Have a great weekend!

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran

5B - Mrs Blatcher
What a wonderful week for 5B . Mrs Foley has taught us all about trying to persuade our M.P., David Amess. to give us anotehr bank holiday day every year!He has told us he is looking forward to receiving our letters!

We have also been geting ready for a visit to TheDeanes School next week as some of us are attending an Inspiration Evening.

Mrs Blatcher has been busy planning some fantastic drama and story telling lessons which we have really enjoyed.

It has been lovely to see the sun so much this week.....long may it continue to shine!

5J - Mrs Johnston
We have continued with our persuasive writing this week. We found an acronym to help us: A FOREST - Alliteration, Facts, Opinions, Rhetorical questions, Emotive language, Statistics and Three (repetition).

We were lucky enough to be visited by some sixth formers from WHSB for another science fair session. This week we compared plant and animal cells under the microscope.

The class have been preparing talks - the standard has been very high. We have enjoyed watching the accompanying powerpoint presentations as well as the visits from Ruby the dog, Cadbury and Tufty the guinea pigs and Bullseye the budgie. Mrs Johnston wonders if she qualifies for the first stage of zoo management skills!

6B - Miss Bates
We have had a very busy week in 6B.

Our SATS revision has begun and so we have been working really hard.

We have been investigating some topical issues in English and have written a discursive piece of writing, this was great fun!

On Wednesday we had a class gymnastics competition and we really enjoyed composing our own routines to music.

Have a great weekend.

6M - Mr Martin

Week 21 Spring Term 10/11

2011-03-04T15:37:00.002Z

Carnival Week!
Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great half term, I know I did!
This week at Darlinghurst has been full of colour, dance and music as it's Carnival Week!

It's been a manic week as every class had to prepare a dance for today's assembly. I was lucky enough to watch the assembly and I must say I was impressed! I didn't know we had that much talent at Darlinghurst. Special shout out to Miss Bernard and her moves! Well done to everyone for all your hard work.

Mr Lloyd is unwell with chicken pox so we would all like to wish that he gets well soon.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the sunshine!

Ben

Reception

The Reception children have been having such fun this week learning about Carnival. We have found out that in some countries it is a celebration before Lent to eat up food in the cupboards before thinking carefully about what we eat until Easter. We have listened to steel pan music and either made jungle animal masks and costumes or carnival people costumes and had our own fantastic carnival parade. We enjoyed finding out what other children had learnt in assembly; Finlay noticed that other countries had different music an did different dances and George found out other countries had different stories.

1C - Mrs Collison
Ola, from all in 1C!

We have been thinking about all things Brazilian this week; animals, people, monuments and finally carnivals!! The children have produced some beautiful pieces of descriptive writing and their work is proudly on display in the school.

Here is what the children have said they enjoyed this week

Chelsey said 'I loved making my Peacock Mask. I had to use paint and feathers to make me look like a real Peacock.'

Jaegar said 'had fun making a mask and my musical instrument. We put beans in the cup to make a shaker noise.'

Sam said 'I found out about Bids of Paradise. They wiggle the feathers on their bottoms!'

Next week we are learning how to recognise the value of different digit in bigger numbers and developing our factual writing skills. We will also be starting our Science topic of Light and Dark.

Have a lovely weekend

Mrs Collison

2B - Miss Butler

This week class 2B have had a lot of fun learning about carnivals around the world. We have been focussing on the Brazil carnival in Rio de Janeiro which is a very noisy and colourful carnival. We listened (and danced) to some carnival music and made our own carnival instruments. The children also made some beautiful masks to wear in the assembly parade. In maths we have been looking at grid coordinates on maps of Rio and Brazil. A very fun week! Hope all of the children with chicken pox are feeling better soon!

2C - Mrs Clarke

Carnival week has been fantastic!!!

We have been learning all about carnivals around the world and in particular, the Rio Carnival in Brazil. We have learnt about why we have them, the costumes people wear and the songs they sing.

Class 2C have made the most amazing carnival masks and used them in our special whole school assembly where they performed a carnival poem with year 1.

Tia: I enjoyed doing the carnival assembly because it was exciting!

Caitlin: I especially enjoyed making the masks this week.

John: I liked making the carnival masks too.

3B - Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie
Hello everybody!

What a flabbergasting week we have had!

This week we have been learning all about carnivals. We found out obout how the people who attend them love to dance, wear colourful clothing and brightly decorated masks! 3C made their very own masks and I thought they all looked spectacular!

Then we performed a carnival dance in the hall in front of the whole school! We danced to hot, hot, hot and it was really great fun!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all of 3C :o)

5J - Mrs Johnston

We have been learning about symmetry in maths. We made masks for the carnival using symmetrical patterns. Phoebe

The theme for the Carnival in Nice is 'King of the Mediterranean' , we adapted the idea to our local area so our theme was 'King of the Thames Estuary' ! We made a float for Bethany, our Carnival Queen, Ben was the King. Some of us dressed in blue for the waves, yellow for the sand, beach clothes for people enjoying the beach. We made up a dance including sheets of fabric that moved like waves. Lewis and Brendan

Today, the people that attend Performance Club went to Garons Park and danced to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. They dressed up as scary zombies! They dressed in black, wore masks and make up. When they came back to class, everyone gasped and commented on their strange appearance. Scarlett and Amy

6B - Miss Bates
Hi Everyone,

We have had such a great week.

As part of the carnival week we decided to make masks and we looked at the history of the Rio de Janiero carnival.

We then made our own masks and all designed a different type of mask with feathers and bright colours.

In English we have had a few interesting debates and this has been really good fun.

Have a nice weekend!

Week 20 Spring Term 10/11

2011-02-18T15:03:00.000Z

Half Term!

Well another half term has come to end.........and hasn't it flown by?!

We are fast approaching spring (and hopefully some nice weather!) which made me think that children will start playing outside again.

As we all have a week off, I thought i'd remind you to take extra care on the roads over half term by remembering the points below:

Stop

Find the safest place to cross then stop.
Stand on the pavement near the kerb or the edge if there is no kerb.

Look

Give yourself lots of time to have a good look all around.
Make sure you can see if anything is coming and drivers can see you.

Listen

Listen carefully because you can sometimes hear traffic before you can see it.
Never cross the road whilst chatting to people, listening to your iPod or talking on your mobile phone
When it is safe to cross, walk straight across the road. Do not walk diagonally. Keep looking and listening for traffic while you cross.
This government website has lots of cool games to play and sends an important message so please have a look

http://talesoftheroad.direct.gov.uk/

Right, let's see what everyone has been up to this week...........................

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been learning about the skeleton and have even made one, although some of us got our arms and legs muddled!! We have continued to learn about arrays and our times tables, it is much easier when you show it as an array. In English we have been doing descriptions for some of the characters in Charlie and the chocolate factory. We even got an e-mail back from jamie Oliver's company thanking us for the letters we sent the other day!

The Rainbow Room

When we come back from the holidays there will be no Rainbow Room the first week back as our room is being re-decorated. Myself, Miss Rowley and Miss Pycraft will be working with the children throughout the week in their classes and can be contacted if necessary through the office. Mrs Grant

Reception
This week we had our school trip to the post office to post our letters. Thank you for all the help we received from parents. The children were a credit to the school. Look out for your letter in the post soon guys!

1B - Mrs Barrington
Hooray! Half term is here. The children have had a really successful terms learning. We finished our traditional stories today with a few people retelling their favourite stories. Then we had a class vote and decided that The Gingerbread Man is our favourite. Next term we shall be learning about Light and Dark in Science and our written work will focus on non-fiction texts. Today the children have taken letters home, detailing our trip to the church and carnival week. Enjoy the holiday.

1C - Mrs Collison
Hello Again!

We can't believe how quickly this half term has flown by and that we are half way through Year 1! The children have worked extremely hard this week during their Maths and English assessments and should feel extremely proud of the progress they have made.

Here's what the children have said they enjoyed this week

Jaegar said 'I enjoyed PE because I like it when we can choose our dance during the Lindi Hop.'

Chelsey said 'I liked PE. We had to learn different moves for the Lindi Hop dance.'

Kirsty said 'I loved Art because we are learning about different types of materials and we are weaving with them.'

Wishing you all the best for a fun, safe and exciting week and looking forward to learning lots more in our new topic next term 'Around the World'.

