Crick Primary School

Welcome to Mercury Class

Mrs Morris is our class teacher

Miss Hinchcliffe is our teaching assistant

Click here to see what we are learning about in Mercury Class this term!

Things to Note:

• Children can bring a healthy snack in from home to eat during morning playtime (fruit is preferable). 
• We will be swimming on Mondays from now until Easter and our PE session is on a Wednesday. Please ensure your child has indoor and outdoor PE kit as we will be going outside whatever the weather. 
• Spellings will be given out and tested on Mondays. 
• Homework will be given out every Friday, this is then due in the following Thursday.

Celebrating our Home Learning (March/April/may/june 2020)

During the school closure the children have been set various learning activities to complete. Well done to everyone! In celebration of the children's efforts at home, here is some of the work completed so far:

Science 

In science the children have been looking at life-cycles. They drew the life-cycle of a flower and then dissected and labelled the parts of a flower. Well done to Ellouise and Ellie who sent pictures of their work.

Soar - Sentence Stackers

Well done to Maisie, Will O and  Anna who sent in their 'chunks'. Can you guess which 'chunk' inspired their writing? Send yours in, maybe we could tell the whole Soar story. You can watch the film here!

Wishing stories

We have really enjoyed reading your wishing stories. Well done to Macey, Lizzie, Will, Freya, William and Naomi who sent their stories in, have a read of them below.

Solar System

In science the children have been learning about our solar system. To finish this unit of work, the children were challenged to 'make' their own model of our solar system. Well done to Will, Lizzie, Max and Gracelyn for sending in their ideas.

Angles - well done to Maisie and Anna for sending their work in.

The children have been learning about angles. They have been finding them in real life, measuring acute and obtuse angles using a protractor and then drawing them. The discovered there are 180 degrees on a straight line and 360 degrees in a full turn. Here is some of their work. Can you work out what type of angles they found?

T4W Non-chronological report

Well done to Lizzie, Will O, Maisie, Fraser and Emily for writing fabulous information texts on imaginary creatures. They are a great read!

Sundials:

Well done Fraser, Ellie, Macey and Will, these are fabulous! Can you see what the time is?

Talk 4 writing stories: Well done Gracelyn, Will, Fraser and Lizzie on writing super stories!

Ellie has put together this wonderful PowerPoint of activities to raise funds for the NHS. Well done Ellie!

STEAM activities: Well done Anna and Will O!

Persuasive leaflets: Well done Will M, Lizzie, Ellie ,Maisie, Fraser and Will PW!

 Spring Haiku/Tanka: Well done Will, Fraser, Naomi, Macey, Max, Gracelyn, William, Ellie, Maisie and Lizzie!

Our Summer 1 Topic is:

Earth & Space

Springtime Poetry writing

We used the outdoors as a stimulus for our poetry writing focusing particularly on imagery. First of all, we visited the library to identify imagery in poetry books and then we collected ideas in pairs or small groups. We then wrote group poems using our ideas collected during our outdoor learning.

planting

During our topic work we learnt about food eaten by the Maya, the Native American people and the Pilgrims. We kept the seeds of the butternut squash (similar to pumpkin) that we used to make soup  for our Thanksgiving meal and planted the seeds alongside some sweetcorn seeds. We plan to plant the seedlings into our class planting area, and then harvest the vegetables in Autumn. Can you tell which seedling is which?

The maya

As part of our history work linked to our topic (a non-European society that provides contrasts with British history) we researched the Maya 
civilization (c. AD 900) and then used T4W strategies to plan and write a non-chronological report.

Fireside storytelling

We shared our Native American myths around the fire, whilst eating cookies (made by Molly) and drinking hot chocolate! Yum!

Amazing Americas WOW days

We had a wonderful time immersing ourselves the Americas. We started with North America and learnt about the Native Americans, the Pilgrims and the Thanksgiving celebration. We made totem poles and dream catchers learning about the traditions of Native Americans and how their stories are extremely important. We read the story of the Pilgrims and learnt why they settled in North America and how difficult life was for them in the beginning. We then prepared and cooked a Thanksgiving meal of pumpkin soup (we used butternut squash as pumpkins were not available) and cornbread, which was delicious. 

Our Spring topic is:

The Amazing Americas

History Detectives

To bring an end to our topic 'Plot, Parliament and Plague', we acted as history detectives and took a tour of the village using the Crick History Society's Historic Village Trail leaflet. We were looking for evidence of the Stuart era; we found a lot! Many of the houses in Crick were around during the  reign of Charles I and the Battle of Naseby; in fact some of the children live in them today! We followed the trail locating over 20 properties from the Stuart era, we demonstrated our photographic skills, taking pictures using the ipads in our table groups. Our skills improved greatly over the morning. Here are some of our photographs; we noticed many of the houses had thatched roofs and we talked about why this was. Mrs Morris also told us the story of The Royal Oak and how it is said that Charles I hid from the Parliamentarians in an oak tree, hence the name!

Remembrance

We visited St Margaret's Church to view the war graves in the churchyard and to take a moment to remember those villagers who gave their lives in various conflicts around the world. As a mark of respect to the fallen, we took some time to write Remembrance poems which have now been bound in a class book.  We hope you enjoy reading them when you visit school.

Reading

During our reading sessions we have been using different formats for our guided reading book reviews. Here are some of our video reviews for The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo.

