Blog 15/12/2021
Grrr Christmas jumpers, Grrr tinsel, Grrrrrr Christmas carols and Grrrr Christmas cards!!
That’s right, it’s the final week of the autumn term and Hawthorn have thoroughly enjoyed ridding Mr Frewin of his Grinchiness! They’ve serenaded him with carols and etched garish depictions of snowflakes and Santas onto the back of his retinas with vivid Christmas knit wear. Of course, I jest. Christmas in school is a magical time of year, we can all reflect on a successful term and allow ourselves to float along with Chagford school Christmas traditions.
I gave them the choice of a final PE session or Christmas hat making and of course, to my horror they chose hat making. Some of the creations were truly spectacular. I’m really sorry I haven’t got a picture of them all wearing their hats, but after the class had been turned into what looked like the battlefield of a confetti fight, we had to spend the last 10 minutes of the session manically tidying or risk our Christmas dinners being served to empty seats.
We did decide on some prizes:
Kit created the most original. His was a giant mug of hot chocolate to keep you warm on a cold (not this year!??) Christmas eve.
Ruby won the prize for most colourful. She used both pen and tissue paper to really bring her creation to life.
The most Christmassy award went to Ollie for his giant Santa head.
Finally, the best made went to Lily for her fully covered Santa hat made completely from paper.
Once the bin was as full as saint Nick’s sack, we paraded down to the hall for our Christmas feast.
The food was delightful- Mikey ate at least 8 sausages and more than one member of the class managed to wangle a second helping of dessert!
But it hasn’t all been Christmas this week. In English we had a brief recap on using conjunctions correctly as this was an area we felt the class needed a bit more guidance on. The misconceptions mainly centred on the very subtle differences in meaning between those tricky subordinating conjunctions. I challenge you to define and compare while and as.
Mr Frewin finally got the display up of the classes work (Yay!) do please come and have a look. If your child’s work did not make it onto the board, please do ask to see their work since everyone worked really hard in completing it and it would be a shame for it to stay in my folder until it goes home at the end of the year.
In maths we have continued to wrestle with multiplication and division. This week’s focus has been the fantastic 9 times table (so many tricks to learn) Try challenging your child to tell you if any number is in the 9 times table. And I mean any, go as big as you want.
The next post I write will be from the New Year where will be embarking on another exciting journey of discovery and learning.
In maths we will continue with our times table practice so any help you want to give your little angel over the holiday will be greatly appreciated.
In science we will be moving away from rocks (to be revisited later on in the year) and into the light- we will be learning about light.
We will be starting a new book in English called Leon and the place between. This is a text I am very fond of and cannot wait to hear everyone’s insights and understandings.
In History we will be studying the Anglo Saxons and Scots.
Of course, if you have any knowledge expertise, facts, literature, Google or anything else that you would like to share with your child please feel free to do so. It would be great if I could learn something new from each person to start the new year.
Thank you for all your support and enthusiasm this term. I honestly cannot wait to get this Christmas over with and back to the classroom with your wonderful sparky little darlings.
Bah Humbug

It’s been bitter sweet for Hawthorn class this week. They have had to really focus their efforts in a number of ways: from maths and reading assessments to singing practices and reading recitals. But the hard work has really paid off, with everyone finishing the week feeling rightfully proud of their achievements.

The carol service on Thursday has surely been the number one highlight. Even if it was a bit damp! The whole class conducted themselves beautifully and their angelic little voices are still soothingly flowing between my ears as I start my weekend. We are always blown away by every child’s Confidence, Courage and Composure when they are asked to stand up in front of an audience and perform. Well done Hawthorn and thank you to everyone that attended. The aforementioned three Cs were also on display during our English sessions. The children put the finishing touches to their journey stories. After some tweaks and fixes, everyone ensured their story included all of the features we have been focusing on this term: propositional phrases, a mixture of simple, compound and complex sentences for effect and elaborate descriptive noun phrases. These were used to help describe different settings as the reader was taken on a vivid imaginative journey.

We got the pens out for these to be written up neatly and everyone produced beautifully penned pieces of writing.

Once completed, every child brought their writing to life by reading their stories aloud in front of the class and camera.

We focused on change of pitch, clear intonation and appropriate pauses to help encapsulate their audience.

Even though the children have done two maths assessments this week, we have still maintained our focus on times tables. This week we concentrated on our 6s. Timestables are always good for parents to help out with as repetition of the facts is the best way to speed up recall. So please engage with TT Rockstars and any other times tables games you remember playing in your formative years.

Overall a very successful week for all Enjoy your weekends and we go again for the final week of term.

We’ve had to have a break from morning dances this week because our moves have been too uplifting for some of our neighbours- I can honestly say we’ve missed it! So much so that we’ve had to engage ourselves with some energetic games of tag! With the start of advent this week, our mornings have taken on a more Christmassy feel with the singing of carols being expertly led by Mrs Armstrong. It has been lovely having a big sing song each day. 
In class this week we have continued to use Marc Martin’s A River as a blueprint text to write our versions of the story. We drew our own scenes to travel through but instead of travelling on a boat we chose to soar above the settings in our magical imaginary aeroplane. Everyone did a really great job of writing a shared class version after some very careful collective planning. At the end of of the week, they individually planned their own versions of a journey story. These should be finished early next week. Once completed we will get some videos of them being read allowed. We can’t wait to hear their finished versions! 
Everyone has been working really hard in maths this week to get their heads around multiplying and divided by 10s and 100s. 
Well done to everyone that challenged themselves to complete an investigation, we have been really impressed by everyone’s organisation of their work. 
In science we started everyone’s favourite topic: ROCKS! 
This week we focused on igneous rocks and the two different types: extrusive and intrusive. Ask your child to see if they can explain the difference. 
I hope everyone enjoys their weekends. 
Ciao ​