Autumn  2024

Autumn 2

Ipswich Town Football Club: Author Day

On the morning of Friday, 8th November, a group of Year 6 children were chosen to attend an Author Day at Portman Road to celebrate National Author Day. Upon our arrival, we were introduced to Rob Parker, a local school teacher turned author. While speaking to the children, he explained how his unique creative writing process takes him from scribbled notes on bits of scrap paper to a finished, published book, with help from his wife, who is an art teacher and illustrator of his books.

As an avid Ipswich supporter, Rob was approached by the football club to write a book specifically about the club, titled One of Our Own. Next, Guy, the graphic designer, explained how he took Rob's ideas and illustrations to create the book’s cover. The pupils were then tasked with designing their own front covers, considering font, colour, illustrations, and other vital information for a cover.

At the end of this activity, we were fortunate enough to be taken on an exclusive tour of the grounds, including visits to the new press room, the changing rooms for both the away and home teams, the manager's office, and a walk down the tunnel to the stadium! Throughout the morning, the pupils were fantastic listeners and asked insightful questions.

To close the visit, there was a short prize-giving ceremony for those pupils who had shown exceptional engagement and interest. Prizes included football Top Trumps cards, and one very lucky winner received two tickets to watch Ipswich vs. Manchester United! We were also gifted a copy of Rob's book for our school library.

We had an absolutely amazing time, and the children were a credit to our school. Well done to all!

(See the gallery for pictures from this trip).

Art 

This week, we've been studying the art of Cubism, with a particular focus on the works of Pablo Picasso and Patrick Caulfield. Cubism, an innovative movement that emerged in the early 20th century, represents objects and people as geometric shapes, often viewing them from multiple angles at once to create a dynamic, abstract effect. We experimented with various tones and tints and explored techniques for layering images, allowing multiple perspectives to appear simultaneously. Be sure to check out our gallery to see our impressive finished pieces!

 

Autumn 1

The first few weeks of the term have literally flown by.  The children have settled well into Year 6, and we are proud that they are proving to be great role models for other year groups in terms of their SPRING learning behaviours. 

So far this term, we have thoroughly enjoyed our history topic, where we delved into WW2 and its effect on our local area.  As part of this, we were extremely privileged to have the opportunity to visit Wattisham Airbase.  We had a fascinating and informative talk and looked round the WW2 museum.  We were even able to get up close to one of the serving Apache helicopters – which was unbelievable!  

In addition to this, in science, we have been exploring atoms and their components – ask us about electrons, protons and neutrons: we are experts!  We used this knowledge to help us create series and parallel circuits.  A few of us were excellent at this and, therefore, we may have some budding electricians in our midst. 

We have also been working hard on our reading, writing and maths.  We have just finished our autobiographies, which we really enjoyed as it was fun to revisit memorable moments from our lives so far.  With maths, we have been ensuring that our arithmetic skills are top notch, whilst in our reading sessions we love our class book Rooftoppers – it is a real page turner, and we can not wait to see what happens.   

Talking of page turners, we were also lucky to have a visit from new author, Nazima Pathan' who discussed how she came up with the ideas for her brilliant new book 'Dream Catchers'.  She was a fascinating and creative inspiration for our future narrative writing. 

This week we will be cooking… the ‘Great Classroom Bakeoff’ here we come!  Watch out for pictures.