My name is Miss Pearce and I will be teaching Chestnut Class this year, along with the support of our lovely teaching assistant Mrs Stevens.

Chestnut Class is a mixed year 3/4 class. We will be working alongside both Ash and Beech class on our topics this year. In our class, we aim to try our best in all that we do. We will be challenging ourselves to learn new and exciting topics and most importantly enjoying ourselves in the process. We understand the importance of being able to communicate well with everyone we meet and to continue to develop our teamwork and cooperation skills.

We love reading books in Chestnut Class therefore the children are further encouraged to read at home in order to reach the reading ‘100 Club’. Stickers, certificates and prizes are awarded when children reach specific milestones on the journey to reading 100 times. These rewards can be obtained when a parent or guardian has both signed and dated the child’s reading journal.

We ask that PE kits remain in school all week in case of a change in timetable.

This is going to be a fun, memorable and hardworking year for Chestnut Class with engaging and enjoyable learning opportunities. We are excited about the journey ahead! Please keep checking back here to see pictures of what we get up to this academic year. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me.

Miss Pearce

It's Our World, Let's Look After It

The topic for Term 4 has been, ‘It’s Our World, Let’s Look After It’. Chestnut Class have been learning important facts about sea turtles, jellyfish and plastic pollution. Leaflets and posters have been created using Microsoft PowerPoint to warn people about endangered sea creatures and the importance of recycling our waste products. This topic coincided with our Year 3/4 trip to Carymoor Education Centre last week which was filled with exciting activities such as pond dipping and woodland walks. On our trip, we learned about the habitats of animals and sustainability. As a class, ocean art has been created using oil pastels and our fantastic observational drawing skills.  This has made our classroom excitingly colourful! We have really enjoyed this term and look forward to the next two terms ahead of us.

World Book Day

Chestnut Class had a fantastic World Book Day dressing up as some of our favourite story book characters. We particularly enjoyed parading around the school hall showing off our amazing costumes. Thank you very much to the parents/guardians who made such an effort into providing costumes for the children to wear and making our World Book Day so special!

Monet

In Term 3, each member of Chestnut Class painted a section of Monet’s famous painting ‘Bridge over the Pond of Waterlilies’. We used many skills to create our pieces including: experimenting with water colours and oil pastels, using viewfinders to focus on one section of a painting and looking at how to upscale it. Our final piece looks amazing in our classroom and we are so proud of our hard work!

Every Picture Tells a Story

Our topic this term is ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’ and the children have been focusing on the works of famous French artist, Claude Monet. We have researched Impressionism and we are creating our very own paintings in the style of Monet, using watercolour paints and oil pastels.

This week in our literacy sessions, we have been writing a first person narrative as the protagonist Katie from our guided reading text, ‘Katie and The Waterlily Pond’. We have particularly enjoyed creating freeze frames to capture important parts of the story which has enabled us to engage with the characters’ feelings through the use of thought tapping. Our enthusiasm for learning is exciting and we are very much looking forward to creating a collaborative art piece for our classroom wall.

Ancient Greeks

Chestnut Class have had an exciting start to term two. Our new topic this term is people who have changed the world in relation to Ancient Greeks. So far, we have been experiencing traditional Greek lifestyle and schooling and comparing it to the modern day. We have ordered events in Ancient Greek history on a timeline and written our very own myths! We are particularly looking forward to designing and creating an Ancient Greek lyre instrument.

Ancient Greece

A fun introduction to Ancient Greece exploring weaving by Greek slaves and crowns worn by Greek goddesses.
 

Pastel Portraits

Some great skills in chestnut class this afternoon. The children had to work very carefully to ensure their oil pastels didn’t smudge! After careful modelling from Miss Pearce, the children layered their colours to create skin tone and definition. 

Harvest

Chestnut Class have been learning about the importance of harvest this week. We have created our very own Kenning poem to highlight the messages of harvest such as growing and sharing food with those who need it. 

In Chestnut Class this week…

Chestnut Class have been focusing on how we are all different but all equal.

We have been creating self-portraits in art and plotting our places of birth on a world map in geography. Our online safety lessons have been particularly enjoyable where we have been designing our very own SMART rules posters.

Everyone has settled into school life brilliantly by having positive attitudes towards their learning and making new friends along the way. A great start to the new term!