Welcome to Kestrel Class!

Tuesday 19th May 

Good morning, I hope you enjoyed looking at yesterday's subject grid and deciding what you were going to do this week. Today is my chance to choose another piece of music and this week I have chosen  Count on Me. This song says everything about our connection with St. Peter's School in Kenya. It always makes me smile and it is a real reflection of what our community is about. I hope you sing along when you hear it.      

Monday 18th May

Good morning everyone and welcome to the last week of home-schooling before half-term and what a half-term it has been! I hope you enjoy making some lovely thank you cards this week and choosing who to send them to. I will be saying a great big thank you to everyone who works at Butleigh School with me. What a great team of caring people.

I hope that you all have a go at writing a 50-word story. I have chosen three photos from the Scottish Book Trust sight to inspire you. Let your imagination run free. Please send me a photo of your work or even the real thing by post!   

Thursday 14th May 

Scroll down for my French video about the weather. 

All about fractions

Next I have made a little sequence of videos talking about unit fractions. That means the numerator is 1. You could have one half, one third or one quarter. 

You can find a fraction of a whole thing like a cake, a piece of string or a snickers bar. Or you can find a fraction of a group of things like a pack of cards or lots of equally-sized Lego bricks. How many different ways can you show the fractions one half, one third and one quarter?

Thursday 14th May

More letters and photos have arrived for our Let's Share page. Please keep sending them in. They're not just for me, although I am loving  them. They are also keeping us connected to one another.  

This is the first of my videos today and it is about the fortune teller I put on Monday’s star button. 

BREAKING NEWS

How lovely to receive my first letter. Thank you Ollie, you have made my day. Head over to Let’s Share to read it. 🙂

Tuesday 12th May 

Today is Desert Island Disc day and I wanted to choose some music that I would have been listening to when I was your age. Doe a deer is a song from the musical The Sound of Music and our family watched that film every Christmas for as long as I can remember. Four years ago when I was walking the first stage of the El Camino walk through France and Spain, my friend and I would sing that song at the top of our voices when we were struggling to keep going on our daily 20km walks. I wonder what songs you will be able to sing 50 years after you first heard them!   

Monday 11th May

Dear Parents, I am sure,  by now,  you will know a lot more about how your child learns. In teaching we always to try and balance our teaching input to include visual learning (including reading and watching the interactive whiteboard) , auditory learning (listening to adults, videos  and each other) and kinaesthetic learning (the doing bit including writing, drawing and making).  Some children have a preferred style but most respond to a mixture of all three. 

It is hard to get this balance right when you are planning on-line learning so I hope you are managing to adapt what I am putting on the subject grid to help your child. It is a massive learning curve for all of us and I can't thank you enough for what you are doing. Don't worry if not everything works or if you don't feel that you are doing as much as you may see other parents doing. The most important thing is: that your child(ren) is/are  engaged in learning of some form; that they they are as happy and calm as they can be in the present circumstances and that you are all safe.

This week there is quite a lot of reading involved in some of the tasks. It is fine for you to take turns reading with your child and for questions to be answered verbally. Similarly,  composing and writing a letter with your child to send to me could be a joint venture if they feel overwhelmed by the idea of putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard. 

My letter to Kestrels class is just underneath here. I hope you enjoy reading it together and I look forward to your replies.

Love from Mrs Crowe     

Thursday 7th May

Today I would like your help. We would like to produce a new set of Our School Prayer cards for us to use in assemblies at school

and in church. You will need an A4 piece of paper with ruled lines on it. There is a one with a rainbow border in today’s star button you can print out if you are lucky enough to have a printer at home. Copy out the words from the photo below in your best handwriting and save your work carefully for when we come back. 

We have bunting up ready for VE Day celebrations tomorrow. It would be lovely to hear what you are doing? Enjoy the bank holiday. Love from Mrs Crowe

Tuesday 5th May

Yes it's that time of the week when I add my 3rd  Desert Island  Disc. Remember our music unit is all about listening to and appreciating music. The song I have chosen is Adventure of a Lifetime by Coldplay. This is the song the whole school sang and danced to at the end of our production of A Midsummer's Night Dream. It was such a joyful occasion it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. I hope it makes you happy. 

Monday 4th May

Hello and welcome to a new week of home learning. There are new suggestions for learning activities on the subject grid. I have also transferred some of the hyper links from previous weeks to websites that I think are useful, engaging or fun to the ‘website links’ button. Remember you don’t have to complete all the activities but they are there to help give your day some structure and help your child to stay engaged in the learning process. If you can have a look at the class page each day it will help your child(ren) to feel connected to school. I look forward to reading another story this week and hearing about what you have been up to. 
Love to all of you and your families from Mrs Crowe

Happy May Day to everyone!

