Wednesday 13th July

History Week. What a fantastic week!

This week we have been researching World War II and how it affected Manea.

Belinda went to interview Mrs June Newell who lived in Bethnal Green as a child and was evacuated to Manea when she was only four years old. Her story was amazing. We loved listening to the recording and produced our "Life of an Evacuee" factsheets.

We have been looking at food and clothes rationing and why this was a vital part of the war effort. We have produced rationing leaflets. Next we baked a wartime recipe using our ration allowances and available foods. We made carrot cookies.

Mr and Mrs Short came to talk to us about living in Manea during the war. We learnt so much! Here are a few facts:

• A spitfire crashed along the Wisbech Road
• Manea had its own ARP warden who was very strict
• Manea residents were fortunate to have a variety of food as they lived in the country.

Willow Class would like to say "thank you" to:

• Belinda
• Mrs Newell
• Mr and Mrs Short
• Mrs Guy

We hope to see you at the History Marketplace.

Tuesday 5th July

Banham Zoo

Year 3 and Year 4 had a fantastic day at Banham Zoo. We really enjoyed seeing all of the  different animals - and we even stroked centipedes, snakes and rats! Then we held a tiger's skull. This was part of our talk about the different carnivores, herbivores and omnivores that can be seen around the zoo.

We all agreed that it was a brilliant day.

Thursday 30th June

We have been busy again this week!

In Mathematics we have been focussing upon solving problems - these have been either pattern or number related. We have had to:

• Say it
• Draw it
• Build it
• Write it

Thursday 23rd June

This week we have been very busy rehearsing our class part for the school production which celebrates decades from the Queen's reign.

Our scene represents the years of World War II.

Tuesday 16th June

What a week! We have been busy rehearsing our parts in the school production. Lines have been learnt, props created and costumes sorted. We are looking forward to performing our play next week.

In Maths we have been looking at shapes and their properties. We completed a task on tangrams and used the shapes to make other shapes.

Thursday 9th June

What an amazing week!

We have been to March swimming pool and had our first swimming lesson.

It was great!

Thursday 26th May

Today we visualised a main character from our class Literacy text. We re-read a description of Krindlekrax, the crocodile, and using evidence from the text we painted our own pictures of him. It was great fun!

During our Literacy lessons we researched crocodiles and made our own information leaflets. We discovered that crocodiles can grow to be huge, 5 metres to 7 metres ... just imagine!

We used our Maths lesson to estimate these lengths.

Thursday 18th May

Sunflowers

We have been busy growing our own sunflowers. This week it was time to plant them outside now that the frosts have gone.

We lined the tyres with rubble bags, filled them with soil and planted our plants. They needed lots of water.

Thursday 5th May

This term our History topic is "The Tudors". We have enjoyed finding out about Henry VIII and his six wives.

We have learnt a rhyme to help us remember what happened to each of his wives:

Divorced, beheaded, died,

Divorced, beheaded, survived.

Can you name all of Henry's wives?

This week we have worked together to create a Kings and Queens timeline.

Thursday 28th April

This week in Literacy we have been looking at sharing and recording information. We have researched and created our own leaflets about crocodiles.

Thursday 21st April

It has been Science Week. We have been to see the chicks and have discussed how quickly they grow and change. In our lessons this week we have studied the life-cycle of a chick and learnt some amazing facts.

We have investigated the scientific question: "Do Eggs Float?". We placed eggs in water and salted water and discovered that the buoyancy of the eggs was affected by how dense the water was. Egg-amazing!

Then in Art we even made some chicks!

Thursday 14th April

Welcome back. We hope you had a lovely Easter holiday.

We have been busy as usual. In Maths this week we have been learning about angles and turns. Here we are working on angles problems.

Wednesday 23rd March

Happy Easter! Enjoy the holiday.

We have enjoyed making Easter crafts this week. We have made Easter cards and Easter baskets.

In Mathematics we have started to investigate angles. We have learnt about the properties of :

• right angles
• acute angle and
• obtuse angles

Here we are finding out about these angles

Friday 18th March

This week we have been busy in Willow Class. In our class assembly we performed the book "How to Grow a Dinosaur". We loved doing the voices for the characters and the actions.

Thursday 10th March

It has been another busy week in Willow Class. In Science this week we have continued learning about Forces and Magnets. We have learnt about forces being either a push or a pull. We have planned an investigation to see how different surfaces affect how a toy car moves when pushed onto them.

Find out next week how we got on.

