Latest News
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
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Year 5 - Living Rainforest Trip
Fri 08 Oct 2021Our Year 5 Journey to the Living Rainforest
Last Wednesday, Year 5 got up very early and set off for the Living Rainforest to learn all about different animals and how they have adapted to their environment in places such as the Amazon, Madagascar and other countries on the Equator.
When we arrived, as we were the only school there, we had plenty of time to look round in our four groups. (Group 4 had an extra VIP guided tour!) As we wandered along the Forest Floor, we saw some attractive, colourful birds including a Toucan and an amusing black bird called Rory.
There were animals that lived in the water that had adapted to their changing environment. It was interesting that the Piranha’s cousin’s teeth were like human molars because they did not eat other fish. A bit further along, we saw stingrays and turtles.
All along the path there were examples of different plants with amazing leaves that got rid of the water quickly so they kept dry. The Pitcher Plant even had a flower that trapped insects which fed the plant.
Nearby, there was a beautiful iguana (dragon). It had a colourful neck to attract the females. The python was in a cage resting but we were told interesting facts about it.
Here are some examples of what some of the children thought about our trip:
“We had a good day out at the Living Rainforest. I enjoyed looking at all the animals and I learnt that spiders shoot out their hairs into monkeys’ eyes so they don’t eat the spider.” Ethan
“We had a great day at the Living Rainforest, we enjoyed the sloth and the armadillo. I learnt that adaptions can be very important to animals and birds.” Kian
“We had an amazing day at the Living Rainforest, the amazing thing is that I never knew that some plants are so big and they even look poisonous, but aren’t. I learnt that some fish have teeth.” Chloe
“My favourite animal was the iguana because it was extremely beautiful and I learnt that poisonous dart frogs need to eat poison to be poisonous.” George
“I loved seeing the terrific turtles and the perfect, poison dart frogs. I found out that sloths are nocturnal.” Isla
“We had an extraordinary day at the Rainforest. My favourite part was when we saw the turtle and the tortoises. I learnt that snakes don’t actually suffocate their prey, they actually cut the blood circulation from going to the brain.” Mya
“I really enjoyed seeing the bird eating tarantula and the caiman!” Ruby-Mai
“I dearly enjoyed the blue poison dart frogs. I found their colour mesmerised me, they were blue with black dots, but there are also many other frogs with different colours. I also loved the toucan even though it kept ‘squarking’” Kacie
“I enjoyed seeing the sloth and the tortoises. I also enjoyed playing at the park. But my favourite part of all was seeing the sloth” Sasha B
Overall, it was fantastic to go on a school trip again and we learnt a lot about rainforests for our topic. A massive thank you goes out to all the adults who took us.
By Isla & Chloe
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The Big Year 6 Camp Out
Fri 02 Jul 2021The Big Year 6 Camp Out
Well what a fantastic three days and two nights we had on our very special year 6 residential!
The experience started on the morning of Wednesday 23rd June when we all arrived at school with all our kit and happy, smiling faces, ready to start our adventure.
The first day was full of brain tingling challenges and problem solving. Wow – did they make us work hard! We solved the key code challenge, built towers without touching, completed the gutter run and solved the toxic waste disaster plus many other mind bogglers. Thank goodness we got a break at lunchtime with a delicious packed lunch supplied by Pat at The Oak – Yum. Just what was needed.
At the end of the school day, when everyone else in the school went home, it was time to the real camp to begin. We collected our kit and made our way through to the school sports field – our home until Friday. When we entered the field, it was so exciting to see how the field had been transformed into a festival style campsite. It then hit us that we now needed to put up the tents. Another challenge for us all.
After this, we could settle in for some food, fun and games. The highlight for everyone was the Tug-of-War! Although I think the teachers are still sulking that they did not win.
That evening it was time to settle down with the campfire before bed. Of course, with hot chocolate and marshmallows! We were then totally ready for settling down for bed after a thoroughly exhausting day.
