A BIG Thank You!

As you are no doubt aware, it has been a very busy Spring half-term at Rise Park Primary School! We have had a visit from the OFSTED inspectors [who were all terribly nice], two Parents Evenings, a book fair and a student teacher working in 4S! It was wonderful to see so many parents supporting their children at both of the Parents Evening meetings, and Mr. Shadbolt was really happy to have a chance to share all of 4S's achievements.

The three weeks left before the end of the Spring term will also be very busy in year four! The deadline for our Animals & Habitats homework project will soon be here, and we will all be going to Twycross Zoo to learn more about this wonderful science topic. There is also a trip to the E-Learning Centre at Top Valley School to work on our D&T project on purses and wallets, and the Annual Rise Park Easter Egg Competition for Key Stage 2 children.

Phew! There's still so much to do!

Poetry - Exploring Form

The children [and Mr. Shadbolt] have been looking at lots of different types of poetry as part of their Literacy lessons this week. They read some examples of each of the different poems, and even had a go at writing their own... although some were trickier than others!

The first type of poem that they looked at was a haiku; a traditional Japanese poem of three lines that follows a very simple structure - the first line of the poem must have five syllables, the second line must have seven syllables, and the third line must have five syllables.

Here are two that 4S wrote together in class:

Comedy Face
Mr. Shadbolt is
A pretty funny teacher.
Well - funny looking!

Absent
Mrs. Bell's not here;
Blame the invisible time
Table on her wall.

Homework - Animals & Their Habitats

This term’s Homework Project will be based on our science topics: ‘Habitats’ and ‘Moving and Growing’.  The children have shown great enthusiasm so far and have contributed many animal facts to the class discussions. As this is such a short term we will only be setting one piece of homework that will be due in the week prior to the Easter Holiday [week beginning 19th March].

We would like your child to investigate a habitat of their choice such as the arctic, the rainforest, the jungle, pond, desert, ocean, woodland, river bank etc. They will need to create an information poster or model of that habitat.  

We would then like the children to use their imagination in order to generate their own animal that will live in their chosen habitat.  Your child will need to consider how the animal is suited to the habitat e.g. does it have lots of fur as it is in a cold climate? Is it camouflaged to suit the environment? Does it have prickles or horns to warn off other predators that are in their chosen environment?  This needs to be drawn and labelled indentifying its features.

Homework - Tudor Explorers

A huge thank you to everyone who produced something for our Tudor Explorers homework project during the Autumn term. We had a great variety of projects, from posters to potatoes! Here is a small selection of some of the children's work from 4S and 4CB. Enjoy!

Ben Pratt-Hall - Poster

Gurneet Johal - John Hawkins Powerpoint

Nathan Thorne - Poster

Charlotte Mellor - Galleon Painting

Happy New Year!

Welcome back to the Spring term at Rise Park! We had a fantastic Autumn term in 4S, and all of the children made a great start to their time in year four. A huge thank you to all of the parents and carers who attended the Christmas Production this year - the children and the staff thoroughly enjoyed putting on the show, and Mr. Shadbolt's voice has now thoroughly recovered after his fantastic solo performance! We hope that you had a really nice Christmas and a great New Year, and enjoyed the holidays.

Back to school, and this term 4S will be:

• Learning about newspapers and different types of poetry in Literacy
• Setting up our own e-mail addresses in ICT
• Studying what life is like for a child in India in Geography
• Investigating different habitats and learning about our skeletons in Science
• Making our own wallets and purses in D & T
• Practising our tradition Indian dancing and learning Volleyball skills in PE
• Ordering - and eating - some lovely tapas in Spanish

We have a lot of fun topics and tasks to look forward to this term, and Mr. Shadbolt will be posting about them on the blog as usual. Watch this space!

Christmas Production - Costume!

The Key Stage 2 Christmas production this year is called "A Very Rise Park Christmas Carol", and is our spin on the traditional Dickens tale. However, our Scrooge is a rather grumpy primary school teacher [not based on Mr. Shadbolt] who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by two visiting ghosts.

Thank you for helping your children practise the words to the two songs that year four are singing; Santa Claus is Coming to Town and The Twelve Days of Christmas. Both classes sound fantastic, and all the children are trying their very best to raise the roof with their amazing singing.

We would like all of the children to wear party clothes for the performances, and these will need to be in school for Friday 16th December, or the morning of Monday 19th December at the very latest. We think party clothes should be the same sort of outfit that you would send your child in to the school Christmas disco, or that you would send them in to a birthday party. Pretty dresses... smart shirts... but no fancy-dress, please - we don't want any Buzz Lightyears or Princesses on-stage.

Look forward to seeing you all at the performances.

Children in Need - Thank You!

On Friday, we all went topsy-turvey at Rise Park Primary in an effort to raise lots of money for Children in Need! Mr. Shadbolt and Mrs. Bell forgot to get dressed and both turned up to school in their pyjamas, and every child in 4S made a real effort to dress-up for the occasion - whether it was coming to school in a snorkel or shaving off half of their hair! We did some topsy-turvey writing, learnt about number palindromes and raised lots of money by buying Pudsey Bear biscuits. We learnt about an eight year old boy called Harrison whose life had been changed by the money that we raised last year.

An extra special mention should go to the group of year four children who made their own bookmarks and jewellery to sell at break times to raise even more money for Children in Need! With no help from any staff at all, these children were able to make and sell enough home-made bits and bobs to raise £37 for the charity! Well done, all of you! :)

Thanks once again to all the parents, carers and children who helped raise money this year. It really will change someone's life for the better!