Welcome Back!

Happy Friday everybody! What a fantastic first full week we've had in Birch Class this week from re-enactments of battles to singing workshops. I have been so impressed with all the hard work the kids have been up to since we started and you can read all about it below.

Last week, we did a piece of writing based on a story we read called "The Castle the King Built". The children realised that the message of the story was that every member of the community is essential to build a community not just the most important or powerful member like the king. They then wrote "The School Mr Finch Built" which produced some very funny results. Ask your kids about it and see what they came up with!

We've started our place value topic this week and have looked at numbers all the way up to a million! The kids have been working really hard on this and I'm impressed with how quickly they've all started to pick it up!

They were most excited about history, where we have started to look at some medieval monarchs. The first one we looked at was William I, also known as William the Conqueror. After examining the context of his conquest and why he had a claim to the throne in the first place as a Norman duke, we then went down to the amphitheatre. One student played Harold Godwinson, the short-lived English King, and another student played William. The rest of the children divided between them with the English side being slightly bigger as it is believed they had a slightly bigger army. I played the narrator and the children acted out the story as I told it: the advantageous position of the English army on top of a hill and the Norman's struggle to shoot arrows at them, the confusion caused by the rumour of William's death and his heroic appearance in front of his army at the last moment, the military trick that the Normans played by retreating to get the English to follow and how they surrounded them and defeated them. One student even got to act out the historically debated death of Harold Godwinson, who may or may not have been shot in the eye with an arrow. 

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We also had a wonderful singing workshop on Thursday in preparation for the Whiddon Down Festival performance on Sunday. I hope to see a few of you there. It is bound to be a spectacular performance!

I hope everyone has a well-deserved rest over the long weekend and I can't wait to get back into it next week!