The next morning, after a delicious pancake and fruits breakfast, we embarked on a non-stop day of activities. Today, we perfected our archery skills, built giant catapults, learned a range of survival skills and enjoyed a walk to the park to develop our understanding of orienteering.
After some more fun and games, as well as making our survival bracelets, it was time for another BBQ, again from The Oak.
Again, we couldn’t have another evening without more marshmallows, smores and hot chocolate! It really did not feel like we were on our school field.
Our final day of camp gave us our final dose of adventure. Team challenges, skateboarding, fencing and an ENORMOUS climbing wall!
Everyone had an absolutely amazing time at our Big Year 6 Camp Out. We will cherish the memories forever!
Here are some of our thoughts…
The year six camp was the best time I’ve had at school since the pandemic started, it really felt like normal life again. We had fun, enjoyed many fantastic activities, and camp challenges. It was an unforgettable time with my closet friends that will stay in my memories forever. Thank you to all the teachers and organisers for allowing all of us to have this experience.
Jimmy Chapman 6HPMy best highlight of year 6 camp out 2021 was the giant catapult we made and launched tennis balls at the tent it was awesome!!!
Angel w
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Children Return to School Survey
Fri 23 Apr 2021Children Survey
The children answered their own survey when they returned to school:
How happy do you feel about being back in school
62% are happy or very happy to be back at school
33% have mixed feelings (happy but a bit nervous/worried)
5% are not happy
What is your biggest feeling
“amazing” “excited” “so so happy”
“worried” “happy” “a bit nervous because of coronavirus”
“I’m feeling happy” “sometimes I was lonely at home”
“ok” “tired” “sad about missing mummy and daddy”
What was the best thing about being at home? What did you enjoy doing?
“being with my family” “riding my bike with my dad” “baking cakes and biscuits”
“playing” “playing games” “being with my baby brother”
“playing football” “playing with my toys” “watching TV”
“playing with my puppy” “staying in my pyjamas” “rushing to do my work so I could play”
“still being able to do World Book Day” “having home discos” “playing on the Nintendo switch”
“mummy helping me with my school work” “playing with dad in the garden”
Any worries?
“another lockdown” “coronavirus” “will school close again”
“I might lose my friends” “going back in to lockdown”
“being nervous about coming back because we haven’t been at school for a long time”
One thing you learnt to do at home?
“backflips” “to tidy up properly” “baking cakes”
“tell the time” “tie my shoelaces” “drawing pictures”
“learnt how to plant seeds” “write neater” “doing word searches”
“bake cookies” “how to communicate online” “wash the car”
“cleaning and tidying my bedroom” “be kinder to my brother”
“cleaning the kitchen” “how to write a proper story” “my 4 times table”
“ride my bike without stabilisers” “I learnt a new game with my sister”
What were you most looking forward to when you returned to school?
“seeing my friends” “seeing my teacher” “having fun with my friends”
“friends” “seeing people in real life” “more ancient Greek”
“having Miss Hall as my teacher not mum and dad” “doing work and seeing my friends”
One thing you wish we knew?
“when will coronavirus would go away” “when can I go to Spain?” “when will things be normal”
“when will covid end??????” “when will everything to go back to normal”
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Remote Learning Post Lockdown Survey
Fri 23 Apr 2021Parent Survey—Results
· 95% agreed our remote learning offer was clear to understand
· Communication with the school 98% said it was good/adequate
· Over half of responses agreed the amount of work being asked to complete at home was manageable
· 91% of children were engaged and motivated to complete their work
· Maths—77% agreed the Maths work set was pitched at the right level
· English—82% agreed the English work set was pitched at the right level
· In terms of their mental health 86% of children coped ok/well with the demands of home learning during lockdown and were generally happy
· 85% agreed over the course of a week, comments/feedback on selected pieces of work provided useful advice.
· 81% said the schools remote learning provision was excellent/good (96% said adequate/good/excellent)
What aspect of remote learning did you find most useful or valuable?
