Oak Class Blog

Oak class enjoyed their first week of their last term at Willow Primary Academy. We joined in with an informative assembly delivered by Severn Trent. We enjoyed our first lessons of our many new topics: Bees, Butterflies and Beetles in Art; Evolution and Fossils in Science; World War 2 in History; Relationships and Sex Education in PSHE. We also enjoyed a visit from Mr Mortimer (a teacher from Holmleigh Park) to prepare us for secondary school.

Oak Class have had a memorable and extremely busy week! This week most of Oak Class have been away on residential. We all had fun, faced fears and bonded as a class. We participated in many activities: woodland walk, tasting wild food/flowers, making fire, egg drop, low ropes, air rifles, tunnels, team building, meadow sweep, toasting marshmallows on a camp fire, tree climb and crate stack. ​

We enjoyed a trip to SkillZONE; we learned how to act safely in situations such as getting a train and swimming in open water. ​

We went to our local library to exchange our books again. We were challenged by the librarian to choose a book we wanted to read and then close our eyes to choose a second book which we wouldn’t normally pick. She also read a range of poems to us. ​

We also paired up with Chestnut class and listened to them read and we also got to read stories to them. We enjoyed the responsibility of writing in their reading records.

We’ve had a great week in Oak Class! On Friday, we learned about life in the trenches during WW1 in History. We enjoyed a challenge on Tuesday when we participated in the NRICH numeracy day webinar. We had an exciting day on Wednesday when we went on a whole trust trip to Cattle Country; Miss Flynn was impressed with our positivity and respectfulness we showed when we interacted with the children from other schools. We also got an exciting delivery from Miss Simmonds today – new books for our class library!

This week in Oak Class, we have completed our SATS tests. We were determined, positive and focused during every single test. Lots of the teachers at Willow said how fantastic their attitude towards SATS was – well done Oak Class.

We also celebrated the king’s coronation; we performed a coronation dance at a care home and invited parents in for a coronation picnic – thank you to everybody who came along. 

We have also been practicing more abstract art (this week we focused on shape).

We have had a busy week in Oak Class! We have been working in pairs to better our reasoning skills in maths. We have been investigating how shadows are formed in science and how we can change the size, length and direction of a shadow. We have been experimenting with abstraction of colour in art . We have been getting very creative in Oak Class recently – look at these digital art submissions for our ‘King Charles III Portrait Competition’ from Isaac and Ruben!

What a fun-filled week! We loved being creative in art and practicing abstract line art. We enjoyed choreographing a dance and creating portraits in celebration of the king’s coronation. We showed off our skills in our PE assessments. We also got our leaver’s play scripts – we can’t wait to learn our lines ready for our performance in July.

We have had a wonderful start to Summer term in Oak Class. The children have been enthusiastic about our new topic of World War One! We have already learned lots of new vocabulary linked to the war and learned the four main causes of WW1. We have also started looking at abstraction in art. We attempted simple distortion by cutting out our sketches of flowers and apples to re-organise them.

What a fantastic week we’ve had to end this term! We completed our final mock SATS this week. We had fun creating ‘Timmy the turtle’ out of recycled materials to raise awareness of plastic pollution in our oceans. We loved hearing Josh sing for us in Salo’s final music technology session with us! We also enjoyed a trip to the library to take out some new books to read over the Easter holidays.

Well done to Lillie-Mai for winning the Spring paper plates competition!

What a fun week we’ve had in Oak Class! We loved our taster sessions in cheerleading, footgolf, dance and fencing! We are so excited for these free after school clubs to start after Easter. This week we also had fun making funfair scenes which we can describe in French.

We have been very focused in Oak class this week. In English, we have produced balanced arguments based on whether people should be allowed to live forever? In Maths, we have been calculating the area of parallelograms and triangles. In Guided Reading, we have been performing a poem, ‘Humpty Dumpty: The Truth’. We also started our new science unit, ‘Light Theory’ – we reviewed what we have already learned about light in the past and what questions we still have. We are excited to begin our investigations!

Because of all our hard work last week, Willow got to join us in class this week! Poet, Matt Abbott, visited our class this week to write a poem with us about ‘excellence’. We used descriptive language and personification to write a setting description based on our book, ‘how to live forever’. We then started debating the reasons for and against living forever – would you like to live forever? We also made a collage in art of our favourite artists who make art from recycled materials. Finally, we ended the week by starting our new maths unit, converting between measurements.

What a wonderful first week back we’ve had in Oak class. We enjoyed lots of world book day activities: a trip to the library, a webinar on how to write comedy and a ‘bedtime’ story session in class with parents (thank you to the parents who came along!) We also started our new units of tag rugby in PE and 3D modelling in computing.

We have had a lovely final week of term 3! Oak class have worked so hard this term in all subjects. We enjoyed a visit to the knife angel this week where we discussed and learned about knife safety. We learned what the consequences of carrying knives were and the risks that come along with it. In music, we recorded audio and changed the speed and pitch of this to add to our music. In gymnastics, we planned and performed a routine using the skills we learned this term. We are now ready to enjoy a well deserved break next week!

Oak class have had a great week so far. We performed our story, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ to Ash and Chestnut class. We really enjoyed listening to their stories too!

We were able to use keyboards in our music technology sessions with Salo this week. We experimented with voltage in Science to see how this would affect the brightness of a lightbulb. We have also been loving our new English unit, ‘Francis’. Miss Flynn is very impressed with the writing we have produced so far.

