3 years, 295 days ago
Posted on December 6, 2020 by Admin

Christmas Diary Dates

We have a really fun two weeks left in school before Christmas so I have a few diary date reminders for you…

On Wednesday 9th December it is Christmas Dinner and Christmas Jumper day. Your child should come to school in non-school uniform, wearing a festive jumper (there is no charge for non-uniform day). If you wish for your child to have a school Christmas dinner and usually pay for school meals please make sure that you pay £2.30 via Parent Pay by Wednesday.

Please let me know via Dojo or directly if you wish for your child to have a Christmas Dinner so that I can send numbers to the kitchen before Wednesday.

On Friday 11th December it is the school Christmas Fayre. This will be happening in the old school hall during school hours; each family group/bubble will have access to the school fayre at different points throughout the school day. There will be games to play and Christmas crafts/decorations to purchase. The maximum amount of money each child can bring into school on Friday is £5. Please send any money to school in an envelope with your child’s name on. Children should come to school in normal school uniform on this day.

On Monday 14th December it is the Polar Express themed SantaDash where we will do a sponsored walk/runaround the playground wearing our pyjamas! Children should come to school wearing their warm pyjamas and sports shoes ready for the walk/run. If your child has a dressing gown they should wear this too but otherwise please make sure that they layer up and wear sensible outerwear as the walk/run will be outdoors. This event costs £1 to enter and each child in Key Stage 2 will receive some bells to walk/run with. Please send any additional sponsorship money into school with your child’s sponsorship form. Papercopies of these are available from school if you do not have access to a printer at home.

On Wednesday 16th December we will be having class parties and a doorstop visit from Santa with a present from the PTA. Your child should come to school in normal school uniform on this date. We WILL NOT be getting changed for parties this year.

The children’s last day in school before the Christmas holidays is Thursday 17th December. Friday the 18th is a PD Day for teachers only.

It is a very busy and festive last two weeks with lots to remember! If you have any questions just message me directly on Dojo or phone the school office.

Thank you,

Mrs Holmes

3 years, 295 days ago
Posted on December 6, 2020 by Admin

Alchemy Island

We have so much more work to share since I last posted about our Alchemy Island topic!

After discovering from our co-ordinates that our next stop on the map of Alchemy Island was Dragon Vine Towers we set off on our journey, passing a Fountain of Gold on the way. I challenged the children to create their very own fountains of gold using solid plastic water bottles, gold coloured liquid and the gas from an inflated balloon. See the photos below to see a video of the completed challenge. We then wrote a set of instructions explaining how to create a Fountain of Gold so if you’ve ever wanted to make your very own fountain of gold read the excellent examples of our work below!

Emma and Natasha even attempted to make a never ending Heron Fountain with Miss Salter, it didn’t exactly turn out how they’d expected but they were able to work out where they went wrong and explain what they would do differently next time!

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Once we had stopped off at The Fountain of Gold we made our way to Dragon Vine Towers. In our Art lesson we practised our sketching and shading skills using a range of art pencils to complete an image of Dragon Vine Towers. There were some fantastic pieces of art work created.

At Dragon Vine Towers we met the Alchemist who set us the challenge of exploring chemical changes. Our Year 5 children investigated the solubility of a range of ingredients in their Science lesson finding many soluble (dissolvable) ingredients. Try asking your year 5 child which ingredients dissolved and which didn’t.

We all observed the chemical reaction of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda with a different kind of fountain of gold and everybody had a turn at making a plastic polymer from milk and white vinegar by heating up whole milk in a pan until it is steaming but not boiling and adding four teaspoons of white vinegar to a cupful of hot milk. This created a pliable lump of dough which they then moulded into the shape of gold nuggets and after an hour these set to form solid lumps of ‘gold’. We will be using these next week when we hope to find the gold mine and go panning for hidden gold on Alchemy Island!

For all of this incredibly hard work we earn the next set of co-ordinates which we will mark on our Alchemy Island map this week and follow to find the Island’s hidden gold to conclude our topic.

Thank you in particular to Hris Genov who has completed some of the optional home learning work linked to our Alchemy Island Topic which I will share in our next Alchemy Island post. This extra home learning can be found in the Parents Letter I sent out with the Alchemy Island overview and is a great way to join in with our school learning at home together with your child.

3 years, 349 days ago
Posted on October 13, 2020 by Admin

Space Week

Last week was Space Week and Hawkstone class had lots of fun continuing our Stargazers topic.

In English we researched Tim Peake, the first British Astronaut to fly to the International Space Station, and planned a Biography about him which we are writing up in class this week. We found out lots of interesting facts – try asking your children what they can remember about him.

One of the most asked questions about space in our class was “Is there other life out there?” So we looked at the Mars projects and carried out an investigation on some fictional planet soil samples to test if there was any carbon dioxide present in the soil which might suggest that there had been life on our imaginary planets. One of our soil samples did show evidence of CO2 which could suggest life. However, we discovered that so far Scientists have not found any hard evidence to suggest that there is life on the other planets in our actual solar system.

We also linked our Year 4 Science topic of digestion to space by finding out how digestion is affected in space.

