Our Class Blog

Welcome to the Kites Class blog. We aim to blog as often as we can and most of our posts will be created using ideas generated by pupils during a shared writing session. Most recent blogs will be posted at the top.

Happy reading!

Wednesday 17th May 2023

This week in our assemblies, we have been thinking again about the idea of 'forgiveness'. On Monday, Mrs Howe told us the story of the prodigal son. On Tuesday, Mrs Baish described how she had been able to forgive a gibbon for escaping at the zoo!

Today, we have been thinking about how forgiveness can make us better learners. Here are some of our ideas...

• "If you forgive someone for their mistakes, you are sort of giving them permission to learn from it and do better next time."
• "Sometimes, if you forgive yourself for the small mistakes instead of getting stressed out by them, you allow yourself to get on with a task instead of giving up completely."
• "If you hold a grudge, you can't concentrate on your learning. If you can forgive an incident and let go, you are able to focus again."

We all agreed that being able to forgive willingly and quickly would help us to move on without dwelling too much on things that don't go our way.

Wednesday 3rd May 2023

This coming weekend is the coronation of King Charles III. We have been asked to think about our hopes and wishes for his reign, considering what we would like for him as well as what we would like him to achieve. Here are some of our ideas:

• I hope Charles III has a long and healthy life.
• Maybe he can make the world a better place.
• Maybe he can make the world a happy community.
• I hope that he makes good decisions about what we should add to the world.
• I hope he thrives like a plant that has water, light and warmth (can you guess what we did in science this week?!).

King Charles has a particular interest in nature and the environment. During his reign, we all hope that:

• The coral reefs can be saved from bleaching so that they can continue to provide a healthy habitat for animals.
• People will stop throwing litter into the ocean.
• People will stop throwing litter!
• Governments all over the world will join together to stop global warming.

Wednesday 9th November 2022

We've been busy learning more about the Stone Age. This afternoon, we have been observing and sketching Stone Age tools so that we can design and create our own. Unfortunately, we aren't able to use animal sinews or bones to make glue so we'll have to improvise on that one! We definitely won't be using Pritt Stick or sellotape!

We've been watching an extract from the film 'Early Man' in English lessons to help us practise using our senses to describe a place. Some of the vocabulary we've come up with so far has blown Mrs Evans away! Keep an eye on our class page for some writing at the end of next week...

On Friday, we started choreographing our own Stone Age group dances using a music track by the Irish band Kila. We thought carefully about how a hunter might move and tried hard to use all the parts of our bodies and different heights and levels. Mr Farrell says we can perform in Celebration Assembly in a couple of weeks!

Lots of us have been particularly enjoying our outdoor games lessons with Mrs Johnson, where we've been refining our football skills. Some of us will not admit to being excellent dribblers!

This week's Science lesson was not a quiet one! We investigated vibrations using tuning forks and a tray of water, cling film over a bowl with rice and elastic bands stretched over mugs. Ask us what happened and what we discovered...

Wednesday 14th September 2022

What a busy week and a half! Since the beginning of last week, we have been...

• Researching the Stone Age using books and the internet (we're learning to make our search terms much more efficient),
• Learning about sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks in Science,
• Practised summarising and predicting using 'Stone Age Boy',
• Read and discussed the first seven chapters of 'The Wild Way Home',
• Represented and partitioned three and four digit numbers in Maths,
• Found out all about the Queen and made a huge timeline of the last hundred years on our carpet,
• Signed the online Book of Condolence,
• Worked as a team to untie a human knot in PSHE,
• Examined and sketched Stone Age pottery,
• Recapped the chords and strumming patterns we know on the ukulele,
• Named different periods of history in French!

Phew! No wonder we're all exhausted already! On Friday, we're going to have a Stone Age Day. We're planning to try our hands at making tools and spears, make natural paints for cave style paintings, forage for berries, build shelters, use throwing sticks and recap our knowledge of building and lighting fires. 

Today, our job at the end of the day was to write our own prayer to say at lunchtime. We challenged ourselves by writing a prayer with a rhythm and rhyme scheme. Here it is:

Dear Lord, who gives us food to eat,

We thank you for the corn and wheat,

The soil, the seed, the spoon, the sieve,

The company to share it with.