Mrs Collison & Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler
Class 2B have been completing their Great Fire of London project this week. The children wrote some fabulous poems about the fire. A special well done to James and Laura who completed this task exceptionally well. In science this week we carried out an ice experiment to see what changes occur in different materials when they are heated up. The children have worked really hard this half term and we all deserve a break! Have fun and stay safe.

2C - Mrs Clarke
Wow, hasn't this half term gone quickly!

I want to start by saying how proud I am of class 2C this week. They have been working really hard on writing poems about the Great Fire of London and they have done the most fantastic job. A particular well done to Alisha who despite ignoring my advice, went on to do a super job! Remember to collect those pennies for our Comic Relief penny trail and also 'junk' materials to help us make carnival masks the first week back.

Here's Alisha's poem.

London's Burning
A fire from an open oven,3C - Miss Crumbie
Red flames
jumped house to house.
Gunpower in the houses,
blown up houses.
They lived on the streets
4 days, then it stopped.
They built new houses.
They made brick houses.

Hello everybody :o)

We have had an absolutely jam packed week in 3c!! I think, by far, our most exciting activity has been making our Anglo-Saxon houses. Miss Weddell has made it so fun we have even had villages been made at home but Sam G, Cole and Rebecca E. Rebecca B has even made a house from all bran and PVA glue!! Amazing!!

Dylan thought making the Anglo-Saxon house was great fun because he learnt how to make 3D shapes from nets and put these together to form a house. They all look fab!!

Also this week we have all been writing an adventure story. Josh decided to put himself in to try to solve the dilemma faced and help rescue the princess!! I do hope he is successful!

Because it is the week before half term we completed some assessments which Taylor really enjoyed doing. She especially enjoyed completing her science test because it made her think about all of the learning we have done over the past few weeks and she feels that this helped her to learn.

I am very proud of all of the children in 3C because they have all worked so hard and have obviously learnt lots and lots!! Well done everybody!!

Hope everyone has a fantastic half term!! :o)

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all of 3C

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran
Where has half the year gone? Blink and you would have missed it.

The good news is that 4AD are going from strength to strength and we expect this to continue.

Have a great half term and we will see you on your return.

Take care,

Mr Duff, Mrs Amran and Mrs Clarke

4L - Mr Lloyd

Hey everyone,

This week in 4L we have continued to practice using connectives and subordinate clauses to use in our work and our English on non-chronological texts. Our maths lessons have focused on 3D shapes and the vocabulary that is used to describe their propeties. Do you know what a vertex is? Mr Patterson came in to teach us all about the Republic of Ireland and how to speak their language. He also showed us how to play Gaelic football and the special dance that Irish do. After half term we are going to learn how to do the dance for our carnival assembly!

Have a great half term everyone!

4L

5B - Mrs Blatcher
We have had a brilliant week but we are all ready for half term! We have been writing our recounts and preparing for the story competition we are entering.In maths we have been reminding ourselves how to multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000...we were really good!

Our topic work has been fantastic; we know so much about our solar system and our power point displays proved this! Happy half term from 5B.

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week on Monday in the morning, we had to find words with three letters or more ffrom the words 'Valentine's Day' as a morning warm up.

We have been learning about fractions and percentages in Maths. We have been writing newspaper reports and super hero stories.

On Thursday the police came to teach us about the dangers of anti-social behaviour.

Brendan and David

Week 19 Spring Term 10/11

2011-02-11T15:22:00.001Z

Tesco Vouchers
Every year the school participates in Tesco’s vouchers for schools scheme.

In the past it has helped raised enough funds to add some wonderful new resources for the school, therefore we are keen to continue it.

As of the 28th of February the vouchers will be available in stores again. If you are an avid Tesco shopper could you please help us to collect as many as possible to help our wonderful school.

Spread the word amongst family and friends and let’s see if we can break last year’s record!

Every little helps!! (sorry…….couldn’t resist that!)

Thank you.

Mr Lloyd

Football

Darlinghurst 1 V Fairways 4

On Thursday the mighty reds took on Fairways in a tense and crucial league match. The game saw debuts for Tom Hill, Raman Negi and Tom Fenn, who all put in great performances.

The visitors started strongly taking an early two goal lead, however the brave boys of Darlinghurst fought back in typical fashion by drawing level just after half time. A fine bit of skill and a deft finish from David Szczepaniak helped the home side get back in the game. Unfortunately the away team proved a little too tricky for us in the closing stages, and walked away with all three points.

The season is still very young and there is a long way to go, we are confident the team can repeat last year’s success.

A big well done to all the lads, you did yourselves and the school proud.

Ok let’s see what’s been going on at school this week………………….

1B - Mrs Barrington

It's all been about adding and subtracting this week. The children have worked really hard and know lots of number facts. We have continued with our traditional stories and next week there will be a vote as to our favourite traditional story. In ICT we practised our touch typing, we're not quiet at the 45wpm but getting there! Next week we shall having different activities to finish off our half terms learning. A big welcome to our new class members Annie and Charlie.

Leanne Knows her maths very well and can count back.

1C - Mrs Collison

Lucy Enjoyed going on a school material hunt.

Dennis Enjoys reading The Gingerbread Man.

We have had another fantastic week of learning in 1C. Children have been writing their own amazing traditional stories and been superstars at finding the difference between two numbers.

Neve said, “I have really enjoyed History looking at homes from the past”

Layton said, “In ICT I have drawn a castle from a traditional story”

Kelsey said,” I love going on Learn to Touch Type in ICT”

Looking forwards to some fun learning next week.

2B - Miss Butler
Over the past week we have begun our topic of The Great Fire of London. We have found out lot's about the great fire and also what life was like in London in 1666. Laura showed us a great picture of her and her family at the Monument in London and she also had a certificate as she walked right to the top! We thought of some lovely words to describe the angry, raging fire which we will use when we write poems next week. In P.E. the children did a fab job with their fire dancing. A special well done to Olivia W, Olivia R and Kai who worked extremley well together on their dance.

2C - Mrs Clarke
This week 2C have started another topic on The Great Fire of London. So far we have learnt about when it was, how it started, how long it lasted and how they stopped it. We did some great practice artwork too, mixing different colours of orange to paint flames.

In maths we have been doing problem solving - but we can't say any more than that as it's top secret! (Ask your children to eleborate!)

3B - Miss Bernard

In PE this week we made up our own dances with red and orange scarves to dance like flames in a fire.

Caitlin - I have liked doing the artwork.

Kadie - I have liked doing the artwork too!

John - I am really enjoying the maths I am doing now.

Jay - I have enjoyed learning about London in 1666.

This week in science we have been investigating forces by seeing how far the car would travel when we pulled the elastic band back – Cameron

Today we have been making our own Anglo-Saxon houses. We really enjoyed it and soon we are going on a school trip to an Anglo Saxon village – Cael & Daisy

We had free writing today and it was loads of fun – Jessica

3C - Miss Crumbie

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week we have started on non-chronological texts in our English lessons. Mr Lloyd has taught us the purpose of them which is to inform people. We have also learnt how to use subordinate clauses effectively in our writing. We will be practicing this every day now. The class have moved on to 2D shapes in Maths, can you tell us what an irregular polygon is? To help us with our non-chronological texts we are creating our own on the Loch Knockie Monster in Scotland. To know more we have been watching films on the Loch Ness Monster. It was Parinirvana day this week which is a day to celebrate the passing of Buddha. Please be good to other people and help generate good karma.

5B - Mrs Blatcher
5B have worked so hard we actually extended our maths lesson over two hours in stead of one !The rain prevented us from doing PE and the children asked if they could continue with some tricky word problems.It took a lot of team work but we got there in the end.

Our class now has a taste of fame after our visit to BBC Essex so we are now entering competitions to see if we can visit some more famous people.

The recounts the children have been writing have been incredible. Ask your children to tell you.

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week in 5J we've made our DT instruments colourful. Also, every morning, we have maths questions to answer. In English we had to write a newspaper article about a school club after we had interviewed someone who attends the club. We needed to add descriptive words as well as including a quote. We asked our interviewees questions based on Who? What? Where? When? Why and How? to find out the information we needed.

Brendan

6B - Miss Bates
We have had such a great week!

The focus of the week in topic has been Cornwall and we have learnt a great deal about the culture in the West Country.

In English we have written persuasive adverts and sold Miss Bates a holiday to the Caribbean.

Our gymnastics routines are really coming on and next week we are going to put them to music and perform them in a mini competition.