I hope you have enjoyed lots of the home learning activities this week. You might want to look back at the star buttons for each day to see if there is any information or any activities that you have missed that you might enjoy. It has been great to receive your photos and to see what you are up to at home. There have been lots of IXL certificates coming into my inbox. Well done to all of you who are busily answering questions or practising your skills. I love the work you are doing on volcanoes it is very creative. Keep sending me your work, keep  looking at the website and most importantly keep safe. Love from Mrs Crowe

15:30 Update 🙂

Put Chichester Festival Theatre in your search engine and access the play from there. 👍
 

Stop Press 12:10

I have just looked on the Chichester Festival Theatre website and the screening of The Midnight Gang does not start until after 13:00. 🙂

Thursday 30th April

Good morning everyone on a rainy day in Somerset. This weather made me think of all those rainy days I had to get through when my three children were small. One of their favourite activities was to build a den and then get all their toys and play games with them in the den. Creative play or imaginary games are a really important part of child development. At this time where children are not socialising it’s really important that they are still practising their conversation skills and playing with their toys is a great way to do this. So the sofa bed in the living room has come out and our big ted has been retrieved from the airing cupboard. I don’t know what my husband is going to say! 

Recordings of Live Theatre Shows on You Tube

Many theatres are making recordings of their shows available on You Tube free of charge. I was sent details about an adaptation of David Walliam’s book The Midnight Gang by Chichester Festival Theatre. The show is available from today! 

Tuesday 28th April

Good morning to you all and what a different type of day this is. Still the rain will be very good for all those plants that we have been learning about. I  know some of you have had a look at the Book of  Hopes I posted on here yesterday. I had a good look last night. All the stories are 500 words or less and are written by some of our most famous children's authors. Today I will be getting my daughter to video me reading the story A Way to the Stars written by David Almond. 

I chose this story because it ties in really well with my second music choice. I love music that tells you a story and this piece of music does it really well. It is called Space Oddity and is by a very famous musician called David Bowie. See if you can hear him playing the guitar as well as singing. Some of you may also have heard a version of this recorded just recently praising Captain Tom Moore who has raised such a lot of money for the NHS. This piece of music may inspire you to do a drawing or painting of space or build a lego spacecraft. 

Whatever you do today, remember to try your best, do something that stretches you a little and most importantly be kind to the people you are sharing your home with.

Love from Mrs Crowe 

Monday 27th April

Good Morning, here we go again for our second week of the summer term. I hope week one went well. I'm still working on putting documents on the page that you can print (if you have a printer). Remember these grids are home learning suggestions. If your child is struggling with a task, don't let that become a big obstacle. Go back to something they can do. We all know that teaching is not just about completing worksheets. It's about developing an understanding of a subject and finding different methods of teaching concepts. At the moment keeping your child happy and healthy is the most important thing. 

I am being sent lots of online resources at the moment. I have added some of these to the useful websites link but this one in particular caught my eye. I am looking forward to seeing what is in it when it goes live today.

 https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/9-12/book-hopes/

Friday 24th April

Good morning everyone. We’ve made it to the end of the first week of the Summer Term. I hope your week has gone well and that you are getting back into the swing of home learning. Keep going with all the home learning suggestions on here and remember it is important to take breaks, stay out of the panic zone and be kind to one another. 
I thought it would be nice to mark  the end of this week by posting our school prayer. Our school is so much more than a building. Love to you all. Mrs Crowe

❤️

Thursday 23rd April

Look what arrived in the post yesterday at my house. A.F. Harrold sent an extra poem on a postcard to keep our spirits up!

Wednesday 23rd April

Good morning everyone. 
I had a look at the weekly subject grid and those links that did not work. For the topic activity I have put the worksheet I was trying to link to in today’s star button. I have also found a great website for information about volcanoes and lots of other things called Primary Homework Help. I have also put a copy of the Covid-19 Time Capsule booklet on this page. The RE link that did not work can be reached by typing in BBC Bitesize KS2 RE. On this page you will find a button that says What is Islam. This is a good starting point to remind you about key aspects of the Islam faith. After this section you will then find a section called What is Ramadan? This has a short video and information about this festival. Joe Wicks can be found on YouTube but don’t forget there are lots of other ways yo keep healthy . 
I am writing quite a lot everyday on our class page. Maybe you could take turns to  read my messages to you. I hope you all have a good day. Love from Mrs Crowe

Good morning Kestrels Class, and what a lovely day it is.

This morning I settled down at 8:55am to watch the BBC Bitesize programmes. Today I watched the  programme for 5-7 year olds too and I thought that had some useful learning tips in it. I am loving Supermovers. I am going to do those in class when we get back to school. 

In the programme for 7-9 year olds, Miss Webb talked a lot about how to make your writing more interesting by using noun phrases (containing adjectives as well as nouns) and also preposition phrases which tell you when or where things happen. Once you have watched the programme go online for the daily Bitesize Maths and English lessons. I am also downloading worksheets from these on to the website but these will be easier if you can get a chance to do the lessons online. 