Amen

Wednesday 6th July 2022

Today was a very scientific day! We have been learning about nutrition and putting foods into categories according to what they can do for our bodies. Bethany was very excited about this as her mum is a nutritionist! When we were learning about food chains in the Autumn Term, we discovered that plants make energy from the sun. This process is called photosynthesis. Ellis said leaves are a bit like tiny solar panels! We can't do that! Humans get all their energy from the food they eat. This food can be sorted into food groups:

• Fruit and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals. They help to make us feel full and can help to keep us regular!
• Carbohydrates include bread, pasta, rice, couscous and cereal. Carbs give us energy and the energy we get from pasta is long-lasting. They also contain sugar so we need to be careful with portions!
• Fats include oils, spreads and avocado. We don't need to eat much of these.
• Protein comes from meat, eggs, fish and nuts. It helps out body to repair itself when we are injured.
• Dairy products contain calcium to help us grow healthy bones and gnashers.

There are some foods which have almost no nutritional value. Unfortunately, these are the foods we like to eat because they tend to be full of sugar. We can eat them sometimes as a treat.

We watched an 'Operation Ouch' clip where Chris and Xand set fire to a digestive biscuit and some pasta to show the difference in energy created. They also used a plate of spaghetti bolognaise to explain that 75% of the energy we get from our food is used to do things like breathing!

We had some interesting discussions about what happens when you combine ingredients to make a new food. For example, is ice cream a dairy product, a fat or a carbohydrate? Also, we designed the healthiest and unhealthiest pizzas we could possibly manage! Some of us didn't realise that you can make pizza crust from cauliflower!

We realised today that we have LOTS of questions about food and nutrition. Here are some of them...

• Why are butter and oil yellow?
• Why are most carbs beige?
• Who decided on the food groups and how did they name them?

Wednesday 22nd June 2022

Refugee Week 2022

This week, we have been learning about refugees. A refugee is a person who has fled their country from war, natural disasters or persecution. They come from lots of different countries and many of them are only able to bring a few prized possessions. Can you imagine what it must be like to be forced to leave your home, your family, your friends, your pets and everything you have ever known behind? What would you take if it happened to you? Why?

Our focus text for this week is Gill Lewis's 'A story like the wind' and Emily is thrilled because this is her favourite author in the whole wide world! This is a story about a fourteen-year-old boy named Rami who is floating adrift in the ocean with a group of strangers on a inflatable dinghy. The motor has broken, there are no oars and they have no idea where they are or if they will make it to land. The only item Rami has managed to bring with him is a violin. He says it's the only possession he could not leave behind. We aren't sure where his parents are yet but we might find out as we read on. Later in the week, we will also be looking at some poems by Benjamin Zepheniah. 

In art lessons, we have been using art pencils to sketch iconic images of refugees including Anne Frank, Albert Einstein, Rita Ora and the Afghan girl with the piercing blue eyes. Keep and eye on our class page for some pictures...

Wednesday 8th June 2022

Yesterday, we discovered what happened to our dead pharaoh carrots! They had turned wrinkly and dark brown because we had dried them out using a mixture of salt and bicarbonate of soda. They looked similar to the pictures we have seen in books of mummified pharaohs! Bethany wanted to try one more thing. She wondered what colour they were on the inside! Using a knife from the dining room, she tried to slice one and found it rather challenging! Eventually (with Annie's help), she managed to make a small dent and found the carrot was still orange right in the middle. Maybe that's why the Ancient Egyptians removed internal organs first?! Yuck!

Today was absolutely splashing as we took a dive (well, maybe more of a step) into the school swimming pool for the first time in three years! We had a great time and Ruby particularly enjoyed chasing Seth! Alice accidentally (maybe) covered Mrs Evans from head to toe in water whilst collecting a sinker from the bottom of the pool. Mrs Evans does not think this is funny! 

Freeze! This morning, we had a go at freeze framing our new English text, 'The Egyptian Cinderella' by Shirley Climo. Hold that pose! We had to think carefully about facial expressions and body language. Sasha had another opportunity (after his 'dead man' impression on our Ancient Greek day) to lie down and close his eyes but he wasn't dead this time, only sleeping! Here is a picture of our freeze frame story, complete with speech and thought bubbles. It will help us when we are planning and writing our own traditional stories set in Ancient Egypt.

