Scarecrow's Wedding Competition

In their reading groups our pupils in KS1 have been enjoying the story 'The Scarecrow's Wedding'. The children were then challenged to design and make their own scarecrow. They then bought these in to form part of the display in the library.

Miss Sparkes had the difficult job of judging the best ones. In the end Sky & Brooke were chosen as the winners... well done to the both of you!

Resourcefulness & Reflectiveness
I wanted my scarecrow to be as life like as possible. I did try using shredded paper, but it didn't have the right look. Then I thought about getting straw from the pet shop. Once I put that inside it looked much better! Sky Griffiths

Resilience
Making a scarecrow out of clay was really hard. The little pieces were a bit fiddly, so I had to have lots of goes. In the end I got it just right. Brooke Atkinson

Read Write Inc Accreditation

In the last three years our pupils have made great progress with their reading. In 2012 only 28% of the pupils passed the Year 1 phonics screening test. Since then we have implemented the RWI scheme to great effect across EYFS & KS1. In 2013 the score went up to 76%, in 2014 we reached 86% and for 2015 we are predicting over 90%... a stunning rate of progress with scores that beat the National average.

As a consequence of the changes we have made, training we give our staff, quality of teaching seen and progress of pupils RWI have awarded us a certificate of accreditation.

E for Excellence Winners:

These wonderful children have demonstrated excellence this week.

Charis Jones – Mulberry

Harry Hann – Pine

Maison Sheriff – Cedar

Sky Griffiths – Cherry

Jack Peppitt – Ash

Rhianna Morton – Rowan

Vittorio Omwanghe – Birch

Ruby Burchell – Willow

Reece Wager – Elm

Jack Barnett – Maple

Mitchell Stapleton – Coconut

Charlie Birdsey – Palm

Natural Art

In their art lessons the pupils have been looking at the work of Andy Goldsworthy. The materials used in Andy Goldsworthy's art often include brightly coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns.

"I think it's incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole."

It was a great opportunity to make use of the extensive school grounds, trees and plants for materials. Some pupils went further afield to Central Park to collect what they needed for their designs. The end results were fantastic!

Resilience
"The hard bit was finding just the right colours. Mrs Caccavale helped us identify colours in our draft and then we had to go out and find them. It would have been easy to find something green... but we wanted a specific shade. That meant we had to look carefully and take our time to get it just right! Emily Morton

Reciprocity
We tried to do a large scale design, but it meant we had to collaborate effectively. For a start we had to agree on the colours that we would need and then decide who was going to collect which elements. Once we then had everything, we had to work together carefully to make sure the finished design looked like our plan. In the end we were very pleased with our large scale art! Jamari Cousins

Art of the Brick

Mrs Caccavale has been working with a group of pupils from Year 4&5 each week on a range of art projects. In the most recent topic, they were looking at 3-D models. What better material to use for modelling than lego? To get some extra inspiration the team went to London to see the 'Art of the Brick' exhibit in Brick Lane.

Reciprocity
"Looking at the designs helped me to think of some different ways that I could use our building materials. The sculpture of the man ripping open his chest was very dramatic. However my favourite was the traffic light heads one. It was really simple. I think I'll try something similar." Amy Sullivan

Resilience
"Some of the designs had taken a long time to put together and used thousands of bricks. On the walls there were some quotes that gave great advice. I liked the bit about only building one brick at a time." George White

Choir performances:

The Christmas shows may be finished, but the choir haven’t got time to rest just yet. The programme for next week is:
Mon 15th: Salvation Army

Tue 16th MyPlace Pensioners 

Wed 17th Briar Road Action Group

The feedback from all of these shows has been extremely positive and really helps to work towards our vision of being a school that sits at the heart of the community.

 

Recycled Paper Structures

This is a chance to look back at our Year 6 workshop using recycled paper to make structures designed by the children. Using the paper rolling machine, they created rods from old newspaper. These were then bound together to form tables, chairs, bins, sculptures and bridges.

Reciprocity
"We had to work in teams to agree our designs and what we wanted to build. Our team had lots of ideas, but together we made a bridge which allowed tanks to cross a river!" Jack Wain

Resourcefulness
"Who would have thought that old newspapers could be so useful? We've saved up paper for weeks to make these designs. Cable ties were useful as it made it easier to lash the rods together. Some groups tried using sellotape, but they found it quite tricky." Mark Trew

Reflectiveness
"When the paper roller was shown to us it looked really easy. However our first few rods didn't work. When we looked at what the other groups were doing we saw they were using less paper. We'd thought that the more paper the stronger it would be. But if you use too much in one go, the roller can't tighten it together enough. Once we changed what we were doing it worked fine." Tommy Lockhart