Here are some snaps from last week's mini marathon!

  S tory focus : Mad About Dinosaurs! by Gliles Andreae. We have been having 'Poem Time', rather than 'Story Time' this week! Literacy focus : we have daily Phonics and handwriting sessions.  We now have a Literacy session where we discuss a picture, compose sentences and then write them.  We also have individual reading sessions, practising our blue Phonics book or reading books.  Maths focus: missing parts to 5; compostion of 5; composition of 6 and 7 as '5 and a bit'.  We sang '5 Little Kittens' as a prompt for discussion of missing parts to 5. We made arrangements of 6 and 7 using ' 5 and a bit'. Can you spot the '5 and a bit'? 6 is made of 5 and 1. 7 is made of 5 and 2.                                                           PE focus : we have started a new unit called  Crawl, Climb, Collect.  We have t...

 Over the last few weeks we have been able to explore the goings on around our school throughout the evening and the night due to Miss Lucas's brilliant idea. Miss Lucas secured us the loan of a camera trap from The Colchester Zoological Society, in association with Suffolk University, with the aim of allowing primary age children access to the secret world of our local wildlife. We first set the trap in our nature garden area and were treated to a procession of the local cat population before a treat which you can see in the clip below. It has also given us the view at night-time. The camera trap in situ. Last night the camera trap was set up to allow a view from the KS1 block towards the Eco-Garden area. And this is what we saw! Look out for further bulletins. Mr Hopegood :)

Today, we had great fun testing materials to see which was the best material at absorbing sound. We listened to a piece of music and we had to stop on a spot when we heard that sound. The musical device was wrapped in various materials. We spoke about how some materials are better at absorbing sound waves, making it harder to hear.  

 Last week, Year 4 took part in the whole school mini marathon which saw the children try and complete 7 laps of the school field and playground. There was some fantastic resilience on show and all the children gave it their best which was amazing to see! Well done everyone!

We had so much fun running, jogging and walking the TCS mini schools marathon! We exceeded expectations with many of us running above and beyond the 2 mile target, or 6.5 laps of the school perimeter.  Our resilience, determination and sportsmanship was unbeatable!  

 In Science, we have been focusing on and learning more about the four seasons.  This week, we explored summer.  During our learning, we talked about the days being longer and that this is due to the Earth's tilt.  We talked a lot about the weather in Summer compared to the other three seasons and what we like to do in the summer.  Many of us said that summer was our favourite season because we like being outside and playing! Due to the questions we asked, we decided to explore our shadows and how they move depending on the time of day.  We understood that shows are created when an object blocks the sun. We drew around our shadows on Thursday afternoon.  On Friday morning, we revisited our shadow drawings and realised that our shadows had moved and this was because the sun was in a different position in the sky. We have been enjoying being able to take our learning outside!