Wednesday 18th May 2022

We mummified something! Not a human (unfortunately) but a couple of willing carrots! We needed two carrots in a tub and then we covered them in a mixture of salt and sodium bicarbonate (which is the nearest substance we can make to natron). We had to make sure there were no air bubbles and we will be pushing the 'natron' down each day to make sure it is in contact with the whole surface of the carrots. In two weeks, we will discover if they have been mummified! 

Last week, we also started an egg-cellent egg-speriment! We wanted to find out what different types of liquids would do to our teeth and eggs were the nearest thing available! We put the eggs in equal amounts of water, Lucozade, vinegar, Coke, Diet Coke and orange juice. The results were truly disgusting! Can you tell from the photograph below which egg was in which liquid?! HINT: vinegar had the most egg-citing impact! 

We yolk you enjoyed our blog this week!

Tuesday 15th March 2022

Since Christmas, we have been learning to play the ukulele every Tuesday afternoon. We have learnt the chords C major, F major and G major. They look easy but they're actually quite difficult and it is taking us a while to switch between them. However, we are showing resilience and we keep trying every week (even though some of us are developing blisters!). Our aim is to be able to play the Bob Marley song 'Three Little Birds' by Easter. Ricky, our ukulele teacher, says that once we know the three chords, we can play a variety of songs!

We have done some online research and some of the songs we could sing are:

• Kumbaya
• Sloop John B
• Ring of Fire
• Twist and Shout
• Counting Stars (by One Republic)
• Stand By Me
• Soul Sister
• Hallelujah
• Over the Rainbow
• Walkin' on Sunshine

Wednesday 9th March 2022

Firstly, we need to tell you how our taste test went last Thursday! It was terribly scientific! Some of our opinions were...

"It was very nice inside and the outside tasted like honeycomb." (Ellie)

"My favourite bit of it was the glass-like top because it tasted like coffee and I LOVE coffee!" (Afton)

"I didn't really like the top layer because it felt like you were eating burnt glass and that is just wrong!" (Bailey)

"Delectable caramelised sugar on top and a fine cream in the centre." (Sasha)

Overall, it was a roaring success and most gave it 10/10 but there were a few people who wouldn't try it again, which would mean more for the rest of us so we weren't too upset...

This morning during our guided reading session, we invented some grizzly ends for subject teachers! No, we haven't gone completely mad. Last week, as part of 'Book Week Live', we watched 'Matilda and Friends Live' from the Cambridge Theatre in London. Several authors took to the stage to tell us about their recent books and one of them was Humza Arshad. His book is called 'Little Badman and the Invasion of the Killer Aunties' and we asked Mrs Evans to order it immediately. We're on chapter five now and the teachers at the school in the book are dropping like flies! We came up with our own ideas for how teachers of specific subjects could be taken out...

ENGLISH TEACHER - crushed by the works of William Shakespeare

MATHS TEACHER - eaten by crocodiles

(Mrs Kennedy won't like this one as we're not allowed to refer to < or > as crocodiles!!!)

SCIENCE TEACHER - chemical explosion

PE TEACHER - javelin in the back

HISTORY TEACHER - clubbed to death by Neanderthals

GEOGRAPHY TEACHER - melted in the Earth's core

FRENCH TEACHER - a sudden fall from the Eiffel Tower

MUSIC TEACHER - singing a really high note until they run out of breath

DINNER LADY - drowned in a vat of curry

Mrs Evans and Mrs Kiernan think we got a little bit carried away with this one but it was a lot of fun!

Wednesday 2nd March 2022

Spring is finally here but it doesn't feel like it today! Despite the rain, we've managed to cheer ourselves up by cooking some 'Cambridge Burnt Cream'. Have you ever heard of it? We hadn't until now! It's a bit like custard with a crust on top made from burnt sugar.