6M - Mr Martin
This week we’ve been highly productive. Designing our persuasive adverts for our revolutionary healthy fast food products, come and grab your own while stocks last! Also high on our list of achievements this week are our versions of St Michael’s Mount, where we have created our own Mounts, using our English skills to write about myths and legends that used to live there. Anyway, that’s all from us now, have a great weekend everyone and see you on Monday!

PS – we are all glad that Mr Martin is back from being off school ill, we missed him at the start of the week!

Cheers
Mr C

Week 18 Spring Term 10/11

2011-02-04T15:31:00.003Z

Chinese New Year

For those that don’t know Chinese New Year began this year on 3rd February and marks the start of the Year of the Rabbit. The year will be 4709 on the Chinese Calendar.

Chinese New Year is also known as the Spring Festival and is the main Chinese festival of the year.

As the Chinese use the Lunar calendar for their festivals the date of Chinese New Year changes from year to year. The date corresponds to the new moon (black moon) in either late January or February. Traditionally celebrations last for fifteen days, ending on the date of the full moon. The Chinese calendar is different from that used in the United Kingdom. It is made up of a cycle of twelve years, each of them being named after an animal. This is very like our signs of the zodiac. Some people believe that people born in a particular year such as the year of the Dog will have some of the characteristics of that animal.

In China the public holiday lasts for three days and this is the biggest celebration of the year.

Here at Darlinghurst, the children have been learning all about different parts of this festival and used their learning to put on a fabulous assembly on Friday. There was lots of interesting things on show and I think we all learnt something new!

Well done to all the children and staff who worked so hard to put it together.

So, what’s been going on at school this week?

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been learning Chinese New Year. This year is the Chinese of the Rabbit. Did you know that on New Years Eve the Chinese open all the windows to let the old year out and the new year in. It is also unlucky to use the Chinese word for the number four on New Years Day because it sounds very much like the Chinese word for death. We have made Chinese lanterns and a dragon head and have been practising a dragon dance. We have also made Chinese stir fried noodles and got to eat them with chopsticks.

Happy New Year of the Rabbit
Dylan

Reception

The Reception classes have had more fun than usual finding out how Chinese children celebrate the Chinese New Year. We have listened to stories from China, made puppets from these stories and written Chinese numbers to make ourselves a book mark. We have also enjoyed learning and saying greetings and different parts of our body in Mandarin. We have ended the week by making a talking book to teach other people how to say the parts of the body in Mandarin. "How clever are we!", said Charlie.

1B - Mrs Barrington
Another eventful week in class 1B. As you know we are continuing our work on traditional stories. This week the children learnt how to read playscripts. We carried out some investigation work in science and explored how water evaporates. Finally on Friday the children learnt about some interesting ancient Chinese stories. Next week we shall attempt writing our own version of a traditional story.

1C - Mrs Collison
What a lovely way to end a fantastic learning week in Year 1 by having a birthday! Thank you to all the children who spoilt me with lots of hugs, cards and sweeties...I have definitely finished the week with a great big smile.

Here is what the children have said they enjoyed this week;

Remie said 'I enjoyed the Science activities yesterday. We looked how materials change state. I found out that you can't wear a paper T-Shirt because when it rains it will all break up and get soggy.'

Thomas said 'I loved maths because we do lots of exciting things with Numicon.'

Tom said 'I loved D & T we had to make different types of houses. I made a flat by using wooden bricks.'

Next week we will be looking more closely at counting back from a given number and recognising all the different processes that are important when we subtract. In English we will be focussing on beginning to write our own traditional stories, trying to think of adventurous word choices to make them very exciting.

Have a lovely weekend. Stay safe.

2B - Miss Butler
Class 2B have been finishing off their gingerbread man topic this week. We designed, baked and decorated some delicious gingerbread men and we managed to gobble them up before they ran away! In ICT we continued with making our class film of the story using windows movie maker. For writing we looked at the story from the point of view of the fox and thought of some exciting verbs.

2C - Mrs Clarke
2C have been all Chinese this week. Thursday was Chinese new year and most of the work completed has been around that theme. Mrs Cornish made Chinese scrolls with the class, we've learnt the story behind the festival and made lucky goldfish in origami. The origami was a real challenge but I was so impressed with the class for listening so well and following the instructions carefully.

Cody, Jay, Ellie and Hayley were brave enough to get up in assembly at the end of the week to show and tell to the rest of the school what Chinese activities we had done. A special well done to Jay for making a Chinese dragon at home by himself and showing that in assembly too.

Next week our theme changes and our learning is centred around the great fire of London.

3B - Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie
Wow what a whopping week we have had!!

This week we have been learning about measurements in our maths. Sam G really enjoyed weighing lots of different items and weighing himself. He was very good at estimating the heaviest items.

In science we completed a fair test to see if we could predict how far a car would be pushed forward. We also tested to see which car would go the furthest out of a metal or a wooden car. Callum found out the metal car went the furthest and he loved doing the test because he thought he was very good at predicting and it was an exciting experiment!!

We have also been learning about Chinese new year traditions this week. We discovered that this week is the year of the Rabbit!! We created oriental plates and Sharmayne enjoyed doing this because it was really fun!!

We completed the tangrams too and Georgia enjoyed using the shapes to create a new picture.

Lewis loved creating a picture a picture of a rabbit using pastels because it is the year of the Rabbit!!

Hope you have a magnificent weekend!!

All at 3c :o)

4L - Mr Lloyd
We hope you have all had a great week in school? In 4L this week we have been continuing with our work on perimeter. For our topic we have moved onto looking at the country of Scotland. We learnt all about the rivers and towns. It was Chinese New Year this week also. Mr Lloyd taught us about the flowers that are used for this celebration. To help us prepare we worked on our speaking and listening skills in class.

We hope you all have a great weekend

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week in 5J, we have been learning about Chinese New Year. This is the year of the rabbit. Next year is the year of the dragon, the year after that is the year of the snake.

We have looked at animations of the story of the Willow Plate Pattern. As well as turning it into a newspaper account we performed it as a drama for the school.

We are still building our instruments in DT - Mr Clark has been helping us with the sawing. We still have ten fingers each!

Hannah and Ben

6B - Miss Bates
We have had a really lovely week in 6B!

Our gymnastics routines are really coming on well and we are going to perform them to music next week.
We have really enjoyed learning about the West Country and some of the things that it is famous for.
Miss Bates said that our persuasive adverts that we wrote in English were outstanding.
We have enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year and our fortune cookies were delicious!

6M - Mr Martin
Hi everyone, lots of fun things have been going on this week in year 6. We have immersed ourselves in the Chinese New Year along with the whole school, making fortune cookies and writing wondrous poetry about Chinese Dragons. Let’s hope the year of the Rabbit is prosperous for us all.

Once again our PE lesson was very exciting, we had all the apparatus out and we made up our own gymnastic routines. We made loads of noise in our Science lesson, where we investigated sound and how to change the pitch of objects.

Happy Learning to you all!

Week 17 Spring Term 10/11

2011-01-28T15:49:00.000Z

Disco

This week saw the World famous Darlinghurst Disco take place!

The children have been excited all week and they were not disappointed! The food and drink went down a treat, and as usual, some bizzare dancing methods were on show!

.........and that was just the staff!!!

Mr Martin and I are feeling a little bloated after eating too many hot dogs!!

A big thank you must go out to all the staff and parents that helped set everything up, in the weeks before and on the night.

It was a great success and wouldn’t have been possible without you.

WELL DONE TO THE PTA!!!.........

Coffee and cake afternoon
Mrs Johnson would like to invite all parents/carers of the reception to a coffee, cake and chat afternoon next week.

It will be held on Friday 4th February from 1.30 - 2.30 in the training room.

Okay…….so what has been going on in school this week?

Rainbow Room
This week in maths we have been adding up money and got to use the numicom to help us. In English and Science we have been continuing to learn about being healthy, about what things are bad for us, smoking and eating too much of the wrong things as well as different types of exercises. We have also been looking at the work of the Italian artist Guiseppe Archimbolo who used fruit, vegetables and flowers to make his pictures. One even looks like an alien and he made it nearly 500 years ago.

Bethany

Reception
Last week the Reception classes had such fun with their learning using stories written by Julia Donaldson that we have carried on with them this week. We now have heard, acted and watched many of her lovely stores and taken part in many activities linked to them. On Thursday we had a creative morning making necklaces and badges to wear to our afternoon disco, when we joined in with dancing competitions. The children then talked about what they had enjoyed the most and how we could make our discos even better. Finlay suggested we pull the blinds down to "make it dark" and Ezio said he wanted us to get "a disco light ball to change the colours in the room." So if anyone has a spare disco ball, please send it our way!