“The teachers engaging with my child”
“Staff were amazing”
“Being able to see what the children were working on a day to day basis”
“The children seeing each other and being able to engage with each other”
“Seeing the teachers daily”
“Live lessons were really good”
“Teams calls”
“All live calls with teachers”
“English and maths videos”
“Everything, the teachers were very professional and all sessions were structured. Grateful to the teachers”
We have made adaptions to school routines—What 1 thing would you like to see the school retain post lockdown?
“Keep the free flow drop offs in the morning”
“To continue using DB Primary for homework”
“PE Kit worn on the days they have PE”
“Parents Drop and Go in the morning”
“Virtual Parents Evening”
“Setting homework online—means nothing gets left at school or lost”
“staggered pick up time so it’s not so crowded on the playground”
How do you feel we could improve remote learning?
“I thought it was amazing, my child was able to login and carry on her school day independently. “
“I felt the remote learning was excellent.”
“Slowing the maths down, it was incredibly quick moving.”
“I’m not sure, it was set up very well.”
“mix it up with live online lessons as well as task setting, rather than using external presentations”
“DB Primary was sometimes a little tricky to navigate “
“Overall we were happy but some of the subjects could have different activities for ability”
“A rule to keep cameras on at all times during the lesson”
“Online live lessons were missing. Learning new concepts without teacher interaction is very hard”
I think the balance was right!
All brilliant, just less live lessons for the younger ones
Do not use Oak National Academy for English. It is uninspiring and dreary
I think the best was done under incredibly difficult circumstances to accommodate a range of children’s needs/ ages / abilities
Remote learning was spot on
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Flutter of Angels
Mon 29 Mar 2021The children made a Flutter of Angels that was on display at St Michael's church.
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World Book Day 2021 - Take One Book - The Umbrella
Fri 12 Mar 2021What an amazing day the children had and it was wonderful to see so many children dressed up too, so thank you 😊
Here’s what the children got up to 😊
In Reception…
In Reception, the children spent the whole week exploring the story 😊
Then they did many activities based on the book including:
Orally retelling the story, labelling the animals from the underwater scene as well as writing about a time when they had been scared and who helped to make you feel better.
Wow! What amazing work from our talented Reception children. 😊
In Year 1…
The children loved reading the story at home and online. They were amazed by the illustrations and enjoyed spotting all the animals and adventures the little dog went on.
In science, the children have been learning about animals and animal groups so they sorted all the animals they found into mammals, birds, reptiles and some children added a fish group too!
The children then wrote a postcard from the dog to Mr Postmouse (they have been learning about his adventures). We chose to write about the page when the dog was floating over the African Savannah.
In Year 2 …
The children enjoyed reading 'The Umbrella' together on TEAMS and shared their wonderful costumes! The Tiger who came to Tea was a popular costume choice and they even had Emeline Pankhurst and Paddington Bear! The Year 2 children in school, set up a fashion show to strut and pose in their costumes to music!
Home and school learners were asked to think of a place they would like to fly to if they had an umbrella like the one in the story, or places they like to dream of or visit.
In class, the children used percussion instruments to add music to create atmosphere for the pictures in the story, we also enjoyed discussing each picture together and gave the black dog the name 'Fluffy'!
In Year 3…
The children had two options to choose from:
They could write the story from the point of view of the dog. They were given a story start and their task was to finish the story using the pictures from the book to describe and explain the dog's adventure.
Or, they could write the story from the point of view of the cat. They were asked to think about what might happen if the cat at the end of the story picked up the umbrella. What might happen to the cat and where may it have ended up or gone with the umbrella?
In Year 4…
The children pretended they were an author who had been tasked with writing words to go along with 2/3 of the settings the dog visited - either the 1st or 3rd person. They focused on some recent grammar we had been learning in lockdown - e.g. adverbials, expanded noun phrases and the punctuation used in dialogue.
The children also picked from other options such as:
- imagining where the cat might travel to and writing about his or her adventures
- drawing a scene of somewhere else the dog might visit
- creating music to go along with the story
- making an umbrella for our own adventures
In Year 5…The children started off by planning our cat’s adventure, we chose 3 or 4 locations and researched the climate, features of the landscape, plants and animals in each location and took notes to help us with our writing and illustrations later in the day.
