“Da da dah dah, da da da da daahhh… it’s the final countdown… da da dah daaahhh…”

With that song firmly embedded in everyone’s minds, we have reached the final week of term 1! Hopefully everyone is planning a fun half-term break and are looking forward to time together at home! Like the sprightly young thing he is, I’m sure Mr Witcomb has many plans to be adventuring somewwhere. Personally, I plan on acting like sliced white bread… spending the break just loafing around…

In literacy, we have continued to work on non-fiction texts about the rainforest. We’ve talked about what is a ‘fact’ and what is an ‘opinion’ and looked at first and third person. This topic will continue after half term as we work on creating a piece of long writing about it!

We have begun to look at Judaism in R.E. over the past week. We read the story of Abraham and Sarah and the foundations of Judaism and discussed the ten commandments and how Moses retrieved them from the top of Mount Sinai. We also spent some time thinking of our own commandments for Sonning Common!

In music we have been enjoying listening to various ballads. Celine Dion made a appearance, as did Bryan Adams, The Cranberries, The Righteous Brothers, The Greatest Showman and Les Mis! Some of these songs were surprisingly popular with the children, and we spent some time thinking about what made a song a ballad. We followed that by editing ballads using some software to split the songs up. It’s amazing how different Bryan Adams sounds when he’s sped up to 220bpm, a dance anthem was created! We did try singing a couple of songs, however speaking for myself, I don’t tend to ‘hit’ the right notes as try to ambush them while their attention is elsewhere… the children were great though.

For the next term, we do have a plea… please could you double check your child’s pencil case over half term to ensure it contains an appropriate amount of stationery! There are a surprising number of totally empty pencil cases in drawers which, much like a broken pencil, is pointless. We would ask that children have: HB pencils (at least 2), a glue stick, a rubber, a pencil sharpener, a ruler and (maybe) some scissors. If your children are like mine shops like Smiggle are like catnip for kids (other stationery shops are available), however these items do not have to be anything expensive just functional!

Lastly, there will be no homework set for half-term. It would be great if the children to continue to read however!

That’s it for this week! Have a great break.

Mr Coates and Mr Witcomb