We measured out and mixed double cream and milk and put it on the stove to heat up. Meanwhile, we were learning how to crack and separate eggs. Some of us were eggsperts and some of us need a little more practise! We beat three egg yolks with some granulated sugar, adding a little vanilla extract to make it smell scrumptious! Once the milk and cream mixture was hot enough, we poured it into the egg and sugar mixture and whisked it until it was smooth. Finally, we shared it out between six cups and popped them into the oven in a bain Marie for 35 - 45 minutes. At the moment, they are chilling in the fridge but tomorrow morning, we get to sprinkle sugar on top and BLAST THEM WITH A BLOWTORCH!!! (Don't worry - this will be fully supervised!!) Then we will demolish them and carry out a very scientific taste test... We will let you know next week what the scores on the doors were!

Friday 25th February 2022

This week, our new text in English (and Guided Reading) is 'Where My Wellies Take Me' by Clare and Michael Morpurgo. It's like a scrapbook - full of beautiful illustrations, poems and the story of Clare Morpurgo's childhood spent in the countryside. On Wednesday morning, we went to Brington churchyard, footpath and post box to collect ideas for our own descriptions. We learnt the word 'dappled' (which means the effect that is created when sun shines through moving branches) and listened to birdsong to see if we could identify it. In the end, we decided we could hear blackbirds, jays, blue tits, kites, robins and thrushes. 

During art, we started looking at the collages of Tracey English. They are made using newspaper and layers of coloured paper and the highest number of layers we could find was eight! The collages are not realistic but they are colourful and recognisable. When we design and make our own collages of houses and landscapes around Brington, we will be kept busy using the magazines donated by our kind families!

It was an introduction to magnets in science this week, when we spent a little time investigating with the equipment. Magnetism is an invisible force where one object pulls another object towards it or pushes it away. Some of the ways magnetism is used around us are:

• the board pens in the classroom
• fridge doors
• fridge magnets
• doorbells
• MagLev trains
• speakers
• computers and televisions
• radios
• vending machines
• compasses
• MRI machines

Phew! What a long list! We didn't know about all of that before! There are probably hundreds more! Watch this space to find out more about our magnetic adventures...

Wednesday 9th February 2022

In 'By Ash, Oak and Thorn', Mrs Benn the owl was telling the Hidden Folk about the deer and suddenly stopped to regurgitate an owl pellet! Some of us were a little surprised and disgusted by this untimely event! We had assumed owls digested and disposed of their food in the same way we do!

Luckily, Mrs Kiernan was on hand with her trusty laptop to investigate the possibility of us having some owl pellets to gently dissect in school! The first time we all gathered together to look at the contents of a pellet, Frankie thought she was going to be sick! Using gloves, tweezers and a wooden probe to prise apart the pellet, we discovered bones, fur and feathers. The bone identification chart told us we had spines, skulls, ribs and jaw bones. The owl had eaten rodents including mice and shrews for dinner. 

The smell was a little pungent in the classroom so Mrs Kiernan has been taking smaller groups outside to look at their own pellets more closely. Look at the pictures below to see what we've discovered...

Friday 4th February 2022

We all got quite excited when a set of ramps and toy cars appeared in our Science lesson this week! After a quick reminder about what a 'fair test' is and a discussion about variables, we worked in groups to see how far our car would travel beyond the end of a ramp if we changed the surface. Some of our surfaces included carpet, artificial grass, cling film, fabric and baking paper. Our ramps had to stay at the same height, the same person let the car go each time from the top of the ramp and we measured accurately to the nearest point of the car. We all worked brilliantly in our table groups and Mrs Evans gave out some house points for teamwork!

Friday 7th January 2022

Happy new year!

We kicked off our new term with a great walk around Brington. Not everyone in our class comes from the village so we needed to make sure we knew what our surroundings were. We had pieces of paper full of photographs of items and details to look for and we stopped by each one to have a discussion and ask questions. We bumped into a lovely gentleman called Tony who answered our questions about his unusual barn and also the gentleman who owns the building that was previously the Brington School. This was about four hundred years ago and you can still see the coat pegs inside! We are allowed to go and visit whenever we like!

Here are some of the things we learnt on our walk:

• Sometimes in the past, thatchers would put straw animals on the top of their rooves to show who did the work!
• We had a good discussion about the postbox and telephone box by the old post office (which isn't actually the original post office!) We now know what ER stands for!
• You can tell how a house is heated from the outside - we saw chimneys and flues on our walk (including a flue that was working perfectly!)
• The hidden stone in the bush by the actual real original post office used to be Brington market place, where local people would trade goods. The cross on the top was removed when Oliver Cromwell passed through the village.