Thursday 3rd March

It has been another busy week in Willow Class. We are really enjoying learning about "Forces and Magnets" in Science. Today we investigated the strength of different magnets. We used paperclips to see how strong each magnet was.

Thursday 25th February

This week we have been learning about Easter, performing poems in Literacy and playing team games in PE.

In Maths we have been working on "place value". We have used our outdoor classroom and the playground to develop our knowledge of the number system. We used the large place value discs to make and represent different numbers.

Here we are at work:

Thursday 11th February

In Science this week we have been looking at "forces and Magnets". We shared the book "Grandpa's Surprise" and looked at all the push and pull forces the characters used in the story. Then we went outside to discover the properties of magnets. We learnt that magnets either attract a material or not.

Here we are at work:Can you spot the magnets?

Thursday 4th February

This week in Mathematics we have been solving multiplication problems. We have learnt the importance of:

• Say it
• Write it
• Build it
• Draw it

So how would you solve this problem using our four rules?

6 x 4 =

Here we are using our multiplication tables and working in our outdoor classroom calculating multiples.

Thursday 28th January

Another busy week in Willow Class. Last Friday we visited the woods where our task was to build a tunnel, Despite the very wet weather we worked well in our teams to make our tunnels.

Here we are at work.

Thursday 21st January

This week we have all really enjoyed working in our outdoor classroom. We spent time organising and creating our outdoor space. Over the next few weeks we will be adding new things to our area.

In Mathematics we have been learning about fractions. We used our mud kitchen to make pies and worked out how to share them equally. The sausage rolls were tricky!

Here we are at work:

We are really looking forward to our visit to the woods tomorrow. We will tell you more next week!

Thursday 14th January

It has been another busy week in Willow Class. In mathematics we have been learning about position and direction. We have also created some mathematical pictures using different shapes.

We hope that you enjoy looking at our mathematical picture gallery:

Thursday 7th January

Happy New Year!

We have been working really hard this week on developing our independent learning skills. Here we are working on our own

Wednesday 16th December

Happy Christmas!

Willow Class have been getting ready for Christmas and have been busy making Christmas crafts.

We have made symmetrical Christmas hats to wear for our Christmas lunch.

Thursday 10th December

This week Willow Class have been learning songs for the Christmas Nativity. We loved the songs about the donkey!

In Maths this week we have been learning to tell the time and use standard units of time. We had to estimate how long a task would take and then measure the time in seconds using a stopwatch.

Here we are working on estimating and measuring the duration of tasks.

The children said:

• "At first I thought this would be easy but making a sensible estimate is hard."
• "This great fun - it's amazing how long sitting still for a minute is!"
• "I thought that it would only take me ten seconds to write my name five times, but I was wrong."

Thursday 3rd December

This week in Literacy we have written in role as Ug. We wrote diary entries explaining how Ug felt about his great ideas and the problems he faced, especially with his parents!

In Music we have been learning the songs for our performance at the Christmas Nativity next week at St. Nicolas' Church.

We all enjoyed the pantomime this afternoon!

Oh no we didn't!

Oh yes we did!

Wednesday 25th November

This week Willow Class were lucky enough to be visited by the Team for Traveller Education. They shared many different traveller stories and traditions with us. Our favourite story was "The Ogre" which has actions and is set to music.

Here we are acting out the story:

In literacy we have planned, rehearsed and performed different scenes from Ug, Boy Genius of the Stone Age. We took on the roles of Dugs and Dug chatting to a neighbour.

Here we are having some heated discussions:

Friday 20th November

Another busy week!

This week we have been buddy reading with our friends in Acorn Class (pre-school). We visited them and shared lots of different books.

Here we are reading together:

We have invited Acorn Class to visit us next time to share books.

In music we have been looking at how musical instruments make sounds. We have discussed what the word 'vibration' means and have made our own musical instruments.

Thursday 12th November

Our Remembrance Day Display

This week Willow Class have been learning about the importance and significance of Remembrance Day.

We learnt that the guns of World War I fell silent on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. King George V ordered a two minute silence to remember those who died. Today we remember all those who fought and died in wars. We made poppies and used water colours to create a poppy picture. In Literacy we wrote cinquain poems. Here are a couple of our poems:

War

Deadly, cruel.

Shooting, fighting, dreadful.

Taking innocent lives.

Combat.

War

Dark, dangerous.

Killing , hurting, bleeding.

Breaking people's hearts.

Battle.

Thursday 5th November

It has been a busy week in Willow Class.