1B - Mrs Barrington
It's been double trouble in class 1B this week with the children working really hard learning to double 1 and 2 digit numbers. Well done! Traditional stories is the focus for our written work and we have written some super character profiles using many amazing adjectives. Next week the children will be looking at different play scripts. There has been great excitement when looking at different homes with lots of children wanting to live in igloo's and castles.

Tyler, Isabella and Leanne are really enjoying listening to traditional stories.

Luke likes reading his reading books at home.

1C - Mrs Collison
Another week that has just flown by and the children are showing me how grown up they are becoming. This week we have been thinking more about traditional stories and focusing on character descriptions and how speech is represented in playscripts.In Maths we have been working on doubles and becoming quite quick at mental recall of these doubles.

Here is what the children have said they enjoyed this week

Luke said 'I loved Maths because its best for learning. I used Numicon to work out doubles.'

Harley said 'I enjoyed Maths as well because I used dinosaurs to work out doubling.'

Thomas said 'I liked Maths because we do alot of fun things. I was good at using Numicon.'

Next week we will be focusing more on the idea of place value to help us count on and back from a given number and in English we will be looking more closely at different types of playscripts. In Science we look forward to exploring the changing state of materials as they are heated or cooled.

2B - Miss Butler
We began our topic on Traditional Stories this week by looking at the story of the Gingerbread Man. The children had a lot of fun acting out and filming the story and began making a movie of their film in ICT. In science the aim of our experiment was to find the most waterproof material so that we could make a suit for the Gingerbread Man so that he could safely cross the river without getting wet. For our writing we created WANTED posters so that we could catch the cheeky Gingerbread Man and the sly Fox.

3B - Miss Bernard
Hasn’t this week whizzed by? Perhaps it’s because we have been so busy. The children were very excited on Monday when we had a Sutton Hoo treasure hunt in the classroom. 28 items were found out of 29, so there is still a piece of treasure hidden some where…………???????? The children then used all the information that found about Sutton Hoo to write their own newspaper reports. They contained some very interesting information. Here are some of the things that the children have enjoyed this week:

Megan- In Art we did pattern and printing it was really exciting.

Jake- Yesterday we had our disco, I enjoyed it.

George- We have done paragraphs in our newspaper reports about Sutton Hoo.

Yann- The treasure hunt for Sutton Hoo artifacts was good for making us think about how the archaeologists felt when they found treasure.

Cael- Today we did free writing and shared it with the class.

Cameron-Today we have been writing our newspaper reports. I was excited even before we started.

Holly- I really enjoyed playing the musical instruments and recording them this week.

Thanks for your contributions children.

Have a great weekend.

3C - Miss Crumbie

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week in 4L we have been learning about how to work out the perimeter of a shape or object. The perimeter is the distance around the outside of a shape. In English we have been writing up our biographies on the Queen which we will the put into a word document using text boxes. We have also been finishing off our ‘New Union Flag’ designs whilst writing letters to the Queen to tell her. Mr Lloyd has written a covering letter to with it to explain what we have been doing. We cant wait to here from Her Majesty!!!

Have a great weekend!

5B - Mrs Blatcher
What a week. We have written some fantastic Tiger poetry for our new wall display and we have been using connectives to make our work more interesting .5B all enjoyed reading the newspaper as we had a practise at some GCSE english questions. In maths we learnt about Venn Diagrams,area and perimeter;in fact we need the weekend to recuperate!

6B - Miss Bates
We are really enjoying our new topic on the British Isles and have been undertaking some research into ‘British foods’ and the history of why we eat a roast dinner, fish and chips etc…

Our new topic in PE is gymnastics and we have been balancing using the apparatus, this has been great fun.

We have also designed some persuasive posters to try and encourage tourists to visit the British Isles.
The school disco has been a real highlight of the week and we are all ready for a restful weekend!

Week 16 Spring Term 10/11

2011-01-21T15:18:00.006Z

SUNSHINE!

This week saw the long-awaited return of that large ball of fire in the sky!
Yes……..the sun seemed to shine down on Darlinghurst for the first time in a long while.
We seemed to have been so used to grey skies and dreary days, we had forgotten what a clear blue sky looked like.
This may seem like an odd topic to bring up in the blog, but I mention it purely because so many children and staff have!
Anyway here are some facts about the sun……………………………

The Romans called the sun Sol, which in English means sun. In ancient Greece, the sun was called Helios.

Light from the Sun can reach the Earth in only 8 minutes! This is called the speed of light.

The Sun was born in a vast cloud of gas and dust around 5 billion years ago.

The Sun is so large that the Earth could easily fit inside the Sun a million times.

So roll on spring…….so we can get outside and start teaching some lessons on our lovely field!

School Disco

The PTA are holding discos for the children on Thursday 27th January

Once again we have DJ MickyB.

3.30pm – 4.30pm 1C, 1B, 2C, 2P, 3B, 3C £2.00 per ticket (includes hot dog and free drinks)

5.00pm – 6.30pm 4L, 4AD, 5B, 5J, 6B, 6M £2.50 per ticket (includes hot dog and one free drink)

Free prize draw for both discos.

The prize is a family pass for 2 adults and up to 3 children for Kids’ Kingdom

(Reception classes will have their own disco afternoon in their classes.)

PLEASE - Money for tickets needs to be put in an envelope, marked with the child’s name and class, labelled ‘Disco’ and given to the class teacher. Wristbands with the child’s name on will then be issued.

Right let’s see what has been going on around school this week…………………..

Rainbow Room

This week in the Rainbow Room we have been creating our own healthy menus for a whole day. We have also written a letter to Jamie Oliver which Mrs Grant is going to send to him showing what we have done. In maths we have been using money, which we are going to do again next week. We have even played some money games. Have a good weekend.

Reception
We have been using Julia Donaldson stories this week to move our learning forward. We have focussed our activities on 'The Smartest Giant in Town', 'The Snail and the Whale' and 'Room on the Broom' to think about big and small and weighing, the kindness and care the characters showed their friends and we have thought about the characters talking in the stories. We have all worked really hard this week, but we have also had alot of fun! Thank you to all the families who have supported the children in produce fantastic artwork for homework.

1C - Mrs Collison
Another busy week had by all in 1C. We have welcomed two new children to our class and it is lovely to see them. We have been continuing to think about traditional tales and looking at addition facts for the number 7 and 17.

Here is what the children have said they enjoyed this week;

Emily said 'I enjoyed Maths because I liked finding all the different pairs of numbers that total 17.'

John Paul said 'I loved ICT we had to use First Artist to draw and write about our favourite traditional story. I drew Jack and the Beanstalk.'

Henry said 'I enjoyed ICT because I had special time to choose a game on Education City. I chose Antarctic Pirates we had to use directions to move the fishing rod to get the treasure.'

Next week we will thinking about how characters speech in traditional stories is represented in text and how to find out the doubles of numbers.

Have a lovely weekend. Stay safe
Mrs Collison and Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler

We have been completing our Florence Nightingale project in class 2B this week. On Tuesday we had a visit from the school nurse who gave us a talk. We found out lots about what it is like to be a nurse now adays. Then on Thursday we travelled back to 1861 and had a Victorian school day. The teachers were very strict and Ryan Bell ended up wearing the dunce hat! Today we had a visit from our art specialist Ingrid who completed our project on Florence Nightingale by helping us to create some beautiful Florence portraits. Thank you Ingrid and a special well done to Olivia Watch who won the prize for drawing the most creative picture.

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran

I would just like to say a huge well done to all the children for being so sensible and mature about having a number of teachers this week. Everyone that covered 4AD said how fantastic you were and having spoke to you about having different teachers this week, you seem to have really enjoyed yourselves as well.

Sorry that parent consultations were cancelled on Wednesday but these will be rescheduled very soon. I thank you for your understanding.

Have a great weekend!

3B - Miss Bernard

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week in 4L we have been continuing our topic work on the U.K. by focusing on the country of England. We have discussed some of the famous English people such as The Queen and William Shakespeare and how to write a biography on them. The class also learnt why we have the Union Flag and designed our own new ones! We are writing to the Queen and Mr Lloyd is going to send our work to Her Majesty to get the Royal Seal of Approval. Do you know why Wales is not represented on the Union Flag (Union Jack)?