The bonus spotting was a roe deer in the churchyard!

Have a look at these pictures and see if you can tell what they are. Ask us if you can't work it out!

Monday 13th December 2021

Today was memorable!!! It was a normal day until... we made CHRISTINGLES! Then we joined the Ely Cathedral service and we watched it virtually by live stream as we couldn't be there in person. Bishop Dagmar led us in prayers and carols. We all laughed when Sarah came to the service as an inflatable orange and dressed up as a human Christingle! It was funny to see an oversized fruit walking up the aisle!

This is how we made the Christingles in school:

1. We got an orange and used four cocktail sticks to pin a red ribbon down.

2. On the cocktail sticks, we threaded sweets and raisins.

3. We made a hole in the top of the orange and pushed a candle in with a piece of foil underneath for safety.

The orange represents the world, the candle represents Jesus (the light of the world), the red ribbon represents the blood of Christ or the love of God and the four cocktail sticks with sweets and raisins on represent the good things that God provides for us through the seasons. 

We have been talking and learning about the symbolism of light in different religions this half term and this was a lovely way to end our RE unit (although it was terribly frustrating when we weren't allowed to eat the sweets!).

Friday 3rd December 2021

Today we had a fabulous English lesson about Edgar and the little girl. We are using the John Lewis advert about a dragon at Christmas who gets over-excited and accidentally burns things down! Our objective was to learn how to 'show, not tell'. This means that instead of saying 'the dragon was happy', we should show he is happy by describing his facial expressions and movements. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:

• When Edgar is excited, his eyes go all big like juicy apples and they twinkle. His wings open up and he runs like he has never been this ecstatic in his life. He reveals his claws and his nose starts to scrunch up.
• When Edgar is ashamed of himself, his face doesn't light up. His shoulders and arms droop and his wings go all saggy like a wet paper bag. 
• When the girl is concerned, she frowns and her eyebrows move to the middle of her face. She looks to the side and sighs loudly.

At the end of the advert, you feel happy because Edgar has tried to put everything right again and sets the Christmas pudding on fire in a calm and controlled manner! We smile and clap each time we watch it but not before we have shed a few tears. Keep a close eye on our class webpage to see our finished audio descriptions in two weeks...

Wednesday 24th November 2021

Today was 'Children in Need' day at Brington! We had to bring money to school so that we could wear 'home' clothes and lots of us remembered to bring bags of pennies too.

We were split into groups and sent to scour the school grounds for as many sticks as we could find! We wrote out this week's spelling words using sticks, leaves and mud. Then we played 'Shut the box' using natural, outdoor supplies. It was a bit trickier than playing in the classroom but much more fun!

After break, we spent a few minutes looking at images of nature and leaf art created by artists such as Andy Goldsworthy. Working individually, in pairs and in small teams, we made patterns with leaves, pebbles, berries and sticks. 

This afternoon, we had an interesting investigation into books for our Christmas lists! Mrs Evans will put the  links on Google Classroom later! We took a quick break to add to the 'Penny Pudsey' on the playground. Finally, we gathered our last sticks to make stars, trees and snowflakes to decorate the classroom. 

Today has been BOSH and totally optimal!  Check out the pictures of our work below...

Wednesday 17th November 2021

The week so far has been a blast! Just this morning, we met Maz Evans on a video chat. Are you wondering who Maz Evans is? She’s a famous author who has written fourteen books in her life so far. Her most popular is ‘Who Let the Gods Out?’, a story about a young boy who has to retrieve the Earth Stone from the Imperial State Crown. This sounds fairly straightforward, you might think, but he has a death daemon on his tail and he is being assisted by a team of oddly-modern but hapless Greek gods and goddesses! It has been our class read for the last few weeks and we are almost at the end. We can’t decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Good job there are three more books in the series…

In RE, we have been working in pairs to create a collage to share our thoughts and feelings about light and dark. In Science lessons, we have been working on creating circuits of electricity and this week we were investigating switches.