Year 5’s used spaghetti and marshmallows to create star constellations. We found out that years ago sailors used the stars to guide them – like a map in the night sky. We looked at the star signs and which star constellation to look out for in the month of your birthday.

We all created some amazing artwork based on the real life artist and astronaut Alan Bean after reading the book – The Astronaut Who Painted The Moon; the true story of Alan Bean. Alan Bean completed two flights into space and even landed on the moon. On his return to earth he painted images from his journey and even added some moon dust to his work. Most of Alan Bean’s paintings included images of astronauts so we used foreshortening (where images in the background look smaller and fade away) to draw and paint images of ourselves as astronauts using watercolour paints.

We began to create Papier Mache planets which we will paint this week and add to our Stargazers display.

Thank you to all of the parents who have supported their children in creating a satellite project. We have had some wonderful entries from models to paintings and even satellite cakes!

3 years, 360 days ago
Posted on October 2, 2020 by Admin

Star of the Week!

It is that time of the week again – time to find out our star of the week!

It was very difficult to choose just one star in Hawkstone this week with everybody working so hard but the lucky winner this week was Ben Samuel!

Ben has made sure that he is prepared for work at the start of every single day, getting everything out ready so that he does not have to keep getting up to get resources throughout the lesson. He has been working well as part of a group and has been trying really hard to use a loud clear voice. Ben has come into a school with a smile on his face each day and ready to learn. We are very proud of him for adjusting to being back in school so well after so long off.

Well done Ben and well done to everybody else in Hawkstone class!

A special shout out to the children who got 10 out of 10 in their spellings this week; Jeremy, Amneet, Freddie, Natasha, Skyla, Aaliyah and Ava-Leigh and to all of the children who beat their scores from last week (you know who you are).

Thank you for a wonderful week, have a lovely weekend and see you on Monday for another great week of learning.

3 years, 363 days ago
Posted on September 29, 2020 by Admin

The Digestive System

Year 4s in Hawkstone Class have started their unit on Digestion with “The best but most disgusting Science lesson”, as described by Georgie! We carried out an investigation to recreate a human digestive system using crackers, banana, orange juice, water, a pair of tights and some cups. We had great fun grinding the food with our hands as if they were teeth, adding bile (water) and stomach acid (orange juice) to the food before squeezing it through the small intestine (the tights) to remove the nutrients. Once the nutrients had been absorbed into the body (placed in a cup) we pushed the waste through a hole in a paper cup onto a plate. The whole class had great hands on fun whilst answering the big question – What happens to our food after we eat it?

4 years, 72 days ago
Posted on July 17, 2020 by Annette Platt

Final day! Home learning for Stiperstones and Hawkstone

Hi Everybody,

You have probably found out by now that I am your new teacher for next year.

I am super excited to see you all in September and get back on track to where we all left off.

As it is the last day – we are just going to revise and reflect on this year of learning.

I have left Summer Learning packs for all of you in Reception, so please collect today as I’m not sure when school is open.

Have a go at some of these activities please.

Hello Year 6 Maths Transition Booklet

Moving To Year 6 English Transition Booklet

t-t-29006-end-of-the-year-writing-activity-sheet_ver_4

Thank you to everyone that have followed and tried hard with your home learning.

Have a fantastic summer holiday and I will see you all in September.

4 years, 73 days ago
Posted on July 16, 2020 by Annette Platt

Thursday 16th July

Hi Everyone

I was so impressed with some of your trolls yesterday. Well done!

I have added a few activities on Purple Mash today as they are some catch up activities that are needed to be done in Science.

Activity 1 – Matching young to adult animals

Activity 2 – A food chain quiz

Activity 3 – Growing and changing

Activity 4 – Dangerous animals

Activity 5 – Tiger Life cycle.

If you have time – could you please pop in to school for your summer learning packs. Please bring these packs when you return in September.

Have a great day!

4 years, 74 days ago
Posted on July 15, 2020 by Annette Platt

Wednesday 15th July Stiperstones and Hawkstone’s home learning .

Only two more days left before you will be preparing for year 6 and Year 6 – you will be preparing for Year 7

English – I would like you to finish your story today.

Maths – Looking at symmetry in the outdoors. Look at the powerpoint Symmetry Powerpoint

Can you make a symmetrical picture – using nature if you can.

Some leaf symmetry for you to print and finish

Leaf-Art-Prompts

Finally – this afternoon – perhaps you could make a symmetry patterned picture using nature.

4 years, 75 days ago
Posted on July 14, 2020 by Annette Platt

Tuesday 14th June – Stiperstones and Hawkstone’s home learning.

Hi Everyone!

Hope you have been learning your last lot of spellings. Let me know your test scores for this week on Dojo

Keep learning these through the holiday. I am going to give you the Year 5/6 Statutory booklet that you can be learning and becoming familiar with throughout the holiday. It is also handwriting practice that will help you keep that handwriting as neat as it needs to be for Year 6 t-e-2549616-year-5–year-6-statutory-spelling-words-handwriting-activity-sheets_ver_7

I would like you to bring these booklets back with you for us all to see.

Maths – Challenge Cards maths – make sure you have finished all of the Maths challenge cards.

Today – I am challenging you to make a troll, gnome or fairy for your outdoor area out of natural materials.

If you have no clay then perhaps you could make some salt dough.