Celebrating St George

In Crew this morning we discussed who Saint George was and why is is celebrated on 23rd April. We worked collaboratively to make a handprint dragon as part of our crew challenge.

At lunchtime we enjoyed our indoor picnic served in a union flag box!

Finally this afternoon we completed our St George’s Day quest. We had to complete three craft activities including pointillism dragons, collage shields and a London inspired Union flag. The children loved taking part in all the activities and collecting stickers when they completed a challenge.

Marvellous Maps

As part of Hook Week we have created maps of Carcroft in the style of David Hockney. The children used tea bags to stain their paper and then used pictures of places in Carcroft and cut and arranged them. We think they look fantastic!

Crew Robson and Crew Godley – Music

We finished our unit on ‘Trains’ by layering up different rhythm notations to create a whole class piece of music that represented the movement of a train. We split into 3 groups, drums, shakers and guiros. Each instrument represented a different rhythm notation and we practised our individual rhythms before playing at the same time and creating a layered piece.

Expert Visitor in KS1

We were very lucky to be visited today by Geoff who works at XP. He came to show us his drone and talk about how he can use it to take aeriel photographs from high up in the sky. Unfortunately it was just too wet and windy for us to go outside and flying the drone but Geoff has promised to come back on a nice sunny day so we can see the drone flying and try and spot some landmarks in Carcroft.

Crew Godley and Crew Robson – Music

We continued with our work on ‘Trains’ during music by thinking of different sounds that you would hear on a train or that a train makes. We thought about how we could use our voices and body percussion to create these sounds.

We then practised following a conductor using crescendo and diminuendo actions whilst performing the train sounds we had decided upon.

Miss McGlone played us a rhythm using a drum and after a discussion, we decided that this rhythm could be used to represent the wheels of the train. She then used a shaker to play a beat that was twice as fast as the drum. We said that this could represent the passengers on the train jiggling along as the train moved. Finally, she played a guiro that went twice as fast as the shaker. This represented the sound of the engine. We talked about how the drum and the shaker could stay at their original beat whilst all being layered on top of each other. We listened to an example of how each individual beat could be played at the same time to create a piece representing multiple different parts of a train journey.

We are ready to begin creating our own compositions next lesson that include lots of rhythms layered on top of each other, as well as using crescendo and diminuendo techniques.

Crew Godley and Crew Robson – Music

We began our new music unit ‘Trains’ by thinking about different modes of transport. We then listened to 4 pieces of music inspired by different modes of transport. We had to listen carefully and draw the type of transport we thought was represented by the music.

We were then introduced to the musical terms ‘crescendo’ and ‘diminuendo’. When the music gets louder it is called a ‘crescendo’. When the music fades away and gets quieter it is called ‘diminuendo’. We looked at the symbols that are used in written music to show this.

We practised a short rhythm and repeated this multiple times. We decided on a visual prompt that our conductor (Miss McGlone) could use to show crescendo and diminuendo and as we repeated the rhythm, we followed the actions of the conductor to make it louder or quieter.

Crew Godley and Crew Robson – Music

Following on from our previous lesson, we began by practising our call-and-response warm-up ‘Water’, using a range of different notations and actions to go alongside them. We then looked at a short chant called ‘Blue flowing river water’ and discussed the rhythm. We then listened once again to our focus piece ‘Orawa’ and thought about the rhythm we had followed for ‘Blue flowing river water’. We talked about how we could use the same rhythm to create a chant about the journey of the river through the landscape. As a class, we identified seven key things that would be seen as the river travels and we created a short chant about each thing to the rhythm from our warm up.

Once we had perfected the lyrics for the chants and made sure that they fit with the rhythm, we practised as a class making sure we were clapping the correct rhythm as we were chanting.