Miss Webb and Karim also discussed abstract nouns. These  are naming words for feelings and are often used in music. They suggested you write your own song. What a great idea! And that leads me beautifully into sharing with you the first song I have chosen to take to my desert island.

Desert Island Discs is a very famous Radio 4 programme. Famous or well-known people are interviewed on it and choose 9 pieces of music they would take to a Desert Island if they were marooned there all on their own. They talk to the interviewer about why they have chosen a particular piece of music. Often people choose a piece of music because it has a special meaning for them. Sometimes it's just because they really like it!

So my first choice is 'I just called to say I love you' by Stevie Wonder. This song is special to me for two reasons. The first is that it brings back memories of a very special family meal I had when I was 50. The hotel we had lunch in had an accordionist and he played this song for us as I danced with my Dad. My Dad was a fantastic ballroom dancer and I loved to dance with him. My second reason is that when my family are away I love to ring them up and just tell them I love them for no particular reason. The recording I have chosen was made at Glastonbury Festival where I saw Stevie Wonder perform live. I love the festival and I love to hear the crowd in front of the Pyramid stage singing along. 

So your challenge is to start making your list of nine pieces of music that you love. Don't forget you can ask your family for ideas. You could make a family list or everyone might want to make their own list. You might want to do a drawing or painting inspired by your choices.

I am going to try and upload an audio track here for you to listen to but I have also copied a link to you tube of this song being sung at Glastonbury. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Ylf4EoiIU

Well that took me quite some time to do! Now that I’ve done it though I feel really good. But that’s the thing about entering the stretch zone. It is challenging but it’s also rewarding. So how are you going to stretch yourself this week? 

MONDAY 20TH APRIL

BBC Red Button Education Programmes and BBC Bitesize Daily Lessons

This morning I have had my first attempt at using the BBC education package launched today. I wanted to share some thoughts with you, the parents, because I think it could be a great resource for everyone but  I think it will take a little time to get used to it. 

1. The TV programme part is aimed at Year 3s and Year 4s (7-9 years) and lasts about 20 minutes. I missed it live so watched it on BBCi.player. I think it starts at 9:20 am but can't find anything to verify this.

2. Today you would have thought they had asked me what we had been learning in Kestrels. They featured: a fun Supermovers video about rounding(very important for children to know); information about partitioning and place value; a poem from the poetry book Please Mrs Butler and information about the Romans. It was all good stuff and presented in a fun,friendly way. It also may give you  the chance to stop and have a cuppa if you can or catch up on jobs. 

3.  I then went on to the BBC Bitesize site and this is where they give daily lessons for Year 3s and Year 4s separately in both English and Maths. There are videos, worksheets and games. They explain what the children have to do clearly. If your child is struggling with a lesson you could always look at the one for the year below and see if that helps them.

4. There are other lessons on Bitesize which do not necessarily tie in with our current topics but might interest your child e.g. the music lessons. I don't see any problem with letting them have a look as long as they don't become glued to the screen. 

I know that at the moment there are lots of new initiatives for home learning and a lot of people on twitter for instance are talking about becoming overwhelmed (panic zone). Try and work out what is right for you and your child. Remember we're only on day 1 of the Summer Term. 

Good luck with everything.  

Good Morning everyone, 

How are you all doing? I hope you are not too mean to your parents on April Fools Day. I am missing not being pinched or punched (gently) by lots of you at school on the first day of the month. I hope you enjoyed the Lego video clip and that some of you will have been inspired to construct or make a festival booth. Today I am going to put the rules up for the Ekphrastic Poetry Competition for those of you who want to do it. The deadline for entries has been extended to when we go back to school.

You could always find your own painting or drawing to write a poem about if you want. Look at paintings and drawings is good for the soul so why not visit an art gallery online and look at some paintings. 
 

How is your reading going. I am a bit worried that some of the Michael Morpurgo books might be a bit ‘heavy’ for the current situation. As long as you’re reading I’m happy. So choose something that you are going to enjoy. Get an old favourite out from home. Books are really comforting and picture books are lovely. I loved to read Shirley Hughes books to my children and her illustrations just make me feel happy. Ask your mum or dad what books they read as a child. 

Ten Things Found in a Dog Lover’s Pocket by Mrs Crowe

A poo bag.

A crunchy biscuit.

A bouncy ball.

A piece of cheese.

A lead.

A mobile phone (to take a cute picture).

Another poo bag - just in case.

A rain mac - for me not Binky.

A towel - for Binky not me.

A doggy chocolate drip.
 

Hope that has inspired you to write your own poem. 🙂 

Finding out about the Romans
 

On Wednesday 18th March, Tom from Steamhorse Interactive spent the day with us teaching us about many aspects of Roman History from what it was like in the Roman army to the importance of Pompeii in teaching us about Roman daily life. 
Take a look at these photos and videos to get a taste of the day. We all had a fantastic time.
 

Learning how to march.

And finally a battle between the Romans and the Celts!