The Shire have been busy exploring the world of butterflies, and designing kites and planes. The school learned about and celebrated VE day. The Dragons were inspired by the story of Noah's ark and the Wizards studied Hindu gods and goddesses.

This term in school 'We are Engineers'. Pupils in the Shire have investigated a flight timeline. The Dragons have been exploring sinking ships and the Wizards navigated Bristol. 

In the Shire Class

The Pixies this week have been exploring how flowers grow, what they need to grow and the different parts of a flower. When out and about, they have been looking out for flowers that bloom in spring. 

3D shapes have been a focus for the Pixies as they talked about how to identify them. They have been making great progress and enjoying lessons on the balance bikes and have been enjoying the sunnier and warmer weather outside.

In the Shire this week, pupils baked chocolate cookies with marshmallows inside.

Elves and Griffins

The Elves and Griffins have made a model set based on the 'Journey' story that they have written with their own ideas.

The children scouted the last outside location and have been storyboarding characters for their film, (about which all we can tell you is - Toby is a spider!)

The Shire enjoyed making Mother's Day cards and learning about the Easter Story.

Wizards

This week in Wizards, as part of our work on the Windrush Generation, the children have been comparing the weather in St. Lucia with the weather in the UK: they have drawn a line graph to represent the data as well as writing questions for their friends to answer.

In Art, the children have drawn some lovely pictures ready for their Easter cards. They have also been drawing images to represent the days from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday as part of our work on the Easter story.

In the kitchen on Monday afternoon, a group of Year 5s made flat breads with garlic butter – they smelt and tasted delicious! Next week, the remaining Year 5s will be making hot cross buns. We are delighted that some of the Wizards have been cooking at home using the recipes we have used in previous weeks at school.

Dragons

The Dragons have been documentary film-makers this week, exploring the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bath. They have studied exploration and empire, looking at primary sources and using clues to identify how Romans lived.

For the Dragons geography field study, pupils interviewed people on why they come to Bath and what it is that makes the city special.

The Dragons have been using their knowledge of story arcs to write their own exposition with introduction of the setting and characters.

We were delighted by the number of people who said how well-behaved the children from our school were during our trip.

The School Parliament

The school parliament has been looking at the issue of food waste in school and pupils have been researching and surveying solutions to the problem.

The Shire

The Pixies this week had fun reading the book 'Pete the cat and the missing cupcakes' as part of their learning about numbers to 10. Pete the cat had cupcakes for a party, but grumpy toad kept eating them. They used the story to bake their own cupcakes and looked at the two numbers of cakes that would total 10. 

They then got to eat the cupcakes, of course! 

The shire baked focaccia bread this week and enjoyed foraging for Rosemary in the garden to use. 

 

The Elves and Griffins have been looking at the Easter Story this week with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey. The year twos have been learning their two times table. They enjoyed painting watercolour pictures of daffodils. 

Whilst out and about this week, the Shire discovered and had great fun with the new equipment at the playground. 

The Dragons

This week in the Dragons, the children learnt about the warrior queen, Boudicca, and her resistance against the Roman invaders. They found out about the food introduced to Britain by the Romans, including surprising items on the menu, like fish gut oil, dormice and flamingo tongues!

The Dragons made their own stop frame animated short films, using everyday objects as characters in their short films. The children worked in small groups, working collaboratively to produce the finished films.

The Wizards

On Tuesday, a group of children from the Wizards Class represented the school at the 113th Chipping Norton Music Festival at Chipping Norton Town Hall. They took part in a singing workshop with three other schools, performing songs about dreamcatchers. The children sang brilliantly at the rehearsal as well as in the concert, which families were able to attend. They were a real credit to the school!

This week, the Wizards have continued to find out about the Windrush Generation including the Bristol Bus Boycott: they have begun to create powerpoints to record all aspects of both the journey and what life was like for the people when they arrived in the UK.

In the kitchen this week, the children made plaited bread rolls – a new skill for some of them. Each child was able to take one home, and they were enjoyed by everyone!

We'd like to thank Father Mark for coming in and taking a lovely assembly about Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent.

 

This term we are 'filmmakers'. We have an exciting few weeks ahead of us, completing the pre-production work for our summer film festival. On July 9th and 10th we will be screening our world premiere in the Living Room Cinema, in Chipping Norton! Please note the dates for your diary. The children have begun to plan documentary films, live action and animation for the festival.

The Pixies started their topic by looking at travel and transport. They have been very excited about booking cruises and flights to Spain in the role-playing travel agents area. 

The children have been categorising different means of transport into three groups: land, air and sea, making comparisons between the groups. In Maths, they have started measuring length and measuring themselves on the height chart. It was challenging building tall towers to see who could build the tallest without it toppling over!

Pupils in the Shire have made traditional tray-bake vanilla cakes with sprinkles. 

Drum roll please...

A huge “Thank You” goes out to the Friends of Chadlington School for our brand new KS2 kitchen, which has only been made possible through their amazing fundraising work and your generous contributions. Cooking commenced this week with children from both the Dragons and Wizards putting the kitchen through its paces making tiffin and baking cheese straws. The children are looking forward to utilising the produce grown in the greenhouse and garden in future weeks in the kitchen. This will allow us to complete our spade to spoon project. Thank you FOCS - we are thrilled with our fantastic kitchen!

Dragons have been especially keen to cook with food grown in our own 'tiddly squat' garden. This week they baked Tiffin (the tray-bake not the dog!). They observed how chocolate changes state when heated.

The Tiffin is to share with others for World Book Day next week. 

In geography, Dragons have researched places identified as UNESCO world heritage sites and found out what this means. They have also found out about the 7 ancient wonders of the world and the modern ones. For example, the Taj Mahal, which was built by a Sultan for his wife.

In RE, the dragons are learning about the five pillars of wisdom in Islam. 

The Wizards are really excited about making their film to be shown at the end of the year. Ms. Hornibrook shared the outline of the film yesterday (Thursday) with the children, and they have been tasked with coming up with ideas for the plot - watch this space! 

As part of our geography work, the Wizards are going to be finding out about how people have migrated to the UK. This week we have started to find out about the people of the Windrush Generation, who came to the UK to help us rebuild and fill job shortages after WW2. The children researched the countries the people came from and also the cities in which they settled in the UK. They used both atlases and Google Earth to locate the places and then chose one place to look at in more detail, including finding out about the physical and human geography. 

Our value this term is 'WISDOM' and the Wizards have thought about what it is to have wisdom, sharing the Bible story about Solomon. The children used water colours to paint pictures from the story. A busy start to term 4!