The children then wrote the story of the cats’ journey and illustrated it in the style of Ingrid Schubert. 😊
In Year 6…
The children spent quite a long time looking through the story and dissecting each page. The kids loved it and they discussed the illustrations and the emotions that came from them.
Then, the children thought about what comes next. We imagined that the cat then went on his own journey and we were going to create a sequel to the original story. The children began by planning the biome, country, what animals 'cat' would come across, feeling and emotions, how 'cat' then progresses to the next biome. The children then 'wrote' the story with a small amount of figurative language and beautiful illustrations.
What an impressive day of learning 😊
All that is left for me to say is….
Well done to all our children both at home and in school for their amazing learning on World Book Day. We were very impressed by their work and I think we have some budding authors of the future right here at Aston Clinton School. 😊
Mrs Geach - Phonics and Reading Subject Leader
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Year 1 December 2020
Fri 18 Dec 2020We have been really proud of the progress our children have made since the beginning of the year. The children have worked so hard and are really showing us what they can do. Well done!
Our topic this half term has been Ice Cold and we learnt about Robert Scott’s exploration to the South Pole. We have also learnt many amazing facts about penguins and all our art work has been based on cold colours.
In art, we have created Ice Cold works of art. Over the half term we have used ready mixed paint to create cold colour paintings. We really enjoyed ‘painting’ with powder paint. However, the paint was so thick and textured we had to spread it with lollypop sticks.
We have also practised our sewing skills to create our own textile tile! Finally, we practised our cutting skills to make a cold collage!
In English, all our books have been based on our Ice Cold theme. We particularly enjoyed learning about penguins. We write our own information texts using all the facts we found out!
In phonics, we have been learning new graphemes linked to the sounds we learnt in reception. For instance, we now know that the ‘ai’ phoneme can also be written as ‘ay’. We will continue all this new learning in the next term. Look out for the new graphemes in the children’s reading books. May we also take this opportunity to thank you for all the reading you do with the children at home. It is making such a difference to their reading abilities.
What a great term you have all had in Year One, we are very proud of you 😊
We wish you all and your families a very Merry Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year.Miss Jackson, Mrs Geach, Mrs Clark, Ms Francis and Mrs Merlino
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Autumn 2 Antics in Reception
Fri 18 Dec 2020The first week back after half term was a roaring success and the children loved learning all about dinosaurs. They really enjoyed using their fine motor skills to make dinosaur masks and then used them to role play stories with their friends. The children demonstrated great understanding of the different dinosaur diets when they discovered what herbivores, carnivores and omnivores eat. They did a great job at using their phonics to give dinosaurs real names and describe them in their books. They even posted letters to the Terrifying T-Rex from ‘Dear Dinosaur’. We also made our very own frozen dinosaur eggs and had so much fun making them hatch in the water tray. The children were amazed as they melted in front of their eyes.
Next we embraced looking at different cultures and religions through the celebration of Diwali. The children enjoyed exploring the ways in which Hindus celebrate the festival of light. We read the story of ‘Rama and Sita’ and the children made their own clay Diya’s just like the ones that lined the streets to welcome Rama and Sita home. They enthusiastically got their hands messy and moulded their Diya’s perfectly, finishing them off with lovely patterns. They experimented with lots of different colours and materials to make Rangoli patterns inside and outside.
Then all of a sudden the classroom became a jungle and the children got out their binoculars to search for African animals. As they went on safari they discovered the natural habitats for lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes and many more. They made lots of lovely animal finger puppets and used them to tell the story of ‘The Ugly Five’ in their very own puppet theatre. On the painting table the children produced some amazing pictures of their favourite animals too.