Have great weekend!

4L

5B - Mrs Blatcher
Well, 5B have been relating their learning to real life this week!We have been looking at adding and subtracting decimals and using real shopping receipts! It has been fun and the children in 5B now know how much Mrs Blatcher spends on her shopping each week ! In English we have been designing leaflets for our planets. using a variety of media sources, we have been discussing the power of advertising and why our leaflets need to be really good.

It has been a very busy week but we have learnt lots and lots.

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week we have made progress on our project in French. We have learned the parts of instruments in French, drawn our instruments and labelled them. On Wednesday, we were supported by a native French speaker from WHSB who was impressed by the children's level of French and confidence. Well done 5J!

Remember, I have asked you to bring in a picture of someone you admire (it could be a member of your family or a famous person - either living or dead), and be able to tell the class why you admire them as well as the obstacles they have overcome and the learning skills they have used. We will be linking this to the learning skills we use at school. This is for Friday - I am looking forward to it.

6B - Miss Bates
We have worked ever so hard this week. Miss Bates has learnt a great deal about a range of unusual animals thanks to our informative non chronological reports. We have begun to look at the West Country as part of our new topic on the British Isles and this has been really interesting. At the beginning of the week we learnt about light and made a periscope, this was great fun!

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

6M - Mr Martin

This has been a really fun week where our topic has been at the forefront of our work. We have been making 3D models of Big Ben, The Millennium Dome and The Angle of The North for our British Isles display. We hope to have these up soon, so look out for them! In Science we have started our new topic of ‘sound’ and will be doing investigations soon. PE has also been fun this week because we have been learning all about gymnastics and we introduced apparatus to our lessons to challenge us with our balancing.

Week 15 Spring Term 10/11

2011-01-14T15:51:00.001Z

Creating Calm
This week we were lucky enough to have had a visit from the ‘creating calm’ workshop!

The children (and the staff!) had some very special sessions with David who helped us all to relax and be at one with our inner selves.

The feedback from the children was very good and the staff also found it interesting!

Molly
We have some great news to report here at Darlinghurst this week.
Molly from 5J has been selected to represent our school at the Essex County cross-country finals on 2nd March. This is an amazing achievement and on behalf of the school I would like to congratulate Molly. Well done!

Please go and show your support if you can.

School Disco

The PTA are holding discos for the children on Thursday 27th January

Once again we have DJ MickyB.

3.30pm – 4.30pm 1C, 1B, 2C, 2P, 3B, 3C £2.00 per ticket (includes hot dog and free drinks)

5.00pm – 6.30pm 4L, 4AD, 5B, 5J, 6B, 6M £2.50 per ticket (includes hot dog and one free drink)

Free prize draw for both discos.

The prize is a family pass for 2 adults and up to 3 children for Kids’ Kingdom

(Reception classes will have their own disco afternoon in their classes.)

PLEASE - Money for tickets needs to be put in an envelope, marked with the child’s name and class, labelled ‘Disco’ and given to the class teacher. Wristbands with the child’s name on will then be issued.

All clubs will be cancelled that day – pottery, French, music and movement, football and journalism.

Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 will have non-uniform that day so they are ready for the disco.

Children must be collected from the discos by adult.

PTA Disco

Right……let’s see what’s been going on this week……..

Rainbow Room

This week in the Rainbow Room we have been working on subtraction in Maths. Mrs Grant said I was on fire!!

I have enjoyed learning about the different food groups and why we should eat them, and why some not so jmuch. Sweets are still my favourite. In ICT we have also been making a food triangle on the computer. That is a bit tricky. We have also been learning why we should do exercise, to keep us healthy.

See you next week
Hayley

Reception
This week we have had fun thinking about toys children would have played with when Mrs Dutton's Grandmother was a little girl. We have looked closely at them to find out about the different materials they are made from and if they are hard or soft, rough or smooth. We have enjoyed playing with old toys and we have even made some. We have thought about the toys that had not even been made 'in the olden days'. " I would miss computer games", said
George.

1C - Mrs Collison
It's that time of the week again and we can not believe how quickly time flies when your having fun!!

We have had a busy week this week thinking about the features of traditional stories and I think most of the children will be able to tell you whether a story is traditional or not. In Maths we have been thinking about partitioning into groups of 10 and recognising that it is these sets of 10 that represent the tens numeral in a 2 digit number. Some children have even moved onto thinking about the operation of multiplication, for example 3 sets of 10 is 30, and beginning to record this in a number sentence 3 X 10 = 30 WOW!

Here's what the children have said they enjoyed this week

Eden said 'I enjoyed everybody singing Happy Birthday to me. I enjoyed learning English and know that a traditional story will not have an author because they are very old. People retell the stories in different ways.'

George said 'I enjoyed learning about multiplication. I know that 4 x 10 = 40!'

Elliot said 'I enjoyed learning Maths. I had to sort pasta into groups of 10's and separate the units, for example 4 sets of 10 pieces of pasta with 2 units on their own makes a total of 42.'

Next week we will be thinking more about the structure of traditional stories and focusing on the beginning, middle and ends of the stories. In maths we will developing mathematical brains by finding all the different ways we can use 2 numbers to total 7 and 17, these are known as addition facts.

Have a lovely and safe weekend

Mrs Collison & Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler
This week class 2B have continued their project on Florence Nightingale and The Victorians. The children drew some great portraits of Florence, a special well done to Samuel. We have had some brilliant homework completed about life in Victorian times with some very interesting facts researched. Did you know, in Victorian times children were not allowed to play with their toys on a Sunday unless they were religious based toys.

3B - Miss Bernard
We have had a really fun week in 3B.We have been learning about place value in maths and have continued our research on the Anglo-Saxons. In art, we have been creating our own patterns.

Cael – “We have been creating tessellating patterns in art. Tessellating patterns are patterns where the shapes fit together with no gaps. It was rally fun making our own patterns,”

Daisy – “Our Anglo-Saxon diaries were very creative. We really tried to improve our handwriting and add feelings to our writing."

Bailey – “I have really enjoyed coming to school this week to see my friends and teachers.”

Vinson – “Do you love school, because we certainly do!”

3C- Miss Crumbie

4L - Mr Lloyd
This week we have been looking at how to work out the area of shapes. Area is the measure of a space inside a shape. We have also been starting work on our topic which is to do with the British Isles. The United Kingdom is made up of England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. The British Isles include the Republic of Ireland. The class have also been learning about the human skeleton, do you know what bone the Femur is?

Have a great weekend.

5B - Mrs Blatcher
Oh my goodness! We have been learning lots of new things this week. Ask us how good we are at writing poetry and how easy we find it!

We have had a fantastic response to our request for more reading at home and 98% of the class read for an extra 10mins last week....well done !

Our new topic is space and we have been building and discovering facts about our solar system ...it has been great fun.

5J - Mrs Johnston
5J have continued learning about the Earth, Sun and Moon. We know that it takes 28 days for the Moon to orbit the Earth, and a year for the Earth to orbit the Sun.

We have started our DT project in French - so far we have learnt the words for materials. Did you know the French word for fabric is 'tissu' ?
We have been finding the area of shapes in maths and know how important it is to learn our times tables!

Lewis

6B - Miss Bates
What a wonderful week we have had!
We started the week by having a workshop on teaching us how to be calm and we really enjoyed learning about this and experimenting with different techniques.
The British Isles is out new topic and so we have started to look at the South West of England. It is going to be so exciting learning new facts about the British Isles.
We are also looking forward to learning Cornwall next week.

Have a great weekend!

6M - Mr Martin
What a fun week we’ve had! Our display board is going to look fabulous with 3D buildings and mountains jumping right off the wall. Can’t wait to finish that next week! In other subjects, we have finished off ‘Light’ in Science and are now going to be focussing on ‘Sound’, learning how it travels through the air. Our Non-Chronological Report Writing is really starting to develop after exploring various types of N/C texts. Next week we get to write our own! Continuing our School policy of the four operations has seen us turn our attentions to perimeter of shapes. We have really excelled at estimating our answers and our addition skills are really developing. See you next week!

Cheers

Week 14 Spring Term 10/11

2011-01-07T15:15:00.003Z

Welcome back!

Well I trust everyone has had an enjoyable break?

The Christmas holidays are generally a time for eating, sleeping and spending time with much loved relatives. This usually turns us into turkey-filled lazybones………………..

However, the children have come back to school this week with a spring in their step.