Crack's Hill - Geography

We visited Crack's Hill again, this time with Year 6, to study the physical and human features of the landscape; ask us what we found out. We also took the opportunity to sketch the landscape and think about how the human features have changed the landscape. It was a lot wetter than last time we went!

Drama

We used the dramatic techniques of  'Conscience Alley' and 'Thought Tracking' to support our letter writing. We were acting in role as either Guy Fawkes or Robert Catesby and supporters of the King or the plotters.

Crack's Hill - History

We walked to Crack's Hill to view the route Charles I and his troops took from Daventry to Naseby during the English Civil War. We looked at how the landscape and land use has changed from then to now; the fields were different in the 1600's, much smaller, with more hedgerows. 

JEWELleRY making - DT

We looked at the jewellery worn during the Stuart era and then chose our own designs to replicate.

Stuart wow Day at Holdenby HousE

 We joined Year 6, and had a fabulous time learning about life in Stuart times. This included making felt, learning a minuet dance and taking part in a pike drill. We were then very privileged to follow in the steps of Charles I , who was imprisoned at Holdenby House following the Civil War, touring the house and gardens including the church. We all had a super time bringing our own British history to life!

Science

This term we are learning about forces. We made paper aeroplanes and took our learning outside to learn about the forces acting on them.

Our Autumn topic is:

Plot, Parliament & Plague

Mercury class 2018/19

Science

We took our learning outside today and planted our potatoes, beans, peas and sunflowers so that we can appreciate the life cycles of plants in action. We had to weed the beds first though! We are going to see whether our peas planted in compost and put into the cloches germinate before our beans in their indoor greenhouses. What do you think?

Our topic this term is:

Hard times

To finish off our topic 'Hard Times', we will be looking at life in the Edwardian era and in particular focusing on RMS Titanic.

Our class assembly

For our class assembly, we shared our learning of life during the Victorian times.

Science

In science, we have been looking at living things and their habitats. We looked at the life-cycles of amphibians, insects, birds and mammals and used watercolour pencils to draw and colour our choice of life-cycle. We then dissected plants, studied the illustrations of Charles Darwin and then drew and coloured our own anatomically correct diagrams of a flower.

Art & Design

In art this term, we looked at the printing style of the Victorian designer William Morris. We designed and printed our own wallpapers in his style.

Victorian WOW Day

For our Victorian WOW day, Mrs Morris turned our classroom into a Victorian classroom. We spent the morning learning our three R's, experiened drill and we even had a visit from the school inspector. We made some Victorian bread and thoroughly enjoyed eating it!

Our Spring 1 topic is:

Toro! Toro!

We will be focusing on Andalucia in Spain, which is where the novel Toro! Toro! is set.

Toro! toro! WOW

We spent our WOW day preparing, cooking and eating a delicious array of tapas and traditional Spanish foods. We also created our own versions of Joan Miro's The Lady and Bird sculpture and Picasso's Owl. We then put our own spin on the artwork of Estban Murillo - The Women at a Window,  we hope you enjoy looking at them!

Crack's Hill

We visited Crack's Hill to look at the physical & human characteristics of our locality. We noticed that humans have had a huge impact on the environment, but some human features have a more positive impact than others. We also wondered if we could see the curvature of the earth in relation to our science topic Earth & Space. We decided it was easy to realise how people in the past believed the earth was flat. We talked about the people who had lived on Crack's Hill in the past and why they chose to live there and about the formation of the hill during the last ice age. We had a fabulous time taking our learning outside!

Our Autumn term topic is:

World War One

The Imperial War Museum

We had a fantastic time exploring the World War 1 exhibits at the Imperial War Museum, London with Neptune class, to finish off our unit of work on the Great War. There were many interactive exhibits, with the trench being our favourite.

Cryptographers at work!

In the afternoon of Outdoor Classroom Day, we took our Computing unit outdoors. We are learning about cryptography, and used semaphore to send each other messages. It was very tricky!

Jubilee Wood

We celebrated Outdoor Classroom Day by visiting Jubilee Wood. We had a super run around and played hide and seek and then looked at where we had planted poppy seeds in the Spring. We found some moss and Mrs Morris told us how it was used in the First World War to treat wounds. We then visited 'Tommy' and sketched him. We sat on the memorial bench and thought about the sacrifice made by the fallen soldiers in World War One. We felt very sad for them.

In Flanders Fields

We are learning the war poem 'In Flanders Fields' by John McCrae. We worked together to think about the meaning behind the poem and how the poet intended us to read it.

Armistice Festival

Today some of the children painted poppies onto stones which will be displayed in Rugby Town centre as part of the Armistice Festival 2018. The children looked very carefully at the features of the poppies and worked diligently to paint their designs carefully. 

Re-start a Heart

We were recently visited by members of the ambulance service who taught us basic CPR, so that we know how to help should there be a medical emergency.

War Horse

We used this clip from The Literacy Shed to inspire our writing about Joey's life. Come in and see our work!

WW1

We used drama to support our understanding of events that prompted the start of World War One.

Fantastic resources to support learning and homework activities

• Nrich - We use this site to develop our reasoning and problem solving skills in mathematics. Have a look around and try some of the activities. Typical activities we may use range from Stage 1** to Stage 2**.
• Mathsframe - The children will find lots of maths games and activities here to support their learning in class.
• Brick Blaster 5 - This website supports children's mental addition skills
• Brick Blaster 6 - This website supports children's mental subtraction skills
• Purple Mash - resources to support the whole curriculum. Homework may also be set using the 'To Do' tab.