Welcome back Crew Shields

30th August 2024Ruth Shields

We’ve had a lovely week back in school and we kicked the week off by spending time focusing on crew and building positive relationships. This will allow us to have a successful year.

Our guiding questions was ‘What does crew mean to me?’ and we’ve spent lots of time talking about the importance of crew. When we shared our thoughts today some of the things children said crew is a big family, happiness, supporting each other and holding each other to account.

On Wednesday we were lucky enough to take part in an escape box challenge. This required us to really put our heads together and use each other’s strengths to help us work out all the clues. The clues were maths linked and had problems solving elements. Even I had to get the odd clue to figure out the next step.

Space Art

30th August 2024Laura Hamill

Today, Crew Hamill proved what fabulous artists they are by fully engaging themselves in a painting of either the Sun or the Moon. After researching the artist Andy Warhol, we used our inspiration to create images of the Sun or Moon in outer space. We used a variety of skills and tools in order to produce these including the use of varying brush strokes, dabbing of a sponge and flicking of a toothbrush to create different elements of our image.

Wonderdome

30th August 2024Laura Hamill

To kick start our expedition, Upper Key Stage 2 were whisked off to the Milky Way within the amazing Wonderdome. We were able to fully immerse ourselves into our solar system, exploring each of the planets and learning in-depth information about the Sun, Earth and Moon. Matt, our space expert, was extremely knowledgable about all things space – past, present and future. We were able to discover that Earth is the only planet that humans can live on as it is in the habitable zone (also known as the Goldilocks zone) where the conditions – temperature, water and oxygen – are just right! We were also taught about the first astronauts to travel into space and land on the moon. Did you know there were THREE astronauts? Interestingly, it wasn’t just Neil Armstrong (the first man to step on the Moon) but it was also Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the Moon’s surface alongside Neil, and Michael Collins, who stayed in the space craft to keep it safe. We were excited to find out that there will be another attempt to travel to the Moon next year, with 4 new astronauts set to orbit the moon!

Chapter One Celebrations!

19th July 2024Sophie Elmer

This year, as a school, we have taken part in Chapter One.This has meant that many of our pupils in KS1 have had the opportunity to read 1:1 with a volunteer at least once a week for the whole year, that’s reading at least a whopping 40 times this year! Not only has this reading opportunity supported our pupils to develop their reading skills and better their fluency it has also boosted their love of reading! All of the pupils that have taken part in this have made fantastic progress with some now reaching the top book band level! We are super proud of them all! Yesterday, we got to take part in a live call with our Chapter One representative, as well as many of the volunteers that have been reading with our pupils. It was lovely for us all to put a face to people, as well as listen to the lovely feedback that our volunteers shared. It was such a lovely moment to share with our pupils, and the great news is there will be much more of this in the next academic year!

Reading Challenge Golden Ticket Winners

18th July 2024Laura Hamill

A HUGE shoutout to Luke and Zach who earned themselves a golden ticket in our reading challenge from this term. Each of them has read every single day at home to move up on our challenge board. They even started to overlap some of the other children in crew showing just how much they have read! I am so proud of your enthusiasm with this challenge boys and I praise your efforts in making sure you have read at home every night. I hope you love your prizes!

Y1 tile artwork

17th July 2024Lauren Marsh

To celebrate the end of our Islam learning we created an Islamic artwork tile using dots and lines. We did this through learning about the artist William Morris who designs lots of patterned artwork for wallpapers.