It has been wonderful to see so many smiley, happy faces, though I should not be surprised as this is often the case with Darlinghurst children.

They tell me they are looking forward to this term, as are all the staff…………..all we need now is some sunshine!!!

I know it has only been a short week, but lots has already been happening…….

Let’s see what’s been going on around the school………..

Rainbow Room

We hope you all had a Christmas and New Year. All the children seem to be raring to go as they have returned in a fairly lively mood! This term in the Rainbow Room we are going to be looking at Healthy Eating and exercise, both in Science and English. We will be writing information texts, reports and also be looking at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before writing our own version. In maths we will be continuing to focus on the four mathematical operations.

If you feel that there is anything else that you would like to know about any of the work we are doing in the Rainbow Room please do not hesitate to ask any of us.

Mrs Grant, Miss Pycraft, Miss Rowley

Reception

Happy New Year everyone! The Reception children have settled back very quickly and have shown us that they are ready and eager to move on with their learning. This week we have been thinking about what we enjoyed in the holidays and we are thinking about coins and the January sales. On Thursday we all pretended we were French children and celebrated the Festival of the Three Kings just like children in France do by eating a special cake to see who was going to be 'the king for the day'. We had great fun!

1C - Mrs Collison
Hello again everyone and a Happy New Year to you all!

It was so lovely to see lots of happy smiling faces return to school on Wednesday after their lovely holidays. The children have shown us that they have got their grown up Year 1 heads on and are all eager to carry on with their learning journey. This term our topic will be Traditional Stories, so if you have any traditional stories that we could share in school that would be great. In Maths we will be thinking more about place value of a number and how this is extremely important when we carry out operations such as addition and subtraction.

Here's what the children have said they have enjoyed about coming back to school.

Louise said 'I loved Art. We had to paint our favourite time at Christmas. I painted a Christmas tree and a snowman.'

Jack said 'I have loved coming back and learning my Maths. I went on Education City and got 100 per cent on the funfair game.'Alexander said 'I liked being back at school because I made a zig zag book with all the words with the digraph oi and ai in'

Have a lovely safe weekend and see you all again on Monday

Mrs Collison & Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler

Class 2B have begun their topic on Florence Nightingale and the Victorian era this week. The children have been enjoying learning about the differences between life now and life during Victorian times. In English the children acted out the story of Florence Nightingales life which we filmed. A special well done to Libby and Olivia Lovett for their brilliant acting skills!

2C - Mrs Clarke

Its been nice to see that the children have enjoyed being back to school this week, although a few still wish they were at home with all their chocolate!

Alisha: We have been learning about Florence Nightingale and it has been really interesting.

Eryn: I have enjoyed doing our free writing this week. I wrote about opening all my presents and throwing the wrapping paper around!

Roman: I have enjoyed maths this week and learning about partitioning numbers. I think I have got better at it this week already.

3B - Miss Bernard

Hi Everybody,

I hope that you have enjoyed your Christmas holidays and a Happy New Year to you all!

Even though we have had a short week, the children have been very busy working on their knowledge of place value, finding out about the Anglo-Saxons, investigating magnets and patterns in the environment.

Here are some of the children’s thoughts on what they have done:

Yann- Happy New Year to all from 3B. We have been learning all about the Anglo-Saxons.

Daisy- Today I really enjoyed making patterns in Art.

Piper- I really enjoyed linking my patterns with Number.

Cam- We’ve been drawing patterns on paper using pastels and they have to connect with Number.

Jake- I have learned that the Anglo-Saxons came from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Thanks for your contributions children and well done for having such a great start to 2011.

Have a great weekend!

Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie
Happy New Year from 3C everybody! It's great to be back and wow what a week it has been.

This week we have started our new topic for the term by learning about the Anglo-Saxons. We have been researching about where they came from and why they are here. Along the way Sharmayne also discovered that they used to play games with horses teeth, she thought that was very strange but exciting!! Callum found out that the archaeologists discovered the remains of a ship at Sutton Hoo and this had lots of different items in it like weapons, gold, drinking horns and silver bowls. This helps us to think about what their life was like in Anglo-Saxon times.

Callum and Loki were researching together and also discovered that the Anglo-Saxons believed in many different Gods. They both really enjoyed learning about the Anglo-Saxons because they were learning together which made it fun!!

We hope you all have a fantastic weekend!!

Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson & the whole of 3C

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran

Hi all. Hope you had a lovely break and enjoyed yourselves.

We are straight back into learning in 4AD, no time to lose!

We have moved on to area in maths. Please remember these formulas:

Square and rectangle

a = L X W

Triangle
a = L X W divided by 2
or
a = 1/2 L X W

We will be looking at the area of irregular shapes next week!

In English, we have been writing a brief recount but this terms focus will looking at what makes a success piece of writing.

Mr Bird started our science topic, moving and growing. He even brought in a model that showed your internal organs!

We have already started our termly topic of the UK and have researched facts about England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We also draw the outline of these countries during our art lesson.

Phhewwww, we fitted all this in and more in just three days. This term is going to be a busy one.

Enjoy your weekend,

Mr Duff :-)

4L - Mr Lloyd

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to school! We hope that everyone has had a brilliant Christmas break? This week we have been talking about what we did over the holidays after that we did a little bit of revision on maths. Mr Lloyd was very impressed with how much we had remembered of place value and column method. Miss Ingram came in to teach us some Geography and we had pop quiz on spelling and tables!

Have a great weekend everyone!

4L

5B - Mrs Blatcher

Happy New Year from 5b!

We have had agood week but realised we were a bit rusty after the holidays.

Mrs Blatcher has made us re visit mulitplication, column addition and subtraction and bus stop division....it was hard.

Our topic is Space and we had the laptops for a whole morning to investigate the topic and found out lots of information about the nine planets.

5J - Mrs Johnston

This week in 5J we have been learning about space, dreams for the future, verbs and adverbs. As well as this, we have been telling each other jokes and talking about our holidays.

Hannah

6B & 6M - Mr Martin & Miss Bates

We’re back! Can you believe it, we’ve entered our final year at Darlinghurst! But we’ve got much to do before we can even start thinking of that fateful day in July! We’ve hit the ground running in that we have launched headlong into our new topic Land’s End to John O’Groats, where we will be embarking on a virtual road trip around this wonderful nation. Already, we have been locating the major cities in the UK and started to begin to understand how they came to prominence. Additionally, we have been learning all about the colours of nations’ flags in English and in French.

Cheers

Week 13 Autumn Term 10/11

2010-12-17T12:42:00.004Z

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Well, we have made the end of term and what a term it has been!

I would like to say a big thank you to all of the parents and children for braving the cold weather on concert night.

I think you will all agree the children performed admirably and hopefully this will be the start of a great Darlinghurst tradition.

Thank you also to everyone who has contributed to Christmas parties this week. I know all of the staff are very thankful for the effort put in by parents and children.

All that is left is to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!............oh and don’t forget that children are back on Wednesday the 5th January!

Just time for one last message from the classes…………..

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been doing science experiments about keeping warm, insulators and conductors. We have also watched some videos set in the cold and talked about how we would keep warm if we were there. We have been a bit disappointed that there wasn't more snow but it was just as well when we were singing on Wednesday, it was a lot colder when we practiced during the day. We have also made cookies, and then got to eat them - always the best.

Have a good holiday!

Jordan B

1B - Mrs Barrington
Excitement, food, carols and presents and not forgetting the odd tipple. The children have enjoyed the celebrations and I'm sure Father Christmas will be paying them a visit. A big thank you for all the lovely gifts. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2B - Miss Butler
Happy Christmas from all the staff and children in class 2B! We hope that Father Christmas brings you everything you want. Remember to eat cake and be merry!

2C - Mrs Clarke
As the children sit watching 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' munching away at the last of our party food, I would like to say what a great class they have been this week. They are all glittered out and have enjoyed making cards, learning about the Christmas story and the story of Santa and his Christmas pants!!
I would also like to compliment all the parents as during the party, your children have displayed fantastic manners. Its been a pleasure to hear so many pleases and thank yous and see them sharing food so well with each other.That just leaves us to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a Happy new year x

3B - Miss Bernard

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran
Just a quick message to say a huge thank you for all your kind presents, they are much appreciated.
Have a fantastic Christmas and a super 2011.

See you all on Wednesday 5th January 2011!
Mr Duff, Mrs Amran, Mrs Clarke and Miss Pycraft

4L - Mr Lloyd
Well, Christmas is upon us once again! I would like to say a big thank you to all of 4L for being such a super duper class this term. We have had lots of fun and there’s more to come!

