Oak Class Spring Term 2 Week 4

We have had a quieter week this week as it has been assessment week. The children have worked exceedingly hard to show us what they have been learning across Maths, Reading and Writing. I am very proud of all of them for their effort and results from the assessments showed lots of resistance when it got tricky.

We started off the week with some music and took advantage of the sunshine to practice our compositions. We are studying the fast paced rhythms of Mambo music and were trying to play different instruments at different times over 8 beats. But to make it even more difficult, the beats changed from crotchets to quavers so we ended up with 16!!! I was amazed by what they produced, there was a huge amount of effort and determination being shown to perfect their work.

We evaluated our cress seed experiment this week, the best conditions were the part light part dark conditions, they had the most shoots and greenest leaves. The ones in full light were all crusty and dried up. The ones left in total darkness grew, but had very yellow leaves. We got a lot of science out of this experiment and the children took some seeds home to plant themselves. I wonder how they will do?

On Friday we joined Karen from the Litter Warriors to tidy up the village. We learnt lots about the types of litter to expect and why certain materials were worse for our environment. She had some excellent advice and tips for recycling and reusing. We then went out into the community to see what we could find, armed with buckets and litter pickers. There was slim pickings along the road (which was marvellous) but we found lots around the park and football fields to fill our buckets. We had a litter bingo sheet to complete and sadly, we did find something from each category - crisp and sweet wrappers in particular, The oldest item was from 16 years ago (according to the sell by date!!) and was a very faded crisp packet, an item easily bin-able!! We are going to use our knowledge and enthusiasm for litter picking from today to do this more regularly.

Finally, to all the Mum's, Mummies and Step Mum's out there, have a lovely Mothering Sunday and I hope you get time to relax a bit too.

Two weeks until the end of term, lots to squeeze in, Poetry Plate heats on Monday, finals on Wednesday and Chi Chi on Thursday!! Lots to look forward to.