Key Stage 2

Last week, Aragon took part in National Numeracy Day 2023. All the children participated in a range of activities depending on their year group. Some of the activities outlined below are what all the children completed as a whole school approach.

Estimation

Across the school, children had to estimate how many pieces of maths equipment was in the jar. Estimation can be difficult and we had a range of different answers. Fatih (right) estimated 673 and Shafia (left) estimated 670. In total, there were 672 pieces of equipment. What an estimate!

Estimate the Weight 

Children were given the task to make a figure using cubes. At the start of the session, the children were given a weight that they needed to successfully make. The difficulty was the children were not allowed to weigh their figure until the end. To help assist the children, we provided them with 100g weights. Successfully, Betty-Lew (3A) managed to reach the target of 122g. How impressive!

Shut the Box

The children thoroughly enjoyed the challenging game ‘Shut the Box’. This game involves children having to subitise (recognise numbers without counting) and find the totals to remove all the wooden blocks.

Welcome to Cluckingham Palace!

Well done to everyone who has joined us in creating chickens for King Charles Palace.

We learnt of King Charles’ love for chickens and got creative.

This is Aragon’s Cluckingham Palace, pride of place in the front office.

We have a host of mediums used to create over 110 amazing chicken and hens! Ranging from artists aged 3 to 11! A whole school art piece compiled of art work from pupils in nursery to year 6!

Welcome to the Wizarding World of Year 5. As you may have guessed, we have been studying Harry Potter in English.  We have been writing persuasive pieces, selling broomsticks and tickets to our very own Knight Bus; creating descriptions, of Hogwarts and the professors; producing our own narratives, finishing the Prisoner of Azkaban in the style of J.K Rowling; and writing a commentary for a Quidditch match. All these pieces of writing have been ‘magical’. The Professors have been stunned by the progress they have seen in our student wizards’ use of specific literary features.  To conclude our topic, we visited Harry Potter Studios and absolutely LOVED it! Seeing the sets and props up close was such a treat. The staff there commented on how polite the children were and, as teachers, we were incredibly proud of them.

In Maths, we have conquered fractions, decimals, and percentages. Not a small feat, as we had to use a third of our brain for fractions, 0.33 of our brain for decimals and 33% of our brain to work out the percentage! We are 100% sure, we could convert anything you asked us to.

Our Science has been out of this world! We have been focussing on Space and know the difference between a Geocentric Solar System model and a Heliocentric model; we currently believe in a Geocentric Model where planets orbit the Sun and Earth rotates on an axis. We know the order of the planets and have created some fascinating fact files.  Did you know the rings of Uranus are vertical?

A huge thank you to St. Martin’s Church for their wonderful Easter Journey Story. They had put on such a fantastic immersive retelling, that really engaged the children and made the story come to life. It was a super opportunity and we are so grateful to them for inviting us.

In Design and Technology, we have been practicing our sewing skills.  After this, we then designed and made our own cushions. Threading the needles was probably the most challenging part, but we were then able to join the material and add decorative interest. 

The epicentre of our Geography this term has been Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes. We got to make models of the tectonic plates using Oreos, and even better that we got to eat them after! We were lucky enough to take a trip to the Natural History Museum and experience what it would feel like to be in in a stage 4 earthquake – we all had wobbly legs after.

The excitement over our P.E sessions has been palpable as our focus sport was Football.  The children have participated well with this and enjoyed the skill-based work and the matches we have been playing.  We have some children who would be brilliant playing for England; they would give Beth Mead or Bukayo Saka a run for their money!

For PSHE we have been looking at ‘Healthy Me’ and exploring at the potential negative impacts of an unhealthy lifestyle.  We have also spoken about media influence and how these can have a detrimental effect on our attitudes and outlooks.  Learning how to put someone in the recovery position is a fundamental skill, that all the children now have. Year 5 have contributed well to the discussions and communicated their understanding of the importance of the topics raised.

All that is left to say is, “Mischief, managed!”

We’re so proud of our Year 5&6 inclusive football team! They attended a tournament yesterday and played against lots of other local primary schools. They won 3 games, drew 1 and narrowly lost 1. Mrs Knott, Gio and the children had such a fun (and muddy) day- the children were fantastic and represented the school astonishingly well. Thank you to Gio, one of the coaches from Sean McInnes Sports Coaching for managing the team so well!

The most well known story told during Diwali celebrations is in the Ramayana, the great Hindu epic about prince Rama and his wife Sita. This important literary work has been shared orally and through dance for centuries.

Led by a West End choreographer, the children in Year 3 and 5 vividly imagined and physically embodied the different roles, dramatic situations and actions of the main characters in the Ramayana as they retold elements of this epic story through dance.

Diwali is embraced by a number of religions and is a metaphor for the idea of selfimprovement. By retelling the famous story through dance, children improved their cultural understanding and confidence in self-expression.

Thursday 2nd March saw the celebration of World Book Day.

The children were so engaged in all the activities and there was a real ‘book-buzz’ around the school. We welcomed author Sylvia Bishop into school. She has written many books including, ‘The Secret of the Night Train’ and ‘The Midnight Thief’. With Early Years and Key Stage 1, she helped the children to develop their own stories, thinking about an animal to start them off. For Key Stage 2 she talked about the importance of finding a story in everything, and what to do if you have writers block. She gave the children tips and tricks by using games and exercises.

We have also been lucky enough to buy some new dictionaries and thesauri’ and used these to write our own stories. We opened the pages randomly, and had to pinpoint a word and try and include that in the story – some of the stories took such an interesting turn based on what came out! Sharing books and stories with other year groups also took place throughout the day. Year groups were paired up and got to move around the school.