Oak class have been loving their weekly music technology sessions with Salo. Salo has been impressed with the level of respect and positivity he has witnessed in our class. We have been exploring Inuit art through making soap sculptures and stencil paintings. We have also been mastering subtracting mixed numbers and fractions. We are now ready to move on to multiplying and dividing fractions this week!

We began this week by meeting with police lady Chloe – we enjoyed asking her questions about her job role. We made arctic animal soap sculptures in art which we really enjoyed! We have also been showing all our PRIDE values this week during our mock SATS. We just have one more test to sit this week!

In Oak class, we made circuits and learned how to record these using diagrams in our books. We then asked investigation questions to see how variations would affect the components in our circuits. We worked on symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes in Gymnastics. We have been continuing to work super hard in maths with adding and subtracting mixed numbers and fractions – the adults in our class are so impressed with us!

We’ve had a busy week in Oak class. We have been learning about daylight in the polar regions in Geography – we enjoyed this hands on activity to understand it better. We have been making strong and sturdy bridges whilst sticking to a design criteria in DT. We have also been practicing our fundamental gymnastic skills in PE.

We have had a lovely and calm start to the new term in Oak Class. Miss Flynn, Mrs Kenna and Mrs Stephens have been so impressed with how mature and engaged all the children have been! We have been securing our knowledge of equivalent fractions before we start adding and subtracting fractions in maths next week. We also went on a ‘polar expedition’ today. We were explorers and we wrote a blog to explain the weather, wildlife and people in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

We have had such a lovely last week of school in Oak Class. We enjoyed playing in the snow and celebrating Christmas after all the hard work we have done this term. Merry Christmas everyone!

Oak class have been very busy in maths this week. We have been naming, classifying and drawing 3D shapes. We have also been drawing the nets for these 3D shapes. This has been tricky but we are progressing because we are showing determination.
We have started to write our narrative stories based on ‘Mog’s Christmas Calamity’ – we can’t wait for you to read them. We have also been creating our own pieces of art based on black history. We conducted investigations using our own questions based on heart rates – this was very successful!

We have been working super hard this week in maths. We have been classifying 2D shapes based on their properties and we have been drawing 2D shapes when given angles. We have found drawing the shapes with the correct angles tricky, but we have showed resilience and determination!

We have also enjoyed practicing our handwriting, reading our stories and meeting Elfie the elf!

Willow joined us in class this week! We used instruments to perform our class poem, ‘December’ by Valerie Bloom. We have been busy learning about the angles in triangles, quadrilaterals and regular polygons this week in maths. We also examined aerial photos and maps of Tuffley in Geography. We determined what type of settlement Tuffley is and researched how it has changed over time.

Oak class have been working super hard in maths to convert between percentages, decimals and fractions. We finished our ‘trailblazers’ paintings this week – they are beautiful! We enjoyed meeting Joesph Coelho on zoom. He taught us about poetry writing. We also met Fleur Hitchcock at the Wild Reading Festival. We ended our week by sorting foods into food groups. We had a discussion about what foods are healthy and unhealthy by breaking down the nutritional value.

We have been busy in Oak class this week writing a setting description in English and learning how to order and compare fractions in maths. We showed great determination in these subjects. Although, the highlight of our week was cooking a healthy meal with our friends! We enjoyed chopping and measuring the ingredients and seeing the ingredients cook on the hob. We especially enjoyed tasting the food. Although, I think the fajitas might have been a bit spicy for some of our boys – enjoy the photos!

We’ve had a very busy first week back at school! Year 6 sat their first mock SATS exams this week. We had a lot of fun building in the construction workshop. Cain and Helen came in to teach us about cerebral palsy – Cain got us to write our names with our feet, put shirts on with one hand and we even got to feed Miss Flynn some yoghurt! We ended the week with a science investigation. We investigated whether there was a correlation between a person’s resting heart rate and how fast they can sprint.

In Oak Class, we have had an exciting week! The bikeability tutors taught us how to ride our bikes safely on the roads. We got badges!! In Science, we measured our heart rate. We wrote our English poems up neat which we performed in our class assembly. Mr. Mortimer visited our class to tell us all about Holmleigh Park. In Project, we learned all about the events which lead to the abolition of slavery. We ended the week, with a Halloween movie night – we loved the treats Mrs. Arthur, and Miss P bought for us. Have a great half term everybody!

We have had a lovely week in Oak Class. We showed determination to finish our beautiful landscape paintings! We went out of school to complete some fieldwork on road safety. We even interviewed a pedestrian to find out how safe they thought Stroud Road was and if they had any ideas on what would make it safer. We also enjoyed a drama lesson role playing the events of the Amistad mutiny! We can’t wait to write newspaper reports about this.

In Oak class this week, we practiced travelling and passing in hockey. We created separated blood in science to further understand the four components of blood. We have been working very hard in maths with dividing 4-digit numbers by 2-digit numbers. We have also been working super hard in English to create acrostic poems based on our story, ‘A Tower to the Sun’. Please enjoy reading a few of our poems 🙂

What a fun we’ve had in Oak class! In DT, we worked together to make bread and we loved tasting the finished product! In science, we dissected a sheep’s heart to understand the structure and function of a heart. We also worked in groups to make towers using spaghetti and marshmallows before we read our new class story, ‘A Tower to the Sun’. In art, we used our knowledge of colour theory to start painting landscapes. We are also very excited that Willow is joining us for the rest of the week.

Wow! What a fantastic start we have had in Oak Class. We managed to get to 9 days in a row of 100% attendance – what an achievement! Congratulations to Kaiden and Harry for being voted as our new PRIDE champions. We started our project based on the History of Africa. We created colour palettes in art based on a landscape and some of us even named the colours. We can’t wait to show you what we get up to this week.