A big thank you also to the parents and guardians for all the support……………………and of course the lovely presents!
We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Mr Lloyd & Mrs Cannell.

5B - Mrs Blatcher
Happy Xmas to all of you from 5B. We have had a great XMas week but we are ready for our holidays now.

6B - Miss Bates
We have had a real fun filled week.
Everyone really enjoyed the carol concert and we enjoyed singing to our parents.
Our French advent calendars are finally finished and we put a great deal of effort into them and will enjoy using them in the future.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!
6B

6M - Mr Martin
Hi all, festivities have been the name of the game this week. We all thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas carol concert on Wednesday, followed by our Christmas party on Thursday where the dance off between Mr Martin and George had everybody on their feet. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you all in 2011!

Have a good one guys!

Mr C

Week 12 Autumn Term 10/11

2010-12-10T15:42:00.002Z

2010 Darlinghurst Carol Concert

This week has seen lots of raised, tuneful voices singing in unison!

The children have been practising for the Carol Concert next week and it promises to be quite the event!

All of the school have been working very hard to learn the songs, so please come along and show your support.

The concert will take place in the playground at 6pm on Wednesday the 15th……remember to wrap up warm!!

We must say a big thanks to the carol committee for organising everything.

Year 6 Business and Enterprise Day

This week has seen some budding young entrepreneurs strutting their stuff!!

Year 6 have worked very hard to put on their famed ‘Business and Enterprise Day’, and what a day it was!

Chocolate fountains, raffles, homemade cakes and bric-a-brac were all on sale, though my personal favourite were the samosas I bought from Nayeem……delicious!!!!!

Well done to everyone who took part, there are definitely some young Alan Sugars in the making!!!

The total amount raised was £ , which was testament to the effort that year 6 put in.

Well done to year 6, Mr Martin and Miss Bates.

Right……let’s find out what’s been going on this week at Darlinghurst……..

Rainbow Room
This week in maths we have been learning to tell the time, and looking at quarter and half turns as well. Some of us found it easier than others but we all had a good try. In English we have been writing a story set in Ancient Rome. In mine Sonic and Shadow went to the Roman baths. In Science we have made our own experiment to show how to keep things warm, we're going to use the same materials as we did to keep things cold. Next week we are going to do the experiment to see if it was a good experiment and if our predictions were right. We haven't been outside much because of the snow but we have had fun playing together.

One more week until the holidays

Bethany

1B - Mrs Barrington
When the snowman brings the snow! It's that time of year when everything goes crazy. Class 1B have suffered the ailments of winter with a variety of different virus's. However, we seem to be over the worst which is good as we had our carol concert rehearsals. Voices of angels, well almost! The children have written their letters to Santa and these have been displayed in the window so if you're stuck for ideas, have a look. Hope to see you all at our carol concert on Wednesday.

1C - Mrs Collison
Hello again,

We are all very excited because Christmas is on the way...lots of singing and dancing but also lots of learning.

Here is what the children have said they enjoyed this week;

Jaegar said 'I liked making snowman biscuits. We are going to decorate them next week. We had to mix flour, milk and butter, roll it out and then cut 2 circles, 1 for the head and 1 for the body.'

Max said 'I liked having activities using money. We played in the role play toy shop. I was the customer and had to buy an animalthat cost 3p'

Elle said 'I loved PE because we made up a Christmas Dance called 'Rocking Around the Christmas Tree''

Have a lovely weekend and see you all safe and sound on Monday for lots more Christmas fun.

Mrs Collison & Miss Plummer

2B - Miss Butler
Over the past two weeks class 2B have been learning about celebrations, in particular the Hindu festival of Divali. The children created some beautiful Divali lanterns and built circuits using light bulbs to light up their lanterns. Well done Reece who managed to independently build his circuit and include a switch. The children had lots of fun making Divali cookies and I'm sure had just as much fun eating them! Well done to all of the children who managed to get in last week despite the snow.

2C - Mrs Clarke
2C has really been working hard on learning how to multiply. They are so good now, they can show almost any multiplication sum with cubes!

We learnt the story of Rama and Sita, which is why Hindus celebrate Divali at this time of year.

Hopefully you all recieved a lovely invite from your child to our Darlinghurst Carol Concert next week. The children worked very hard on them writing in their best handwriting!

Lots of practice has been had with our carol singing.

Our Christmas party is next Thursday afternoon. 2C is responsible for bringing in 'sweet' food and drinks. Please send any donations in on Thursday please. Thank you.

Kadie: I have enjoyed learning about Divali
Ethan: I enjoyed doing multiplication.
Jay: I have enjoyed practicing our carols and singing.

3C - Miss Crumbie
Hello again everybody!!

We have been super busy this week learning about christmas and getting lots of goodies ready for our festive week! We have enjoyed writing about the nativity story because its nearly christmas.

Samuel L really enjoyed being able to use his imaginagion to try to add in extra detail about what Mary and Joseph were feeling and seeing along their journey and Josh enjoyed writing the nativity story because he could learn much more about Jesus.

Also this week we have finally managed to create some wonderful Christmas cards and Natasha said that this enabled her to show off her artistic skills.

3C's christmas party is next week and we have made some super hats which Loki loved to create becaue he made lots of mess ..... which he had to clear up after :o)

Our christmas carol concert is next week too and Iqra is so excited about all of our practice sessions because she just loves to sing!!

We hope to see you all on Wednesday evening for our concert. Remember to wrap up warm!!

From Miss Crumbie, Mrs Johnson and all of 3C.

4L - Mr Lloyd
Hey everyone!

This week has been the usual mad week in Year 4! We have been making advent calendars from cereal boxes and we think Mr Lloyd’s and Mrs Cannell’s fingers have been aching from all the cutting! We have also been practising our carols for the carol concert next week, we are getting very good now. Mr Lloyd, Mr Duff and Mrs Amran all bought us some gifts that we are making to keep. We have made some clay tea light holders and next week we are making decorations for our Christmas trees at home. We hope you all have a great weekend.

5B - Mrs Blatcher
5B have had a fab week....in science we have been looking at properties of materials and in maths we have been learning about fractions.
The highlight of the week has been rehearsinf for the Xmas concert on weds ...we were the best singers !

5J - Mrs Johnston
This week we have been practising our Christmas song - Ding Dong Merrily on High. Today, we have been doing cross stiching. It was lots of fun. We are now getting extra maths homework, which is also really fun.

Scarlett

6M - Mr Martin
We've had a truly incredible week.

Business and Enterprise day was a resounding success and it is all thanks to the people who came to look round and shop.

There was every stall imanginable including bric a brac, candy floss and other hand made goodies! It gives us great delight to announce has been the most successful BE day ever, raising over £350.00 and to go to the charity Life Straws.

If that wasn't enough we've been hard practising our carols for the carol concert and starting our new topic of Light and Sound in science.

Week 11 Autumn Term 10/11

2010-11-26T15:23:00.011Z

Happy 60th Birthday Mr Bird!

Wow! Mr Bird finally reached the grand old age of 85.....ahem......sorry......I mean 60!

He has been at the school for longer than most and has seen many come and go in his time. He represents what Darlinghurst stands for as a school, which is why he is loved so much by staff and children.

Mr Bird had a wonderful time on Wednesday, and was overwhelmed by all the gifts, cards and well wishes he received. He asked me to give a BIG mention to everyone who made it such a special day, so..........

THANK YOU EVERYONE FROM MR BIRD!!!

Darlinghurst United Match

Match report

Well done to all the boys who played for Darlinghurst football team on Thursday, Brendon Taylor, Cai Bentley, Ollie Halpin, David Szczepaniak, Josh Howe, Steven Goose, Marko Worricker, Jacob Healy, Jayden O’Connor, and Jayden Callaghan. After dominating possession we were unlucky to fall behind. Milton Hall were attacking us a few times but our goalkeeper kept us in the game in the first half. In the second half we came back 1-1 with Jayden Callaghan`s exquisite goal to help us get moving again.

At the closing stages both teams were trying get the winning goal to get the 3 points in the league but the deadlock couldn’t be broken. As the final whistle blew disappointment in Mr Martin, Mr Lloyd and Mr Patterson’s face was evident but we gave everything in the quest for glory.

By Spoon, Goose and Howey!

-

Have a great weekend everyone and wrap up warm!!