The last two weeks we entered the magical world of Princesses, wizards, dragons and knights. The children really enjoyed reading ‘The Princess and The Wizard’ and this inspired them to write their own powerful potions. They came up with incredible invisible potions, ones that turned people into unicorns and dangerous fire potions. The children loved becoming wizards themselves and bringing these potions to life mixing snakes (grass), fairy dust (sand) and snails (rocks) in the tuff spots outside and bubbles, paints and glitter in the water tray inside to cast their spells. The Knights then arrived to restore order in the classroom and slay the dragons with the fantastic shields and armour they made in the junk modelling area. Although the children quickly learnt that Zog was not a dragon that needed to be slayed as he was the friendliest dragon of them all. The children loved becoming Zog in our hot seating game and wrote all about who they would give their gold stars. You will be pleased to hear mums and dads your names were mentioned a lot as you help them so much and they love your to pieces, their words!
We really can’t believe that autumn term is already over but cannot wait for all our spring adventures to start in January. We have enjoyed every minute of this term and loved getting to know your children and see their personalities shine as their confidence has grown every week. We could not be prouder of the progress they have made, all the fabulous work they have produced and know they will keep progressing as the year develops.
Have a wonderful Christmas everybody, stay safe and have lots of fun creating magical family memories together.
Mrs Hobley, Mrs Cole, Mrs Hillsdon, Mrs Potter, Mrs Shirran and Miss Wilmot
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Year 3 December 2020
Mon 14 Dec 2020YEAR 3
The children in year 3 have been working really hard and amazed us with their learning attitudes over this term. We think they are looking forward to having a rest though over the holidays! We wish you all a very happy Christmas!
English
During this half term the children have been doing writing based around the book “George’s Marvellous Medicine.” They have started to learn how to use speech marks or inverted commas to show direct speech or dialogue between characters in stories. They have also had fun writing instructions to make a simple no cook cheese cake and are in the process of writing instructions for making a Christmas card.
Maths
For most of this half term the children have been learning how to add and subtract numbers and how to use different strategies such as number lines and column methods. We have now started work on multiplication and division and how times tables can link both these operations.
Remembrance Day
On Remembrance Day children talked about the reasons why we have this day each year and produced some lovely artwork based around silhouettes and poppies.
Science
In science children have been very excited to learn about different types of rocks (igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary) and how they are formed. They have learnt that petrology is the scientific study of rocks and have been very active petrologists investigating the appearance and properties of different rocks to try and work out what type of rocks they had been given.
Geography
The children have learnt about the structure of the earth and how mountains can be formed which affects the shape of mountains. They have been developing their map reading skills by finding the locations of different mountain ranges around the world. None of them thought that living on top of Mount Everest would be a good idea because it is too cold and it takes too long to boil water for warm drinks!
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Year 4 December 2020
Fri 04 Dec 2020Year 4
The children continue to impress us with their energy and love of learning. Some recent highlights include:
Design and Technology
The children have been learning to make an apron out of old sheets and clothes (many thanks for the donations). This involves looking at a variety of designs of aprons and deciding with a partner which type of apron they would like to construct. They then recycle material from the old items to create their new apron. At the time of writing, we are just beginning the constructions process – this involves cutting, sewing, etc. Good teamwork is an especially important when the children are working in their pairs.
Some quotes from the children:
“First we made the template, then we put it onto the material and cut it out, then we started to make the hem with pins, string and needles.” – E.G.
“Our first attempt didn’t work out, but looking at our second attempt it now looks great!” - M.H.G.
Science
In our science lessons we have been learning about what sound is, what causes sound and how it can be measured. In recent investigations, year 4 have constructed a replacement telephone, using only string and coffee cups. The idea behind this experiment was to look at the impact on the loudness of sound when the distance from the source of the sound was varied.
Here are some quotes from the children:
“I thought it was really fun because we got to make telephones and it was fun investigating the phones to see if they worked or not” – F.G.
“I enjoyed this lesson because it was fun making phones!” – R.S.
Maths
In maths year 4 have been learning about perimeter. As part of that, they have been measuring various distances within school – which has included both in the classroom and outside on the playground.
Here’s what the children had to say about their maths lessons:
“I think learning about perimeter was quite fun, I liked how we got to go outside to measure the playground - every time we had different answers!” – I.Y.
“I liked measuring perimeter because it was an extension to maths and it made maths fun because you got to use the equipment.” - L.J.
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