Before half term we designed and made a trail for the pre-school children to follow. On Tuesday we undertook our trail - it was great fun!

In Mathematics we have been learning to measure. We have learnt about the relationship between millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres. Today we were given the challenge to measure our classroom and objects inside it using non-standard units of measure.

Here we are measuring:

Thursday 22nd October

Trail making.

We were given a challenge. We had to make an outdoor learning trail for the pre-school to follow.

Planter

We have re-planted our class planter. We regularly water and tend the plants.

Holiday

Have a lovely half-term.

Thursday 15th October

It has been another busy week in Willow Class. We have been focussing on speaking and listening.

In Mathematics we have been solving problems and have had to explain our methods of working out each calculation. We realised that there are many ways we could solve a problem.

Here we are explaining and sharing our solutions:

In Literacy we have been writing poems. We wrote a class poem about our favourite scene from Gregory Cool:

Twilight

Calm, pale blue evening.

Shimmery, glowing lights.

Beautiful fireflies flapping their tiny wings.

Stars quivering in the distance.

A dazzling moon dancing in the sky.

Owls hooting, dogs barking, donkeys braying.

Smells of dinner drifting on the breeze.

Stifling hot air.

Harmony and freedom.

Today we had a wonderful time writing our own poems.

Thursday 8th October

In Literacy this week we have imagined being in Tobago.

We looked at the final scene in the story 'Gregory Cool'. We imagined what the boys could see, hear and feel:

• They can see the fireflies glistening like exploding mini-volcanoes;
• They can feel the humid sticky heat - drenching their clothes;
• The boys hear the radios, many different tunes blaring out across the landscape.

We have also written letters as Gregory to our Mum and Dad.

Here are some of our letter openings:

• Dear Mum and Dad,

How could you be so cruel! I am here for four weeks, please take me home.

• Dear Mum and Dad,

Why Tobago? What? No toys, no computer, no play-station ...

Here we are sharing our letters with each other:

In Science we imagined what was underneath our feet.

Were we right? Find out next week.

Friday 2nd October

It has been another busy week in Willow Class.

In Science we have continued to investigate the use of rocks in our environment. We explored the school and grounds to see how many different rocks we could find and how they are used.

Here we are recording our findings.

In Literacy we have been looking at identifying the main parts of a story. From our class text "Gregory Cool" we identified five main points:

• Gregory arrives in Tobago,
• Gregory meets Lennox,
• Gregory, Lennox, Grandma and Grandpa go to the beach,
• Gregory meets the two fishermen, and
• Gregory and Lennox watch the moon rise.

In Drama we created our own freeze frames. Can you guess which scene is which?

Thursday 24th September

In Willow Class this week we have been on a walk around the village looking at how rocks are used. In the graveyard we saw headstones made from marble and limestone. We noticed that the older headstones are beginning to erode.

Can you spot the differences?

A huge thank you to the parents who came with us.

In Literacy we discussed elections and voting, as part of our work on British Values. We wrote speeches giving reasons why each of us should be voted on to Manea Primary School Council.

Here we are rehearsing our speeches.

Willow Class Welcome Meeting

Thank you to everyone who attended our class welcome meeting this week.  It was lovely to meet so many parents/carers.  A letter will be sent home shortly to those parents who were unable to attend.

Thursday 17th September

It has been another busy week in Willow Class. This week we have written diary entries as a character in Literacy, explored different rocks in Science, created our own musical accompaniments in Music and learnt new counting games in Maths.

One of our favourite sessions this week has been Dance. We are choreographing our own dance based on trees and forests. This week we created the opening of our dance sequence - the tree growing from its seed.

The pictures below show our different ideas for the opening of our dance.

We hope you enjoy looking at the photographs.

Thursday 10th September

We have enjoyed our first week in Willow class.

This week we have:

• become 'The Queen" for a day,
• talked about rocks and soils,
• counted and sorted numbers in Maths,

• and our favourite lesson has been Drama work in Literacy.

We created sound pictures based on the book 'Gregory Cool'. Our pictures show the scene where Gregory wakes up.

Welcome to Willow Class

We have all enjoyed our first day as a junior school pupil. Our day started with a tour of the school, especially the junior department.

Today we have been very busy. We have:

• learnt a poem,
• completed some handwriting,
• played counting games in maths,
• undertaken some 'Under the Sea' art work,
• listened to and discussed the story 'The Lion Who Wanted Love" and
• attended our first KS2 assembly.

We have had a wonderful day and can't wait to come to school tomorrow.