Mr Lloyd

Right let’s find out what everyone has been up to this week.................

Rainbow Room
This week in the Rainbow Room we have been learning about Roman Gladiators and how they used to fight in the arena, we even acted out a Gladiator fight in PE, but in slow motion; it's quite hard to move slow but we had great fun. In maths we have been measuring things in mm, cm and m. Did you know that a metre is about the same length as our outstretched arms? It makes it a lot easier to estimate when we think like this.

We have also been learning about keeping warm in science and thinking about the experiment we did last week when we looked at how quickly ice cubes melted in different tmaterials. The ice cube in the bubble wrap melted the slowest although some of us thought that it would melt it the quickest because it was thicker, but it kept the cold in and kept the warm out, not what we want when it is this cold outside.

Next Friday Mrs Grant is going out for the day so we will all be going back to our classes. We hoped that this would mean that we wont have any homework, but sadly not!!

Have a good weekend,

Bethany

Reception

This week in Reception we have been very busy learning all about Winter. We have learnt all about water freezing and ice melting (we got very wet but had lots of fun!) We were even lucky enough to see frost in our recpetion garden because it has been so cold!! Have a lovely weekend everybody and come back ready to continue our Winter theme next week.

1B - Mrs. Barrington
Money, money, money! Class 1B are beginning to recognise and understand the value of money. Whilst we had lots of coins for the children to play with, finding £50 notes proved somewhat difficult! In science the children experimented with items that they predicted might float or sink. Next week we shall continue with stories from other cultures and are looking forward to our 'Number' day on Fri.

Cherokee noticed that the floating things had no holes and are not made out of paper.

Arham noticed that heavier items sank.

1C - Mrs Collison

Doesn't time fly when you are having fun! A lovely productive learning week in 1C. We have been working really hard at thinking about the value of English money and trying to work out how much money we would need altogether if we were going to by 2 or 3 items from a toy shop...some children have even thought about the value of £1 and £2 coins and applied this to what they already know about place value to add items in the toy shop that were worth £1.63 and £2.21.....wow!!

In English we have been looking at story characters and thinking about the characteristics that they have. The children have thought hard about not thinking just about their apperance but their behaviours too.

Here's what the children have said they enjoyed this week:

Kirsty said 'I loved Maths and Science because it is fun finding out new things like the force of gravity.'

Sam said 'I loved PE because we use the apparatus to practise safe jumps with bouncy knees and standing straight afterwards for 3 seconds.'

Chelsey said 'I liked PE because we do a dance for the warm up and my heart starts to pump really fast. It pumps fast because the blood needs to get to our muscles.'

Have a lovely weekend and lets keep our fingers crossed from some fabulous snow!!

2B - Miss Butler

This week class 2B have been finishing their space project. We received a message from an alien space craft and we drew the aliens. We then wrote some fantastic descriptions of the aliens in our writing session.

For our thinking homework this week the children and their parents thought about what it would be like if the sun never stopped shining. A particular well done to Millie and Ryan Christians mums for sharing their thoughts with us and drawing some great pictures to go with their ideas.

2C - Mrs Clarke

This week in 2C we have been learning about Space and the order of the planets. We had a chance to really use our imaginations by designing our own aliens - we then had to tell the class about them, it was really funny!

In maths we have been doing 10 more and 10 less than a number. The class have really concentrated on this and most can now do this from any 2 digit numbers.

Caitlin: My favourite thing this week has been our Philosophy lesson imagining what would be on our own planets.

Roman: I have enjoyed maths this week and using all the big numbers!

3B - Miss Bernard

Hello everybody,

3B have had a fun week finishing their Romans topic. We had a great discussion in Philosophy for Children about endings. Lots of deep thinking going on. We have also had a go at creating our own ending for a Roman story. The children had to write it from one of the character's view points, which they found quite difficult.But they all worked really hard.

3B have also been working on addition and subtraction skills. This involved playing games and devising problems for each other, an activity that they enjoyed very much.
+

Here are some of the children's thoughts on what they have enjoyed:

Megan- I enjoyed going to the library last week and reading a book.

George- Today we are having our Roman feast it has been exciting.

Alfie- This week we have been adding and taking away and we got to choose games.

Cam- We have been making pancakes for our Roman feast and they look yummy.

Cael- We dressed up in Roman togas and it was really fun.

Vinson- Our discussion about endings in Philosophy for Children was very good. Endings are very important. Without endings there would be no beginnings.

Thank you for all of your contributions children.

Have a great weekend,

Miss Bernard

3C - Miss Crumbie

We have had a mega week! It is our final week of learning about the Romans and we celebrated with a Toga party and a Roman feast! Dylan G and Taylor loved the fruit stew and all of 3C polished off our food so quickly that those Rotten Romans in 3B didn't get to share. Callum said that we must all make sure he remembers not to try so much food so others can rty some too!!

We have also been learning about fractions this week. Sam G found this great fun because he likes cutting things into halves and quarters.

We have also been creating our own story characters and thinking about how we can describe them. Loki's character was called Zoga and he has razor sharp spikes.

Callum's characters were called the monster killer twins. They have two massive spikes on their heads and plated armour over their bodies.

We are all looking forward to next week because we are getting ready for christmas now!!

Have a great weekend!!

4AD - Mr Duff & Mrs Amran

What a week! Busy, busy, busy!

Column multiplication superstars, we even had peer teachers. Well done to Kaitlin, Ella, Jameel and Martine. Our play scripts have been written and acted out. We did an assessment in ICT and the children thoroughly enjoyed seeing different formats. We started to make our "hand" holly wreaths, watch this space. We have been singing "desk the halls" as this is our Christmas song, practise as much as you can at home. Can you tell the time? Well, we are much better now! What a great lesson, interactive and we even had the help of an ex-pupil, Lauryn :-)

Pheewwww, I could go on and on but I would be here all week. I am very pleased with you all (and so is Mrs Amran and Mrs Clarke).

Enjoy your weekend and see you Monday!

Mr Duff

4L - Mr Lloyd

Hey everyone,

This week in year 4 we have doing more work on column multiplication by multiplying 2 digits by 2 digits. We have to remember captain zero though! In English we have finished our scripts and made some really good plays! We are all now really good at making Powerpoints and adding animations and sounds to the slides. We also did some cross country and it was very cold but lots of fun! Next week we are putting our tree up in class!

Have a great weekend!

5B - Mrs Blatcher

What an exciting week! We have all worked really hard this term and the results showed in our recent Readding Test...well done 5B. In maths we have been multiplying tens and units by tens and units... this has proved tough for some of us but we are persevering! Our adventure stories based upon Moonfleet have been going really well and all of the class have become so involved with their story writing, they even missed a playtime this week to continue writing.

Our times tables are becoming stronger and stronger and we love the 12x table especially...the children will tell you why.

Miss Wedell brought her dog in today for class talk and discussion.Thankyou Miss Wedell ...we really appreciate it.

Mrs Blatcher and 5B

5J - Mrs Johnston
We have had a mega week! It is our final week of learning about the Romans and we celebrated with a Toga party and a Roman feast! Dylan G and Taylor loved the fruit stew and all of 3C polished off our food so quickly that those Rotten Romans in 3B didn't get to share. Callum said that we must all make sure he remembers not to try so much food so others can try some too!!We have also been learning about fractions this week. Sam G found this great fun because he likes cutting things into halves and quarters.

We have also been creating our own story characters and thinking about how we can describe them. Loki's character was called Zoga and he has razor sharp spikes.

Callum's characters were called the monster killer twins. They have two massive spikes on their heads and plated armour over their bodies.

We are all looking forward to next week because we are getting ready for christmas now!!

Have a great weekend!!

6B - Miss Bates
A great week.

We are busy preparing for our business and enterprise day on Weds, we hope this will be a huge success and money will be raised to buy life straws for India.

We have also started working on designing our own Christmas comics to read to the year 3s who come up once a week. It has been great fun making up our own stories and illustrations.

The Christmas carol concert is only a week or so away and we are really enjoying practicing for this too.

Have a good weekend.

6M - Mr Martin
This week has been full of creativity. Finishing off our models of Indian homes has been really exciting and we can’t wait to see what everyone else has done to compare. Our Business and Enterprise is really taking off with our groups having their £5 to buy things ready for their stalls (Don’t forget to bring your money next Wednesday – 9:30 in the hall). Our other creative activities has seen us start our French advent calendars which will count us down to our Christmas breaks! See you next week for more fun from 6M :)